top ten favorite restaurants in rome

A while ago my cousin Susan Katzman asked me to guest blog on her site Sweet Leisure. My contribution was my current Top Ten list of Roman restaurants. My friend Jane just phoned to complain (rightly) that it should also be on my own blog, so people could find it easily. So...here it is Jane! 

It's always hard choosing 'the best' of anything. While a lot of people complain about food in Rome, I find  it's hard to go wrong when going out to dinner here. In Florence and Venice it's almost impossible to avoid tourist traps, but in Rome, it's just not that hard to get a good plate of pasta. That said, I definitely have my favorites. The following are the places I go regularly, not in any particular order. I've tried to include a few in different neighborhoods since I imagine you'll be touring around. For more Roman tips for visit my web site.  buy my app Eat Rome

making pizza in todi

I know people brag about different things. Some are fixated on cars. Others immediately tell you how many bedrooms their house has. Or how many houses they have. I’m no exception. I can’t wait to tell people that I have four ovens. Yes, two of them are normal, electric ovens in the kitchen (one Rex, one Miele). I use them all the time, for baking, roasting, etc. But it’s the other two ovens I get really excited about.

You see, I have two - count’em two - wood burning ovens at our home in Todi. Hah. Beat that! One is the more ‘modern’ kind of oven, where the wood goes in a separate area to fuel the rectangular oven. I loved cooking with this for several years - the heat got searing hot and the brick surface meant I could get crispy crusts.

But no, I wasn’t content until Domenico built a true, dome shaped pizza oven. (that's it above) I know I will eventually use it to cook other things, but for now I’m having too much fun making pizzas. We whip them up every weekend, rain or shine. And when I say we, I mean we. Domenico and I are a tag team. I craft the pizzas, and he is the oven master.

I’ve experimented with a few recipes for the dough and so far the one I like best is Evan Kleiman’sPizza, Pasta and Pannini. It’s really simple, but it was a revelation seeing Evan actually make the dough herself when she was visiting. When she says leave it wet and sticky, she really means it. It’s kind of a mess until you get the hang of it, but the wetter the dough the thinner you will be able to get the crust. Trust me. Or rather, trust Evan. But another dough recipe that I’ll be trying soon is the one from the NYTimes last month that uses sour dough starter.

Yes, the dough and crust is important, I know. But the real fun comes with the toppings. This is where my pizzas really shine. Once I roll out the dough into a thin circle, I carefully transfer it onto the peel and quickly add the toppings before Domenico swishes them into the waiting oven.




What I top them with is a bit whimsy, a bit planning and mostly what cheeses I happen to have in the fridge. As many of you know, I’ll go out of my way to make it to a local caseificio. There is Montecristo in Ponte Rio, and Giuliani in Collelungo. And of course, I always make a pit stop at Lufra in Orte on my way up to Todi from Rome. While I almost always use mozzerella, I am equally happy with smoked scamorza, black pepper-studded pecorino and oak-barrel-aged, rosemary-wrapped, goat cheese.

And what’s a pizza without pork? I am partial to crisp-frying little cubes of guanciale, or else adding thin slices of wild boar salami. Vegetables can be anything from leftover swiss chard, coarsely grated raw zucchini or - my favorite - thinly sliced red onion.

A few words about assembling the pizzas. Have all your toppings ready at hand, in small bowls. Roll out your dough on a floured wooden pastry board, if you have one. Use a rolling pin to get things started, then stretch it out with your hands. Once it is in perfect (or not so perfect) shape, gently lift it onto the metal peel that you have generously sprinkled with semolina flour (I find this works best, or fine corn meal).  

Now, work quickly before the dough starts to stick to the peel. First lay on a thin layer of tomato sauce if you are using that ( I rarely do). Then cheese (if using mozzarella, make sure you drain it well first). Then meat toppings, fresh herbs. Finally drizzle with olive oil and top with salt.
 

Here are a few of my favorite combos, as well as Evan’s dough recipe. You'll notice my pizzas are never overloaded. Resist the temptation to add just one more ingredient. With pizzas, less is always best. And as always (and you're probably getting sick of hearing this) the quality of the ingredients is the most important thing. It's better to use what's at hand, rather than half-assed substitutes. For instance, if you have some incredible farmhouse cheddar by all means use that instead of some not-very-good imported sheep's milk cheese.

Topping Combos

Pecorino cheese
Fried Guanciale
Sage

Mozzarella
Cherry Tomatoes (fresh, or canned, drained)
Add fresh basil once the pizza is out of the oven.




Goat Cheese
Red Onions, sliced
Fresh Thyme


Smoked Scamorza
Mushrooms, thinly sliced
Parsley
Garlic

Mozzarella
Zucchini, coarsely grated
Ndjua (very soft, very spicy and fatty pork salami from Calabria)

Goat Cheese
Sliced spicy sausage
Rosemary
Cherry Tomatoes

Tomato Sauce
Crumbled and precooked sweet pork sausage
Fennel seed
Grated orange rind
grated parmesan


Evan’s Pizza Dough Recipe
Makes Four 10-inch pizzas

2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast (I use 15 grams lievito di birra)
1/4 cup luke warm water
3 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup cold water

In small bowl add yeast to water and let fizz for 15 minutes (I skip this, and just disvolve the cake of yeast in the water)

In large bowl combine yeast and water with 2 1/2 cups of the flour, salt, olive oil and cold water. Stir to form a thick batter. Add the rest of the flour a little at a time, eventually transferring it to a floured surface and knead for 8 to 10 minutes. The dough should be soft and a bit sticky, but elastic.

Let the dough rest for about 20 minutes, covered.

Divide the dough into four balls, place on a board and cover. Let rise for about an hour.

zucchini time

I know a lot of you have gardens and are just gearing up for the too-many-zucchini season. But for now, they are small and cute and you just can’t get enough of them. I’m sure you are just barely steaming them, and enjoying them as they are, not looking for anything creative. 

cooking your way through italy

Coming to Italy to eat is a no-brainer, and I’m always happy to help friends find the perfect place. Everything from three-course, eat-till-you bust meals to the perfect gelato. But if you love food, chances are you also love to cook. So combining a vacation in Italy with a cooking class or two, and maybe a market tour, makes perfect sense.

Ten years ago finding a reliable culinary adventure - in English - to recommend wasn’t so easy. Thankfully many of my ex-pat friends have jumped in and started businesses based here in Italy that introduce the adventurous traveler to the Italian kitchen. Here follows some of my favorites.

Yummy Peppers

The other day we finally got our vegetable garden planted in Todi. Among the many things that made it into the ground were four pepper plants called “Cornuto.” The salesgirl at the nursery was a little surprised I wanted so many, since, she said “sono per l’insalata.’ In other words, they were only good for chopping up and eating in salad, not cooking or preserving.

But I knew better. A week ago, in Rome, Domenico came back from the bio market in Testaccio with a half kilo of these beauties. Although the thin skins do indeed make them perfect for eating in salads (and they show up all over Greece that way) I knew they would make the perfect vehicle for the tasty stuffing I had in mind. Their thinness was actually a bonus, since it meant a higher stuffing to veggie ratio, which is always a plus in my book. (I mean really, aren’t stuffed vegetables usually just an excuse to eat the stuffing??)

So, here follows my recipe. The truly important ingredient here is home made bread crumbs. You’ve heard me say it before, and I’ll say it again, there is no substitute. Just save your left over bread, slice it, and whiz it in the food processor. Stuff it into a zip lock and it will be ready in your freezer whenever you need it. Although the better the bread, the better the crumbs, this is an excellent way to use up that loaf of bread that wasn’t so great. Home made crumbs from a so-so loaf is way better than packaged crumbs any day.

Feel free to play around with the seasonings. Also, if you can't find these types of peppers, any will do. If I have huge squarish shaped ones, I usually cut them in four long pieces. 

Stuffed Cornuto Peppers

1 pound peppers (about 4)

3 cups bread crumbs

2 tablespoons capers

1/3 cup pitted black olives

1 cup parsley

1/2 cup basil

4 anchovies

3 cloves garlic, chopped

4 sun dried tomatoes

4 tablespoons olive oil (plus more for drizzling)

salt and hot pepper to taste

Pre heat oven to 200 c. (400 f)

Slice the peppers lengthwise and carefully trim out the core, leaving the stem.

Place peppers in one layer on a oven tray, covered in parchment paper.

Lightly salt the peppers.

Place bread crumbs in food processor, and add the rest of the ingredients. Process, on and off, so that the other ingredients get chopped up and mixed in, with the oil and crumbs. Taste the crumbs for seasonings. The mixture should be pretty strong tasting. 

Divide the bread crumb mixture between the peppers. Drizzle with oil, and place in oven for about 20 - 30 minutes, untill peppers are well cooked and stuffing starts to brown. 

Serve room temperatures. These make and excellent side dish for grilled meats. (yes, Jodi, that means you)

Growing your own:

Although my peppers were called Cornuto, and this is what they call them in Rome, I think that they are also called Corno di Toro, and you can find them at Johnny’s Seeds. 

cherry ricotta tart

This year, due to rain and too many urban social engagements our vegetable garden in Todi is way behind. It’s only this past weekend that we’ve finally gotten stuff in the ground. (more on that in next blog). But even though the rain dampened our planting (literally) it did wonders for all the things we have no control over. Foraging is one of the funnest things about being in the country. Wild asparagus, dandelion greens, blackberries. And my friend Jane is maniacal about getting while the getting is good.

This weekend was really the first time we were able to come up to Todi in about six weeks. Jane was all set to go looking for asparagus – or even dandelions – but it was already too late for that. The June sun was beating down and the asparagus had already turned ferny and the dandelions had long since flowered. Cherries, however, were quite another story.

I don’t think the cherry trees that grow on our property are indigenous. I guess a farmer must have planted one in the past, and they have since sprung up all over. But we never seem to get many cherries for two reasons. The birds usually pick off the cherries as soon as they ripen, meaning there are usually none to pick when we get up from Rome on Fridays. And the really beautiful ripe ones that are there, are way too far up in the highest branches of the tree to get to.


But not this year. For some reason – the intense rain I’m thinking– the five cherry trees on our property are just groaning with plump, dark ripe cherries. So Jane headed out, with her olive-picking basket strapped to her hip – and managed to pick over 10 kilos of cherries this weekend.

We’re still trying to figure out what to do with them (they are in the fridge now) but Jane and Scott did manage to pit about a kilo of fruit on Saturday so that had to be dealt with immediately.

I thought I was going to make a old-fashioned cherry pie, but forgot to tell Sophie to get extra butter and eggs at the store. But I did have a package of fresh ricotta from the mozzarella store in Orte (so glad they always stick that in as a free gift).

So, here’s what I made for dessert last night. Now we just have to figure out what to do with the other nine kilos.


Ricotta and Fresh Cherry Crostata

Crust:
1 ½ cups of flour
7 Tablespoons of butter (110 grams)
2 egg yolks
½ cup sugar
¼ tsp salt

Preheat oven to  350F (180 c. )

Place flour in a big bowl, and make a well in the center of the mound. Place cut up butter, sugar , salt and yolks in the dent. Gently start to mush it all together, eventually working in the rest of the flour. Give it a few good shoves with the heel of your hand to work it all together.

Line a 9 inch tart pan with removable bottom with parchment paper. Place the dough in the pan, spreading it out with the heel of your hand until it covers the pan and a bit up the sides.

Bake the crust for about 15 minutes, until starting to turn golden.

Take out and let cool.


Filling:
1 ½ cups whole milk ricotta
1 egg
¾ cups sugar
2 ½ cups pitted fresh cherries

Whip the ricotta with a fork till smooth. Add sugar and eggs, and stir till smooth.
Fold in cherries.
Fill tart shell with ricotta mixture, place back in oven and cook for about 25 minutes, until set.
Let cool to room temperature and serve.

Cows and Nuns

It’s been a busy few weeks in Rome. It seems as if every night there are art exhibitions, museums openings and parties. My friend Cathryn captured most of the recent events in her blog for Artforum, including the much anticipated opening of MAXXI. But the show I was most excited about opened this past Tuesday : Sienna Reid.

Full disclosure: Sienna is one of my best friends and a neighbor. (but most of you already know that.) That said, I have a lot of friends who are artists but I can’t say that I own five of their paintings. I am a huge fan of Sienna’s and have been from the first time I saw her work.

Sienna is American and has been living in Rome for ten years. She is from Seattle and has been painting for over 25 years. Her work is figurative, mostly in oil and very much inspired by the world around her. Over the last few years she has specialized in portraits (I commissioned her to paint Sophie, Emma and Pico).

One of my favorite paintings by Sienna is a small portrait of a cow which hangs in my kitchen. And when I say portrait, I mean portrait. The cow is very much a specific animal, with a huge presence that belies the small scale of the painting itself. Sienna began painting cows in 2000 and her current show pairs some of her most recent cows with a relatively new subject: nuns.

The show’s title in Italian is Mucche & Monache, which makes it sound sort of funny, sort of ironic. But the show is neither. Instead it is one of the most seriously introspective and moving group of portraits I have seen in a long time. While some of the paintings - especially the nuns - seem almost abstract in their lack of facial details, their body language and relationship to one another speaks loudly.

But what I love, love, love in so many of the works is Sienna’s expert and lush treatment of surface. A seemingly white hide is a kaleidoscope of colors. The drape of a veil is a sea of blues.

The show remains up until June 29.

Galleria Monty & Co.

Via Madonna dei Monti 69

Tuesday - Saturday 16:00 to 20:00 and by appointment.

328 7623 389 or 338 3117 822

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Outside the Holy City

dinner: pasta with sardines, zucchini and lemons

I’m the kind of person who, at the end of a long day, can think of nothing so wonderful as spending 3 or 4 hours cooking dinner. Yes, I have a cocktail to go along with that. But it’s the cooking that winds me down, relaxes me and brings me to where I want to be.

But something happens in June, as the days get longer. I’ll be happily working away in my office, at the computer, and will look up at the clock. “OMG, it’s 7:30! I have to make dinner AGAIN? Didn’t I just do that last night??!” I really don’t know what happens, but my cooking instinct just flies out the window in June. It probably goes to the beach. But I’m not, so what’s a girl to do? The stores are closed at this point, so I have to make do with what’s in the pantry.

Last night the pantry looked pretty bare. Sophie had very kindly done the grocery shopping but I hadn’t given her a detailed list. I said get something for dinner, but I guess she interpreted that as meaning four packs of feta.

Anyway, she did get some zucchini, buy only four. Not quite enough for a side dish. And a head of lettuce.

I kept poking around the pantry and found 3 cans of sardines I had bought in an effort to get more omega 3’s into our diet. Back to the internet where I found a recipe on Epiciurious for pasta with sardines. Sounded just ok, not great, but got rave reviews. So....I decided to tweak it a bit, using the four zucchinis and fresh lemons from the terrace. The result was, even I have to admit, one of the all time best pastas I have ever made. Really. Truly. Trust me.

As always, the secret is in the ingredients. My sardines came from the Calabrian store down the street. (Zingerman’s sells some great ones from Portugal) Fresh lemons from my terrace (yes, that's the photo above). Fresh breadcrumbs from home made bread I had made last week. Our own olive oil. And so on.

And the zucchini were my favorite Romanesco variety, which are just coming into season. They are light green and heavily ridged. These are much firmer than other varieties, and have a much more intense taste (less watery). If you happen to have a garden, you can get seeds at Johnny’s.

So, do your best to source great ingredients here. But, the one thing that makes the dish extraordinary is fresh breadcrumbs. Do not use store bought!

Pasta with Sardines , Zucchini and Lemon

Serves 4 to 6

1 pound pasta (I used farfalle/bowties)

3 cans sardines

3 Tablespoons olive oil

1/4 cup capers

4 small zucchini (or two medium) , coarsely grated

3 cloves garlic

2 cups fresh breadcrumbs

1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

dill (fresh if you can get it, but I used some dried I had gotten in Greece)

1 large fresh organic lemon

fennel pollen (very hard to find ingredient, I know, but made a huge difference. If you can’t find it, substitute a bit of fennel seed, ground)

Heat olive oil in big skillet, where eventually all the pasta will fit.

Drain and dry the capers. Add to hot oil and fry until they blossom out and just start to darken, about 2 - 3 minutes. Take out with slotted spoon and drain on paper towel.

Add the fresh bread crumbs to the oil. They will soak all the oil up right away, then just keep stirring until they brown and crisp up. Put in a bowl and add the capers and some salt and pepper. Add the grated peel of the lemon.

Open up all three cans of sardines. Drain the oil from one of the cans into the skillet you just used. Gently heat and add the grated zucchini. These will soften pretty fast, in about 3 minutes. Once they have softened and wilted down, add the garlic, pressed through a garlic press, the red pepper, fennel,dill and salt. Stir. Then add the three cans of sardines, with or without the oil depending on how dietetic you are feeling.

Stir it up, breaking the sardines into largish chunks, until it is heated through.

In the meantime, boil salted water and cook pasta. Drain, reserving a cup of the pasta water.

Add pasta to the sardine mixture, stirring and adding a bit of the reserved water to loosen it up. Add the breadcrumb mixture and toss well, and serve.

Zucchini Tendrils at Campo dei Fiori

I know someone was tweeting or posting about zucchini tendrils a few weeks ago. I can’t remember if it was Judy or Nancy. Or maybe Ed Behr at Art of Eating? (acutually I think it was a facebook thread where we all chimed in) At the time I thought, sadly, “That’s the kind of thing you NEVER see in the market in Rome. Maybe in Sicily or Calabria. Or go out and trim your own from your garden." So, imagine my surprise - and pleasure - to see a basket full of zucchini tendrils in Campo dei Fiori yesterday!

They were gorgeously and expertly trimmed. Not one blemish, and each of the itty bitty baby zucchinis still attached were carefully cut down the middle so that they would cook at the same time as the thinner tendrils and leaves. There were even miniscule zucchini still attached, no bigger than my fingernail.

According to Nancy they are called tenerumi in Sicily. And Judy says they come from the cucuzza squash down south. When I asked the lady selling them what they were called, she replied - in true Roman fashion - "beh", with a shrug of her shoulders.

I asked the woman how she would prepare them, and she said either boiling them and then sauteing them quickly in olive oil with a bit of garlic. Or, alternatively stewing them with a bit of tomato and very little water. Either way, it sounded like too much cooking for something so incredibly vibrant.

I took a lighter hand, and they turned out extraordinarily good. Here’s my recipe:

2 pounds zucchini tendrils, trimmed

2 Tablespoons olive oil

3 cloves of garlic

3 scallions, whites only

red pepper to taste

salt

Bring large pot of water to boil. Add about 1/2 tablespoon of kosher salt. Put in all of the zucchini. Add a handful at a time, so it all fits in as it wilts. When the water comes back to a boil, stir a few times and let boil for a few minutes. Not too long, since you don’t want to over cook. Just enough so that the tendrils are easy to bite through (this depends a bit on the age of the tendrils. They should ideally be form a pretty young plant, very new young shoots and itsy bitsy zucchini)

In the mean time, heat olive oil in big saute pan. Add chopped onion, garlic and pepper. When it starts to soften and become fragrant, lift the zucchini out of the hot water and saute with oil. It’s ok if a bit of water is still attached, but let it cook off. This helps finish cooking the tendrils. Add salt to taste. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Sunday Lunch in Rome

There were a lot of things in Italy that it took me a long time to get used to. Shops closing in the middle of the day. Unannounced strikes. Late trains. But one thing I took to immediately was the idea of a big Sunday lunch.

I grew up in a family where dinner was the only serious meal of the day and breakfast was a non event. My sisters and remember that while driving through Italy as youngsters (we lived here for a couple of years in the ’70’s) our breakfast would consist of tick tacks from my mothers purse. To this day my sister Robin gags at the mere sound of tick tacks clicking in their box.

Lunch was similarly frowned upon, and was never really a sit down planned affair. In fact, my mother still ‘picks’ at lunch and my father considers a big lunch an enormous waste of calories.

When I moved to Florence in 1988 to work on my dissertation I was faced with endlessly long Sundays when the libraries and archives were closed. I am pretty sure it was my friend Marietta who had the great idea of going out to lunch, which we did with gusto almost every Sunday. While during the week I made do with panini from the bar around the corner from the archive, Sundays we headed to our local trattoria for full three course meals with wine. A walk and a nap followed, and I can’t think of a more perfect formula for a Sunday afternoon in Italy.

Now, twenty years later, I’m living in Rome and lunch on Sunday has become one of the highlights of our family’s week. I feel especially attached to this tradition as Sophie and Emma are about to head off to University. While I often cook at home, (buccatini all’amatricana is a standard) we also like to go out in famiglia. Here follows both the recipe for Amatriciana as well as our favorite places to go out for Sunday lunch in Rome. We favor traditional Roman restaurants with hearty food!

Perilli

Our all time favorite place for Sunday lunch. But also, evidently everyone else’s since it’s near to impossible to get a Sunday lunch reservation here unless you call a few days ahead of time. But it’s worth the effort. Founded in 1911, the old fashioned place still has a distinct Roman trattoria feel to it. Located in Testaccio, where the old slaughter house was, many of the dishes feature those odd cuts of meat known as the quinto quarto (innards, etc.)

I think this is the best carbonara in town, full of huge chunks of chewy guanciale. Sophie swears by the amatriciana (but then again, Sophie would probably order amatriciana even if she was in China). Either way, you can’t go wrong. Fun when more than one orders the same pasta dish, since they bring it to the table in one huge serving bowl. They portion out the plates to whoever orders, but the lucky last person gets the big bowl, with all of the good bits at the bottom. Un-button your pants, and have a second course as well. I waffle between the maialino, the coratella (lamb innards) and ossobuco.

(Perilli, Via Marmorata 39. tel: +39 06 574 2415)

Giggetto

Giggetto get’s a lot of grief from food snobs in Rome, but while it may have had it’s ‘off’ years, it’s back as good as ever. If it’s spring or fall, and not too hot, nab a table outside. It’s located in the Ghetto, right near Portico d’Ottavia, and has a fantastic view of that and the Teatro Marcello. Besides all the Roman standbys, I think they do the best carciofi all giudea in town. These are crispy whole fried artichokes that are as delicious as they are beautiful. (See the piece I did for Diary of a Foodie for the process, Season 1, episode 3). A few times a week cases of artichokes arrive and are carefully trimmed in the front room by the waiters. Actually, all their fried things are excellent, including the zucchini flowers when in season. Save room for dessert, since they come from the son of the owner’s bakery next door Dolce Roma (yes, the best sacher torte in town.)

(via Portico D'Ottavio 21)

Piperno

I’ve been going here since I was 12, and have a soft spot for this place. When my father can be convinced to have lunch, this is where we go. Not just because it’s the closest restaurant to his house and he doesn’t have to walk, but also because it’s usually got excellent food. Also, on a summer afternoon, you can’t beat this jewel sized piazza for pretty. And in winter their green cloth covered walls makes the old fashioned dining room extra cozy. To order: carciofi alla giudea (which is one of their specialties), anything fried, including zucchini and zucchini flowers. Save room for their pala di nono (grandfather’s balls): deep fried, chocolate speckled balls of ricotta. I’ve never had them anywhere else (and not quite sure I need to).

(Monte de Cenci 9, sort of hard to find)

Pierluigi

Located in Piazza Ricci, which is one of the few really pretty piazza’s in the center closed to traffic, this is my go to place for outdoor dining when the weather is good. Don’t bother if you can’t sit outside. The food is good, but not the same without the setting. This is by far the chicest of the places we frequent, and you are more likely to run into Luca di Montezemolo (big wig at Fiat and Ferrari), who I saw there last weekend, rather than big Roman families. What I love: The soppressata di polipo, which is paper thin slices of pressed octopus, drizzled with olive oil and lemon. Although they have a wide selection of pastas, I almost always end up ordering the spaghetti alle vongole. They also have something called Insalata Catalana, which is a heavenly version of seafood/potato salad with rughetta.

(Piazza Ricci)

Bucatini All’Amatriciana

1 pound buccatini

2 tablespoon olive oil

1 small onion, chopped

3 thick slices of guanciale, chopped into small cubes*

1 large can of san marzano tomatoes

1/2 cup or more of grated pecorino romano

Place quanciale in a large saute pan and heat up. Let it cook and and sizzle, until just starting to brown. It should give up quite a bit of fat. Turn off heat, and scoop the guanciale bits up and set aside.

If there isn’t a lot of quanciale fat, add a bit more olive oil to pan (you may not need to. There should be at least 3-4 tablespoons of fat) Turn heat back on and add onions and cook at low heat until softened. Do not let them brown, but make sure they are quite soft. (if you like, you can add a bit of red pepper to give it some kick at this point)

Add tomatoes and their juice to pan, along with reserved guanciale. Let it bubble away, slowly, for at least a half hour. It should reduce quite a bit, and get thick. If you think it’s getting too thick, add a bit of water.

Bring large pot of water to boil, add salt, and cook buccatini. When done, drain (reserve a cup of pasta water), and add pasta to pan with sauce. Stir it all up, over gentle heat, just to meld the flavours. Take off heat, and stir in cheese. If it seems to thick, add a bit of reserved pasta water.

Serve with extra cheese on table.

*Somebody should write a book about guanciale. Oh, wait, they did! My friend Ari Weinzwieg wrote an entire book about bacon, Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon. His section on guanciale features yours truly, otherwise known as Guanciale Girl. Here I am: Guanciale Girl.