Linguini all'Amatriciana

The husband took us to Italy last month... or should I say, we ate our way through Italy last month and it was amazing.  I picked up a sauce cookbook while over there and I learned some very valuable information regarding Italian food.  The two most important things I learned was to "respect" garlic and buy quality pasta.  I'll get in to how to "respect" garlic in another post but the pasta bit is quite interesting.

Why?  Well the Italian government actually regulates commercially manufactured pasta in that they require a certain quality of flour and dictate the percentage of soft wheat flours used (or sub-quality flours that are commonly found in large quantities in US pasta) used.  This is why it tastes SOOOO drastically different and SOOO much better than what we have here in the States.  It also explains why I was not as sensitive to wheat during my travels in Italy.

So back to cooking.  The book I picked up was simply called Pasta: All The Recipes and it has everything from sauce to noodle and ravioli recipes.  It's basically my new Italian Bible. I had some pancetta in the fridge so I decided to make a modified all'Amatriciana (or alla matriciana as the romans say) sauce... which basically just means I took out the parmesan cheese and used the olive oil sparingly.

Ingredients
5 Roma tomatoes or 1 can of diced tomatoes... whichever is easier
1/2 cup pancetta
1 TBS Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1/2 onion
1 TBS freeze-dried or fresh basil or 1 tsp dried
1/2 cup pecorino romano cheese I did not use this in the recipe... lactose and I are not friends
1 pound linguini (or bucatini if you want to be authentic but a long noodle is best)
Salt

Okay so I have my important ingredients

Now to cook!

Directions
1.  Start your water for the pasta.  Once boiling, add a little bit of sea salt to prevent the noodles from sticking to one another
2.  Blanch the tomatoes, then peel and chop them to your desired consistency
3.  Pour the olive oil into a large skillet and brown the pancetta until crispy (approximately 5-7 minutes).  Scoop the pancetta out of the pan, but leave the drippings in

MMMMM pancetta!

4.  Turn the heat down and add the onion and sauté until opaque (approximately 4-5 minutes)
5.  Add the tomato, basil and let your sauce thicken, stirring occasionally, while you cook your noodles
6.  Before you serve the sauce, add the cheese to it and combine.  Pour it over the noodles and mangia mangia mangia!

All'Amatriciana, sans cheese

Puttanesca Sauce

Dinner in a pinch?  Keep these ingredients handy for a hearty and healthy meal!

Ingredients

2 tbs Olive Oil

1/2 cup white onion, chopped

5 cloves garlic, minced

1 (32 oz) can crushed tomatoes, with juice

15-20 large olives, chopped- if you like the taste of kalamata, use those but black is fine as well

2 tbs capers, drained

1/2 tsp dried basil

1/4 tsp dried oregano

1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

1 tbs red wine

Pasta

Directions

Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.  Add onion and saute until tender.  Add garlic and red pepper flakes and cook for about 2 minutes.  Throw in the remaining ingredients (can't forget the splash of vino!), then heat until bubbles appear.  Lower heat and simmer for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.  While the sauce is simmering, cook pasta according to box instructions.

Serve!