Appropriate, Steal, Adapt this Recipe for the Making of Pasta All’ Matriciana, or Pasta Amatrice …then donate 2 bucks for the rebuilding!
Eating and Drinking in the Mediterranean, or taking the long, slow way to lunch with cold beer and a hot oven.
A couple decades basking in southern Europe’s charming inefficiency can transform the purest protestant of ethics into a slow roasting of a pig’s snout caught on camera with the worst production values and scriptless repetition, yet lacking in any plausible plan to become a little pile of cash for those days when the teeth grow longer, or have altogether gone missing; charming inefficiency my ass, your wasting your life away! I mean it’s enough to irk even the most loyal of my readers. So with nothing else to do, here are my notes that may one day become a script that becomes a video that gets onto a website and is seen by many working chefs who need some fresh, charming, but nonetheless horribly inefficient recipes. My notes for an irksomeless repetition; preparation for an aftershock: a recipe for rebuilding — the act of discovery of an ancient art forgotten by “professional” cooks who think a wood-fired oven is only for pizza; and fat fearing diners. But you know, you got to be focused on the improvement of the production values and their destination, because after all, you are eating and drinking in the Mediterranean. This is the result of the drift from all’ matriciana to something more likely to be found in a pot cooking in Spain. Just go and ask a local butcher in central Spain for guanciale or Italian cured pork cheek and see the look on their face.
This is my homage to the people of Amatrice and a call for cooks to make this sauce to raise funds for the rebuilding.
Lot’s of chef’s are doing it, but I don’t got a restaurant and thought a lot of cooks would be having the same problem finding this stuff, so I went down to my local butcher and ordered up half a fresh pig face and bought a couple cans of what looked like Italian whole tomatoes and a case of beer. You know, I am not a chef — never have done any cooking for money — but I have a good memory for techniques to bake in our wood fired oven. Pig face I once roasted into chicharrónes, or pork rinds at high heat that should be other than rinds if you want them to taste the best, and so I lit a fire and started cutting up Italian green peppers and red onions, then put a mid-century mid-western cast-iron dutch-oven next to the flame and cut fresh herbs in memory of the stewed ox tails of a couple years ago. In with a sizzle went the pig face with the lid off to get a little love in from the burning encina oak, or should I just say pork snout, although it sounds far less offensive in Spanish, as carrillada, yet even more elegant in Italian: guanciale. Pulling the dutch oven out with long gloves; into the dissolved fat a half an inch thick; the snout caramelizing; the rest of yesterday’s white wine splashed in to tease out the juices of the cartilage and steam the fresh blooming savory; thyme, and oregano. Cooks talk of the fat, but it’s also the cartilage, just as in oxtail stew that put the “sugo” into this sauce, roll that off your tongue again, sugo,— and that takes time for the sensuality of sugo to become savory. An alternative version of this would be with sucking pig, fried or oven baked. I’ll try this with what they call in Segovia, cochinillo, because the cooking of the onion and peppers in this magic fat creates a very special sugo. Ada Boni told me long ago to use lard, but I know what that means; she was translating “pig fat” into American, lard. And as we have just read there is lot’s of ways to do that!!
This all goes back into the oven for about the length of a beer after which the chopped red onions and Italian green peppers are added. A dip in the pool and another beer and add crushed pepper and 7 spoonfuls of David and Susanne’s home-made, sun-dried — “Sicilian” — tomato paste. This goop got roasted Moroccan peppers that were coated in extra virgin olive oil and fresh ground pepper; basil, garlic, and olive oil, in addition to the dried tomatoes. You know, it’d be a lot easier to give you a list and punctual cooking times, but it just aint like that. No recipe is. A recipe is that for which we search for in time; it is the search for lost time. I went over to the neighbors to get some Spanish jamon in the stead of Italian prosciutto. I’m looking after their stuff and plants as their daughter recovers from an auto accident in a hospital in Albacete. This jamon just wasn’t going to be getting any better in that fridge and got into the pot. After a bit, or two, the canned tomatoes get squashed and added with all their juice. Now all you have to do is wait and drink beer and wait for Susanne to arrive; boil the capellini; and get those raw videos up. It just wouldn’t be the same to wait a day or two for the spit and polish; nope you’d loose that spontaneity in the act of creation; the joi de vive; the manage a trois going on in the oven… No, it’s got to be just a little bit irksome; it’s got to have a story; a history; a town, after all, we are trying to rebuild. Yet, because this was so out of sight, I have to write a script, load it up on the “tele-prompter” and read my lines; film the sequences, edit the video and load it up on some future web site, as though I was to someday be a chef, ya know, and make a little pile of cash. But not now. This is my donation to la causa. You can help as well: go into your favorite restaurant and nag the chef to add alla matriciana to the menu — for the future and the past of the lovely town of Amatrice to once more be.
This is how this wonderfulness could be repeated in a restaurant
Yesterdays sauce served with with Spatzle — that norther Italian, but also especially wonderful Schwabisch pasta sauced with the Amatriciana sauce left in the wood-oven for a few hours more, yet refreshed. Into a pan went oil and garlic until it was browned then covered with a plate until the Spaetzle was nearly ready. A scoop of that salty, starchy water, a dollup of butter; a couple of big spoonfuls of our secret dried Sicilian tomato paste, and simmered for 5 minutes. If you want to lean Schwabisch, add barlauch — that garlicky plant found all over the foothills of the Alps. With the Spatzle just a little undercooked put into the sauce with grated parmesan and elemental cheese then top with a lot of freshly ground pepper. Halleluja! Half a jowl with this method stretched to serve 100!! With this recipe, any restaurant can both make a good profit, pay the staff well and make a 2 buck donation to rebuild Amatrice.
