Did we really take the summer off from this little project? I guess so. But we're back! Fall is here, which really gets me inspired to cook. Don't get me wrong, I love grilling and barbeque, but nothing beats slow-cooked dishes like braised short ribs (coming up shortly . . .). In the meantime, let's pick up where we left off: guanciale.
This is pretty fatty stuff, so you need to slice it thinly then slowly bring the heat up in the pan to render the fat. I did this on the stove, but I probably could have cooked it on a cookie sheet in the oven (as I do with bacon).
Once the fat (mostly) renders, drain on paper towels:
Then saute red onions, garlic, the basic tomato sauce, red pepper flakes, and the guanciale in the rendered fat (I drained a bit first):
Now, you would normally finish this dish by adding cooked bucatini, a dried tubular pasta that resembles spaghetti. Mario refers to bucatini as "garden hoses" in the book. But here's the thing: I went to two Whole Foods, Kings, Stop N Shop, and Fairway and none of them carried bucatini. Hey guys, get on that!!!
Rather than make the trip downtown from work to the Chelsea market, where I know they have bucatini (thanks to a tip from Victoria over at Cooking Zuni), I decided to substitute. I know, no substitutes. But hear me out--this was a substitute that made the dish more complicated, so it wasn't a shortcut substitute, it was a "hey, I'm going to make this more difficult and time-consuming than it needs to be" kinda substitute. Rather than tossing some dried pasta into boiling, salted water, I made fresh paparadelle using the recipe for fresh pasta from the book. After cooking until al dente in the salted, boiling water (2 tablespoons of salt for 6 quarts of water), I added the fresh pasta to the sauce and cooked it for a few more minutes.
And here's the dish:
This was delicious in all its porky, fatty goodness! There's definitely a unique, slightly salty pork flavor from the guanciale that's cut by the sweetness of the red onions. The red pepper adds just a tiny kick at the end. This was a plate-cleaner, easily. Now, I still have 3 pounds of guanciale left . . .
