Cured Meat

A deliciously strong pasta dish, taught to me (as were so many others) by my friend Andrea. See page 546 for information on guanciale. Frankly, I can barely write this recipe without rushing off to the stove.

I featured this little group of recipes in my New York Times column and in The Minimalist Cooks Dinner, but it’s so instructive, important, and wonderful that I felt it belonged here as well. All (well, almost all) the variations begin with bits of cured meat cooked until crisp, around which are built a number of different sauces of increasing complexity. Most people insist that the “genuine” meat for these recipes is pancetta—salted, cured, and rolled pork belly. Pancetta is available at almost any decent Italian deli and at many specialty stores, but you can use bacon (or even better, if you can find it, guanciale, which is cured pig’s jowl; see the back of the book for mail-order sources). Pecorino Romano is the cheese of choice here, but Parmesan is also good.

Jota, often referred to as Slovenia’s national dish, is also found throughout Friuli, in extreme northeastern Italy, and especially in the area around Trieste. It’s a good one-dish meal, not unlike a soupy version of cassoulet. The addition of sauerkraut, however, cuts through the rich pork and the beans, and while it might not exactly “lighten” the dish, it makes it somewhat less dense. Buy “pure” sauerkraut—just cabbage and salt—packed in plastic bags or a barrel. Serve with good crusty bread.

This is my cross-cultural take on a frequently served Swedish snack. If you’re making the North African mantecaos specifically for this dish, you might omit the cumin, but I think they’re more interesting with it. You can also make these with standard biscuits, in which case they’re pretty simple.

This tart calls for the same procedures as the Tomato Tart (preceding recipe), with a different but equally summery—and, with its bit of curry powder, more unusual—topping.

A staple of many tapas bars, and among the most elementary of appetizers, this is a surefire crowd pleaser—as long as your crowd isn’t vegetarian. Even if some members are, you can skewer plain mushrooms or mushrooms and other vegetables—like red peppers and zucchini, for example.

This is a pizza in all but name, and it disproves the notion that “creative” pizzas began in California. Creamy, smoky, and crunchy, it’s a real winner.

This is a popular item throughout Eastern Europe and is often formed into fanciful shapes (as is its close cousin, chopped chicken liver, at many American bar and bat mitzvahs). It tastes just as good served from a bowl and spread on crackers or toast.

The artichoke is in the thistle family. One medium to large artichoke will yield approximately 2 ounces of delicious edible flesh. An artichoke is fresh when it squeaks as you squeeze it, and feels heavy in your hand for its size. Look for a deep olive green on the outside, and pale tender green on the inside of the petals. Artichokes will last fresh about a week. To store them, sprinkle them with cold water, and refrigerate in an airtight bag. Wash only before using. Italians have endless ways to enjoy artichokes, but I love them in this pasta dish with a little bacon added, a perfect harmony.

I found versions of this dish on menus across America, Italian and non-Italian. I guess everybody loves its appealing flavors. It is delicious made with frozen peas, but when I was a child, my grandma made it only with the sweetest first pods of peas. I also remember that it was my job to shell them, and I ate quite a few of those raw peas. Pancetta is pork belly cured with salt, pepper, and other seasonings, then made into a roll, but not smoked like bacon. You can substitute bacon or Canadian bacon for the pancetta, and substitute fresh peas for frozen.

Everything tastes better with bacon, and so does spinach. The Italians often use rendered pieces of pancetta or prosciutto to flavor their vegetables, especially the winter vegetables such as chicory, kale, Savoy cabbage, cauliflower, and the like.

Cannelloni—that delicious stuffed pasta, literally translated as “big reeds”—is always a sign of a festive occasion in Italy. This baked dish can be made in advance and serve a large group of people, and it is loved by most. What you stuff it with almost does not matter, although a meat-and-vegetable combination is the most common choice. Cannelloni was a big-hit item on menus of Italian American restaurants in the sixties and seventies. If you have a gathering of family and friends, as Italians often do, this is a good dish to make.

Spaghetti carbonara has humble roots in the Apennine hills of central Italy, not far from Rome, and was the shepherds’ favorite as they roamed the hilly pastures following the movement of flocks, a practice known as the transumanza. They carried with them some bacon, and made the cheese as they went along. Eggs were used only if available; of course they render the dish richer and creamier, but it is delicious with or without them. Of all of the pasta recipes that I have served in my restaurants throughout the years (starting with Buonavia in 1971, to today’s Felidia, Becco, Lidia’s KC, and Lidia’s Pittsburgh), spaghetti carbonara is definitely the crowd pleaser. It has some of the flavors loved most by Americans: bacon, eggs, cheese, and of course pasta. I’ve added some chopped scallions for freshness; I hope you like it.

As the impoverished residents of Amatrice moved to Rome in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this recipe came along with them; today it is as Roman as the Colosseum, but you would never know it. Throughout America, 99 percent of Italian restaurants have this tubular-spaghetti dish on their menus, so it might as well be American now. You can use garlic here instead of onions, as the original recipe calls for. But unless your amatriciana contains guanciale (cured pig jowl), you are not even close to the original. Since pig jowl is not found in every corner store, making the dish with bacon or pancetta will yield delicious results as well. In this recipe I used onions, as in most of the American amatriciana recipes, but the bay leaves are my addition. The precursor to amatriciana sauce is sugo alla gricia, which does not contain tomatoes. The dish seems to have roots before the discovery of the New World; tomatoes came back from there to Italy. The gricia sauce contains guanciale, coarsely ground black pepper, and grated pecorino cheese to dress the pasta. This dish is still made today and is very popular in and around Rome, where it is called pasta alla gricia.

In America, commonplace coleslaw is made from green cabbage, but I do see shreds of red cabbage tossed into a mixed salad every now and then. When I was a child in northern Italy, we ate a lot of the cabbage family, from regular cabbage to Savoy cabbage to black kale. We ate red cabbage braised next to a roast, but we also made a lot of differently dressed salads with it. The secret—and the work—was in slicing the cabbage thin. But given today’s food processors and all their different attachments, and the reasonable prices of mandoline slicers, this salad is a cinch to make. You can even slice the cabbage a few hours in advance; just remember to toss it with some vinegar as soon as you slice it to keep its color bright.

As a child, I had salads in the winter that Nonna Rosa would dress with the flavorful fat rendered from pancetta or prosciutto scraps and a splash of homemade vinegar. The greens were always the tougher winter kinds, like chicory or escarole, and sometimes she even added slices of boiled potatoes, still warm. So, when I had my first spinach salad in America dressed with warm bacon pieces, I assumed my grandma’s salad made with spinach was the American/Italian way.