amatriciana sauce — Amatrice, Italy

Amatriciana is a pasta sauce built on guanciale, cured pork jowl, rendered until crisp, then combined with tomato, chili and grated pecorino romano, a sheep's milk cheese. The combination gives the sauce a sharp, salty edge from the cheese and pork, balanced by the sweetness of the tomato. It takes its name from Amatrice, a small town straddling the border of Lazio and Abruzzo, and has since become closely associated with Roman cooking, where it appears on most trattoria menus. Sources describe it as growing out of an earlier, plainer dish called alla gricia, made only from guanciale, pecorino and pasta, without any tomato at all. To prepare it, the guanciale is cut into strips and rendered slowly in its own fat until crisp, then chili is added to the pan, followed by tomato, which is simmered down into a thick sauce. Grated pecorino romano is folded in at the end, off the heat, so it melts into the sauce rather than turning grainy. Onion is included in many recipes cooked today, though the gricia base it grew from left it out. Long pasta shapes such as spaghetti or bucatini are the ones most closely tied to the sauce, since their strands catch the thick, clinging tomato and cheese mixture well, though short shapes like penne or rigatoni are used in some kitchens instead. What stays fixed across versions is the pairing of guanciale and pecorino romano; the tomato, chili and onion are additions layered on afterward.