“Bestseller Amatriciana” – Michelin Star Chef in Rome shares Recipe

A visit to the restaurant Il Convivio Troiani where owner chef Angelo Troiani shows how to cook his version of Amatriciana Pasta –
Michelin: 1 Star
Instagram: @ilconviviotroiani

“Best Seller… Amatriciana“
Crispy Pork Cheek
160 gr. seasoned pork cheek cut in thin slices and strips
Sauce
200 gr. pork cheek sliced (not too thick)
200 gr. tomato pulp
400 gr. peeled tomatoes
50 gr. red onion
2 c balsamic vinegar
80 gr. roman pecorino cheese
Red chilli pepper, salt and pepper as needed. .
400 gr. di Spaghettoni “Felicetti”

Preparation:
Roast the seasoned pork cheek cut in strips in a pan until it becomes crispy.
In another pan, on a very low flame, sear the sliced pork, add the red onion and garlic and
have it wither.
Pour the balsamic vinegar and let it evaporate, then add the tomatoes.
Add salt and pepper as needed. Add the chili peppers as your choosing.
Let it cook for 6/7 minutes on a very low flame.
Take the pork cheek off the sauce.
Cook your pasta in salted water. Take it off very “al dente”.
Pour the pasta in the pan and mix it with the sauce. Take the pan off the heat and add some
pecorino cheese.
Presentation:
Serve the pasta in the plates and add the pecorino cheese and the crispy pork cheek on top.
Serve hot.

Hello, good morning. Today we’re making the Amatriciana. The Amatriciana is the dish that best represents us at the banquet. It’s become, let’s say, our signature dish, in Italian. It’s a dish that was born in 1992. I was really very young, and back then, the Amatriciana was just that—it was a codified dish, it was a dish that was made everywhere. At that time, I was very young, and I wanted to share my experiences, to share my tastes in a way that was, let’s say, a little alternative, different. And so, the Amatriciana was the dish that struck me the most, and it helped me start thinking about what to do to make it an even more recognizable dish, how to better emphasize those flavors and tastes that I think are fundamental to the Amatriciana. So I started thinking, what is the Amatriciana made of? Tomato, guanciale, pecorino, an acidic part, and onion, which is the only element that ‘s much discussed today. So I thought, instead of just using peeled tomatoes, I started making it with two types of tomatoes: fresh and peeled. Then the real— let’s say, the other real revolution—was using twice the amount of guanciale, so guanciale to make the sauce and guanciale to make the crunchy part. Before this dish, I probably don’t know of any other first course where crispy guanciale was part of the first course. It probably comes from, let’s say, this dish of mine. Today all the Amatriciana, grisie, and carbonara are made with crispy guanciale. But in 1992, when I had this idea, let’s say, crispy guanciale wasn’t used but guanciale was used as an element of the dish. So I started making the, as I was saying, sauce, and therefore among the ingredients, 50g of guanciale. I cut it into slices. Okay. In the meantime, I can also throw in the pasta because in my opinion, matriciana is a sauce that needs to be made quickly and not cooked for a long time, meaning you need to prepare everything so that everything happens very quickly. Only in this way can you maintain and enhance the most important flavors and characteristics of matriciana. So, let’s add salt to the water and throw in the pasta. Meanwhile, the guanciale goes in. Now, something very, very important, the fat, the ratio between lean meat and fat, should be roughly 50:50. Why is that? Because if it’s too fatty, the fat alone doesn’t give matriciana its typical flavor. If it’s too lean, the same thing happens and it becomes a meat sauce and no longer a matriciana. Now the temperature must be medium, the guanciale must melt, but the fat that forms mustn’t catch, it must remain white, otherwise the flavor of the matriciana changes, otherwise it becomes a dish difficult to digest, otherwise it is a dish that is bad for us because the fats, if they rise in temperature, carbonize and then become… It is an insipid product, a product that, let’s say, is not only no longer pleasant, but it is a product that can be harmful to us. I have melted it. Let’s see how, first, the fat slowly melts. Now in another pan I roll the other guanciale, which will then become the crispy part that we will put on the plate. The pasta goes. The pasta I use for this dish is spaghetti, cooked for about 14 minutes. It is organic pasta. I rely mainly or almost exclusively on organic products. I like to think that organic is only the beginning of a journey towards a healthier world, towards healthier cuisine, towards a cuisine that is good for you, that is preventative. Little by little, it is starting to take on color. Here you see the fat remains nice and white. Oh. So, let’s put this over here. That way we speed things up a little. Cooking the guanciale is essential to give it the flavor I want. So the fat needs to brown. Look, it needs to be this color. It’s not time here yet. Everything else is already ready. Just a little more and we’ll move on to the next step. Here we are. It’s cooked just right. Then I add the very finely chopped onion. Now the onion stops the cooking with its own water, it stops the cooking of the guanciale, it loses its water, therefore it loses its strength. Yes, I add, I think it’s a characteristic note that contributed to giving that broader, more rounded flavor to this dish of mine, and it’s a mix of vinegars where the base is a vinegar and a balsamic vinegar. Then I add some aged red wine vinegars. This is obviously outside of tradition, but I’ve been doing it for many years now, and for many years now, other guys who have worked at the convivio have also been making matriciana with the same ingredients. So let’s say that the balsamic vinegar is one of the notes that don’t come from tradition that I added, but which contributed, as I was saying, to giving this very rounded, much spicier flavor. Okay. Now, part of the vinegar has caramelized, so it will give the matriciana its sweetness, and the other part, which remains, let’s say, more raw, contributes to the acidity. Okay, now a pinch of salt. I like using coarse salt, it’s easier for me, I can feel it more in my hands and it’s a less processed, more natural salt. A pinch of pepper and also two drops, three drops of chili oil. The Amatriciana is a spicy dish, it was born as a spicy dish too. Okay, let’s say another characteristic that has a little to do with my way of making traditional first courses: we can combine tradition with very thick sauces. So, okay, now I’ll cook it, let it simmer, let the water in the tomato evaporate well, so that when I add the spaghetti to the sauce, in a very short time the sauce will stick to the spaghetti and this allows me not to stir it in because if I stir it in, the spaghetti releases the starch and this sauce is as if cream were added. However, by not stirring it in, every flavor, every taste remains perceptible, recognizable. How do I know when … Okay, this is ready. How do I know when the sauce is ready? The guanciale should start to melt, to give way, so I understand that the sauce has absorbed all the flavor of the guanciale. Now I’m going to remove it. So I’ll remove the oil, the fat. I’ll just keep the roasted guanciale. We’re almost there. Just a little more, let’s say, another 2 minutes and we’re ready. If the water evaporates too quickly during cooking, I can always add a little more water. So, I’ll add a little, very little. I have to be careful not to make the sauce too flavorful, because the guanciale is flavorful by itself, but now I know how far I can go. In fact, I added very little salt. Now I’ll add this drop of water. Here. Yes, the sauce is ready, so I’ll remove the guanciale I used to make the sauce. Okay, we’re ready. Here, now in a very short time. I don’t stir the pasta to avoid releasing the starch. But if I were making a simple dish —cacio e pepe, carbonara, griscia—then I’d stir it in a lot, precisely because I need the starch to keep the sauce from sticking together, to keep it from becoming too hard. But here I don’t want starch. No. Here we are, the sauce is ready and now off the heat I add the pecorino. I don’t stir the pecorino either because I don’t want it to melt into the sauce. So I do this sprinkling. I barely touch it and can plate it. Then I line it. Okay. I add the crispy guanciale. Like that. Another little sprinkling of pecorino, which helps me take away that greasy feeling, and that’s it. And there’s my Amatriciana. Thanks.