If you like the crisp edges of lasagne, the soaked croutons, the whipped cream that gets icy around the chocolate scoop - you’re in the right place.
Hey everyone, and welcome to all my new subscribers who’ve found me by way of The New Yorker or Caroline Chambers. Thank you for being here! The Best Bit is where I share what I’m cooking at home—recipes that aren’t about doing it all, but about doing what matters. We all love to eat simply, but simple cooking is only special when it’s really good. That’s what I focus on here: the best bits of a dish and how to make them, no distractions!
I hope you enjoy it, and please ask any questions in the comment section below—I’ll do my best to respond before you get cooking.
Choosing what’s for dinner can be harder than cooking it. When I’m tired of appealing to everyone’s tastes, I make a maximalist pasta—a big ragu, clams pooling with garlic and wine, amatriciana. Even carb-phobes lose their resolve when their senses are assailed by such sauce.
The recipe I’m sharing this week—Ameritriciana—is a bit of a star in our home. You’ve probably had some version of the classic Roman bucatini all’amatriciana with tomato, chili and guanciale. It’s as delightful and classic as you’d expect the combo to be. My version is heady and brash, dialed up with the smokiness of applewood-smoked bacon, rosemary and caramelization. This would not be eaten in the Piazza Navona; this amatriciana has taken root in America.
I want you to think of this recipe in three distinct stages:
Making a base of softened onions, garlic and bacon. This is a gentle, slow process that gives a sweet, smoky, rosemary-infused launchpad for the tomato sauce. (There will also be a little heat if you’re using chili, which you should if your kids don’t care.) Nothing should brown or crisp—think soft, sweet, and rendered.
Reducing the tomatoes to a caramelized paste. Long-cooking the canned tomatoes with the base drives off water so the sugars can caramelize. Without adding any extra sugar to the sauce, you’re making it intensely sweet. Stand close and stir a lot.
Rehydrating the sauce and incorporating the bucatini. You’d be crazy and disappointed if you didn’t add cups of liquid back to your tomato reduction. Their flavor has been irrevocably altered by caramelization, and they’ll remain sweet when you wet them again. Deglazing sugars with red wine gives a tannic counterpoint to the sweetness—but it doesn’t wet nearly enough once you’ve cooked off the alcohol. So I’ve given you a direction to add 1½ cups of pasta water back to the sauce before incorporating the noodles, but of course none of our pans/heat/noodles are the same, so use this measure as a baseline. Before serving, stir the bucatini through the bubbling, rehydrated sauce, so that the noodles suck it in.
Ameritriciana
Serves 4-6
It’s bucatini all’amatriciana in cowboy boots. This pantry pasta gets its signature smoky-sweetness from applewood smoked bacon and deeply caramelized tomatoes. To make it a knock-out, reduce the tomatoes with the bacon and onion base until it becomes a sticky paste, before rehydrating it with red wine and water, and incorporating the noodles. Unlike the dignified Italian classic, this version is (almost) excessively sauced.
Bucatini is typical with amatriciana, but we love it with short noodles as well. Vegetarians will not be disappointed by leaving out the bacon: increase the amount of olive oil in the pan when you soften the onions and consider adding soaked dried porcini mushrooms in place of the bacon.
2 medium red onions
¼ cup olive oil
8 ounces applewood smoked bacon
4 large cloves garlic
2 sprigs rosemary
2-4 pinches dry chili flakes, optional and to your taste
28 ounces crushed tomatoes or tomato passata
½ cup red wine (if you’re not drinking the rest with dinner, freeze it in a Ziplock to cook with next time)
1 pound bucatini
Peel and slice the onions as thinly as you can, then put them in a wide, low-sided pot with one tablespoon of olive oil and some salt. Sweat over medium heat, stirring here and there.
While the onions soften, peel the garlic cloves and slice them as thinly as possible. Slice the bacon into ½ inch slivers.
When the onions are soft but not brown, after about ten minutes, add the garlic, one rosemary sprig, the chili if you’re using it, and the bacon. Stir to separate the bacon slices, keeping the heat low enough that neither the onions nor bacon fry. Keep moving things around until the garlic is soft and the bacon is translucent, and has rendered a lot of its fat, about ten minutes more. Remove the rosemary sprig and discard.
Pour the tomatoes into the pan, season with salt, and turn the heat to high. Be on guard for around 20 minutes as we reduce the sloshy tomatoes to a tight, sweet paste. For the first 5 minutes, you don’t need to watch closely, but as the sauce reduces, turn the heat down to medium and stir often. After 15 minutes, you can taste with curiosity, waiting for the moment when the reduction becomes noticeably sweet. Bubbles will become sluggish as the sauce reduces. It will begin to fur on the pan, a good sign that sugars are caramelizing. Stir constantly, as if you were stir-frying the tomato reduction.
When the sauce is thick enough that you can drag your spoon down the middle of the pan and it leaves a clear line, pour in the wine. Bubble and stir over high heat to deglaze all the sugars and cook off the alcohol. When you can no longer taste the alcohol in the sauce, after about 5 minutes, turn off the heat. Bruise the remaining rosemary spring to release its oils, and add it along with the three remaining tablespoons of olive oil to the sauce. Set aside.
When you’re ready to cook the pasta, bring a large pot of water to the boil and salt it. Cook the bucatini for a minute or two under the recommended time on the box. While it’s cooking, warm the sauce in a large pan next to the water (the one you used to cook the sauce is ideal) with 1½ cups of the pasta water.
When the bucatini is just shy of al dente, transfer it to the sauce using tongs (or drain the noodles, reserving a cup of the water). Continue to cook the bucatini in the watered-down sauce over high heat, stirring constantly—however awkward this is—until the pasta is cooked and the sauce juicily coats each strand. Add additional water if needed to keep the noodles twirlable.
When you serve the pasta, spoon some of the extra sauce on top, followed by grated Pecorino or Parmesan
Good reading on the real thing.
my biggest q is how do you wear an all-white outfit while cooking tomato sauce with a child??????? lol but for real
Looks deeeelish. No improvements needed, but thought I'd share a bacon-cooking method I use for carbonara that could also be used here. Slice your bacon in the same way, place in a Dutch oven or cast iron, and place in the oven for 20-30 minutes at 375, stirring occasionally. When finished, remove the bacon with a slotted spoon, cook your onions in the remaining bacon grease, then return bacon once the onions are caramelized. The oven method can free up your hands to do the rest of the prep / catch LEGO's being thrown by munchkins.