You may have seen on the international news, if you follow it, that there was an earthquake (6.2) in Italy this morning about 3:30 am, which killed over 20 (later revealed about 300) people. It hit in central Italy (not in our mission), east of Rome. One of the towns hardest hit was Amatrice, pronounced "ama tree chay" It is a town with only 2.600 people. However, it is famous in Italy because some of the cooks for the popes have come from this village One of their spaghetti sauces, called Amatrice, is very well known in Italy. We had several calls this morning from worried parents and friends, and I have been Googling it all morning to see what is going on. You may be interested in doing this and seeing the town, etc. I also read about the spaghetti sauce, which I had never made, so I went up and made some for lunch. Basically, you can make it while the spaghetti is cooking. I took a few pics with my cell phone while I was making it. I left the office to make lunch, Myrna came up 20 minutes later, and we had lunch. I did not go to the store to buy what the recipes (I read several, which were all a little different) said I needed, but it turned out fine, I thought. Italian pasta sauces do not have to be very involved or take forever to make. Since Italians eat them a lot, however, they are very finickey (how ever you spell it) about them, and how their pasta is cooked--always "al dente" or "to the tooth," not too mushy and not hard either.
First I put a pot of water on to boil, adding salt (all Italian salt is sea salt and it has nothing to keep it from caking--it certainly isn't Morton, I put raw rice in the shaker to keep it pourable.)
In our refrigerator I found a 150 gram package of smoked panceta (bacon), which comes cut up, because they use it in a lot of things, including sauces (Bolognese also has it). You could just cut up about a half pound or so of regular bacon. I also finely cut up a half of an onion. I did not use the mezza luna knife (rocking knife), shown in the pic, because I had just sharpened my Ikea cooking knife, but the mezza luna is a great kitchen tool.
I put the bacon into a pan with a heavy bottom and cooked it until it was almost crispy. By then the water was boiling and I added the spaghetti.
We just buy whatever brand of spaghetti is on sale. I can't tell much of a difference between the various brands, and they certainly have a lot of them here, all at different prices.
Bacon and onions cooking. I drained off the bacon fat, but Italians would either leave it in or, if they poured it off, add some olive oil. There needs to be enough oil to cook the onions and be flavored by the chili pepper (read about that later).
Then I added two cans, 400 grams each, of cubed tomatoes in sauce. You could use both tomato sauce and diced canned tomatoes. The recipes all say to add white wine to the cooked bacon and onions and let it reduce before adding the tomatoes, but I just dumped in the tomatoes and stirred it well.
At this point, I added the spices, salt, pepper, and a small amount of hot chili powder, not enough to make it hot, but to give it a little "kick". My Italian recipes say to put in a whole dried chili pepper (which you break in half) with the cooking bacon and onion, then take it out after it flavors the oil. But I didn't have a dried chili pepper, so I added a little dried chili powder from an Indian store, which they have here. I use this chili powder to make enchilada sauce and it tastes pretty much like New Mexico dried chili powder, perhaps a little hotter than some, but they have different heats of New Mexico chilis too.
I think the chili is what makes it Amatrice, in addition to the pecorino (sheep) Romano cheese, which is a hard cheese that you can grate. Now, I did not have any pecorino cheese either (although I have eaten it here), but we had lots of Parmigiano, which has its own flavor, not quite as strong as pecorino. You put a lot of cheese in it this sauce.
This is Parmigiano cheese, sold in 100 gram packages, already grated, for about 1.49, which we found on sale for 1.00 each and bought lots. (The Reggiano DOP means it actually came from Reggiano, the province south of us, and DOP means it is "official".) Of course, you can buy these hard cheeses in big chunks and grate it yourself, which we have yet to do because the stuff already grated is usually on sale for less than the big hunks. If you have ever seen a whole hard cheese, they are impressively large wheels.
Then you drain the cooked (al dente, of course) spaghetti and put it back into the still hot pot and add the sauce and cheese and stir it up.
Then put it in your plate, and add more cheese, if you want, and "buon appetito." It was pretty good, and, while eating it, I thought about the poor people of Amatrice, for whom this sauce is named. The Church usually does not have branches in small towns, so I don't know if there are members there or not. I am sure we will learn more as it is picked up by the news media.
This afternoon, Myrna went up and made a batch of cookies from a new recipe she found. The office anziani asked her to make cookies for an investigator they are visiting this evening, so she made potato chip cookie, as an experiment. They are made with regular potato chips (not with ridges--they sell both here and Italians like potato chips).
She just brought me one, I just ate it, and it sort of tasted like potato chips, with both dark and white chocolate chips. Everything is better with chocolate, of course!
Ciao for now.
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