Pasta al Limone

 This week’s recipe is from Sicily, not Rome, and yet you’ll see so many similarities to the process I laid out in our Roman Pastas series. Sicilians are famous all over the Mediterranean for their citrus crops, especially their lemons. Accordingly, pasta al limone has been an instant hit from the moment of its inception.

I mentioned several times throughout the previous series that a keystone of Roman cooking was to source only the best ingredients and to use them well and simply to create something so much better than the sum of their parts. This is also completely applicable to the cuisine of an island a few hundred miles to the south, in Sicily. It is important to remember that by no means is Italian cuisine monolithic, but that nevertheless, the same basic fundamentals apply to food from any region.

This pasta recipe is one of the fastest I’ve ever put up here on the website. It comes together in the amount of time it takes to boil the water and cook the pasta, very similarly to cacio e pepe.

In fact, think of this as a derivative or descendant of cacio e pepe. Recall that for basic cacio e pepe, a pasta is boiled, a paste of pasta water, pepper and pecorino is made, and then the two are combined until emulsified with extra reserved pasta  water. We will follow the same basic steps, and our only modification to this process will come in how we deal with the stars of the show here, the lemons.

Before we get to the specifics on this simple recipe anyone can make—even on the tightest of budgets—let’s talk citrus. As a note to any Brazilian or otherwise Lusophone readers: My family originally comes from Brazil, and so I know that in Portuguese, there aren’t distinct words for “lime” and “lemon” as there are in English. In Portuguese, we differentiate yellow from green by the location which we add to the generic word that means both “lime and lemon.” If a fruit is a “Sicilian lemon,” then it’s a “lemon” in English; if it’s a “Tahiti lemon,” then it’s a “lime.” For any readers from the Lusophone world, this recipe is meant to be made with the former, not the latter. And for those of us in the US or elsewhere where a distinction exists between generic “lemons” and “Meyer lemons,” this recipe is meant to be made with the former; Meyer lemons are sweeter than regular lemons, possibly as a result of crossing regular lemons with oranges or clementines to create the Meyers. That extra sweetness in the Meyers won’t work with this dish, so make sure to get the best regular lemons you can find.

The lemon will be the star of this recipe, so don’t be shy with it. Wash, zest, and juice 2 whole large lemons. Be careful to only scrape off the outermost yellow part. That yellow outer layer is almost entirely natural yellow pigments and scented oils which together make lemons very aromatic, all of which we want to make use of in our final dish. That layer, however, is very thin, and directly underneath it is the much thicker and far more acidic layer of white pith. Generally, don’t get any—or get as little as possible—of the pith when zesting citrus of any kind (oranges, limes, lemons, grapefruits, etc.). Either before zesting or between zesting and juicing, roll your washed lemons against your countertop or another flat surface. Doing so weakens or even pre-ruptures some cell walls inside the lemon, thereby making juicing easier later, and increasing yield at that point.

We will also make use of fresh mint to balance out the acidity in this dish. Fresh herbs like mint and basil bruise very easily when hacked at indiscriminately with a knife.

Place 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil in a wide, shallow pan, and as the oil warms, place the zest into the oil together with a few leaves of mint taken directly from the plant, without any chopping or tearing. There are several compounds in both mint and lemon zest which are (only, or in some cases, more) soluble in oil versus water. When the oil becomes noticeably aromatic, turn off the heat and remove the mint leaves.  

Cook 1 pound of a long, dry pasta according to the manufacturer's instructions to al dente doneness. When 3 minutes remain, reserve 1 ½ cups of pasta water. Grate 1 cup of pecorino Romano or Parmigiano Reggiano and combine it with the juice and zest of the two lemons juiced and zested earlier. Take 2 tablespoons of that pasta cooking water and combine it with the cheese and lemon juice and zest so that a thick paste forms. Season this paste liberally with black pepper, just as one would make cacio e pepe.  

From here, the process is identical to cacio e pepe. Drain the pasta once it is al dente, and combine it with the aromatic oil, the cheese-zest paste, and thin and emulsify the sauce by gradually adding pasta cooking water and tossing. Garnish with black pepper, Parmigiano Reggiano, lemon zest, and fresh mint leaves.
   

Pasta al limone, as prepared by Vincenzo's Plate

(Photo Credits to Vincenzo and his team) 

Pasta alla Gricia: the Dark Horse of Traditional Roman Pastas

Of all the Roman sauces, alla Gricia is certainly the dark horse—so much so that, when I started learning Italian in early 2020, I mistook “alla Gricia” (the actual name of the pasta, which came from the name given to small-volume food sellers in Rome in the days of the Papal States, before Italy had even unified) for “alla Grecia” (which would’ve meant that this was “[pasta type] in the manner of the Greeks”). There is in fact nothing that is particularly “Greek” about this dish: no feta, no Kalamata olives, nothing else of the sort. I share this with all of you just to illustrate how obscure this dish actually is. But the truth is, it really should not be: many more people should know about, cook, and enjoy spaghetti alla gricia than currently do. And even though I recognize how small my audience is, I aim to do what I can through here, reaching all of you, to try to help put this wonderful sauce (back) on the map.

By now, you’ve probably seen how similar amatriciana, carbonara, and cacio e pepe are to each other. (If not, go back and revisit the other recipes.) The techniques used for those three are very similar, and the recipes only usually differ by an ingredient or two. Alla gricia is no exception.

A few words about ingredients: Alla gricia contains guanciale, a cured pork product from the jowl. (This can be rather hard to find, so in a pinch, if absolutely necessary, you can use pancetta, which is a cured pork product from the belly instead.) As with the other recipes in this series, the guanciale should be cut into small cubes. Unlike the other related recipes, for alla gricia, I will stipulate the use of a short pasta (rigatoni and penne rigate are the best), rather than a long one. This way, the guanciale will be able to enter into the tubular structure of each piece of pasta, providing an essential contrast in taste and texture.

Alla gricia comes together quickly, in the amount of time it takes to bring a gallon of water to a boil in a 6 quart pan, cook it to al dente per the package’s instructions, and drain it. Start getting everything ready for mise en place as soon as you put the water to boil.

As with the other recipes the call for guanciale, this one calls for smaller-than-bite-size cubes of guanciale. Cut the guanciale exactly as you would cut bacon to be made into lardons, if that were called for in a recipe—about that size, and for those reasons. Our objective is to have both meat and fat on each piece of guanciale. Place the guanciale in a skillet in a single layer (or work in batches if necessary). Do not add any extra fat to the pan. There is already plenty of fat in the guanciale, and there will be more added fat from the pecorino still to come.  Without any preheating, bring the pan and the guanciale to the stove, and turn on a burner to low heat. Let the guanciale render slowly. Turn it often to encourage even browning and rendering, and to prevent anything from sticking to the pan. 

A quick word of caution: Longtime readers may have noticed the absence of an instruction I typically give several times throughout each of my recipes in the Roman pasta series (the standalone recipe for bucatini all’amatriciana that I published late in 2021 and the 3 other bases, plus papalina, which I’ve recently put out). Normally, I’ll call for layered salting of dishes. Make a mirepoix? You should season it? Add some chicken stock? Season again. And so on—for each ingredient or set of ingredients. Each ingredient normally only gets a little bit of salt at a time since my philosophy is to add salt continuously as I cook so that nothing is underseasoned. Salt’s primary function in cooking is not to act as a flavor of its own right, but rather to accentuate the flavors around it. (This is why salt, even in small amounts, is called for in sweet baked goods.)

But all of these Roman recipes contain copious amounts of either guanciale, or pecorino Romano, or both. Pecorino is already a very salty cheese which is aged for several months to allow its flavor to become even more concentrated, and guanciale is cured in lots of salt and other spices for months at a time. These ingredients are both, without any additional salt, more than salty enough to round out the dishes they are a part of. No additional salt should be added beyond what is already in the cheese and the guanciale, lest these classic dishes become so salty as to be rendered inedible.

 When the water comes to a boil, place a pound of pasta into it, and cook per the manufacturer's instructions, just to al dente—never further. Grate 1 cup of pecorino romano. If you cannot find pecorino where you live, you can either use parmigiano regiano, or for an even better substitution, a local firm sheep’s milk cheese. However, do not buy or use industrially shredded or grated cheese of any kind: they often contain anticaking agents that, while they prevent the cheese from clumping (and from my experience, not as well as the manufacturers had hoped), those same anticaking agents also make it nearly impossible, if not entirely so, for the resulting sauce to become creamy and properly emulsified.

2 minutes before the pasta has finished cooking, reserve a cup and a half of pasta cooking water. Take 3 tablespoons of that pasta water to create a thick paste with the cheese and black pepper. Drain the pasta when it finishes cooking per the manufacturer's instructions to al dente, and then, away from the heat, combine the cheese-water paste and the guanciale with the pasta. With only the paste of water and cheese, this “proto-sauce” is too thick to be sauce by itself. Little by little, while mixing constantly and never returning anything to an open heat source, add more pasta water until a rich, creamy, emulsified sauce forms which is capable of not only coating the exterior of the pieces of pasta but also of going inside of them and transporting the guanciale into the center in the process. Once you have added enough pasta water to turn the paste into a creamy sauce, you are ready to serve. Garnish with extra pecorino, black pepper, and guanciale.  

Photo credits to America's Test Kitchen