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

Roman Cacio e Pepe: The Original Mac and Cheese

 Cacio e pepe (“cacio” is the word for “cheese” in several regional dialects in central Italy; the word for “cheese” in standard Italian is “formaggio”) is one of the four iconic Roman pasta dishes together with amatriciana, alla gricia, and carbonara. One could argue this humble dish made with only four ingredients, is the culinary ancestor of the American classic mac and cheese.

As I mentioned in the article about carbonara, Italian—and especially Roman—cooking is all about using the best, freshest ingredients with great technique, but not trying to reinvent the wheel. There is one step in this recipe that can seem a little daunting, but with enough patience and practice, I’m sure you’ll add cacio e pepe to the list of dishes you cook regularly at home for your friends and family.

First, let’s discuss ingredients. In this regard, cacio e pepe could not be simpler: it only requires pasta, black pepper (whole at first, then freshly ground), Pecorino Romano cheese, and the pasta’s cooking water. Italians are very protective of the regionality of their ingredients, so, although it is much easier to find a good quality piece of  parmigiano regiano, that isn’t the right cheese for this application Parmigiano, as the name implies, comes from Parma, in the north. This dish, and thus the ideal cheese, are both Roman, so the natural choice is, of course, Rome’s best-known cheese, pecorino romano, made from sheep’s milk. (“Pecore” are “sheep.”)

This will certainly raise the price, but you cannot buy pre-grated pecorino in a tub or canister, unless you hand-selected the piece of cheese and it was grated in front of you and put into the container. You must buy a block of pecorino and grate it yourself, either with a box grater or a microplane, or do as I suggested and have someone grate the cheese in front of you if you want to bring it home already grated. (When I grate my own cheese, I prefer the microplane, and why that’s the case will be discussed later.) Any industrially pre-grated cheese will almost certainly have cellulose, calcium silicate, or some other anti-caking agent. These anti-caking agents will make it impossible to form the sauce correctly, so you should not use any industrialized cheese packed with them.

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.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil (with at least a gallon of water in a 6-quart pot), and cook a long pasta according to the manufacturer’s instructions. While the water is coming to a boil, place a tablespoon of black peppercorns in a dry (i.e., no oil) skillet and keep the skillet constantly moving over the burner for between 30 seconds and 1 minute, or until the peppercorns become fragrant. Then, turn off the heat, and using another pan or another suitable food-safe object, crush and reserve the toasted peppercorns. (If you have multiple pepper mills, use one that until now has been empty, if you want an even easier way to break down the pepper. Otherwise, place the heavy object on top of the peppercorns in a single layer, and put your body weight into that object. You need either the burrs of a mill—that is otherwise empty and contains no untoasted  pepper—or the whole weight of your body pressing down on them in order to crack the peppercorns.) Grate 1 cup of pecorino into a bowl and combine the cheese and the pepper.

When the pasta is 3 minutes from being done, reserve a cup and a half of the pasta cooking water. From that, start by taking 3 tablespoons of water and combining the water with the pepper and cheese. Stir. I mentioned earlier that my grating implement of choice is my microplane, rather than my box grater. Microplanes only have one grating setting, but that setting is usually as fine or finer than the finest setting available on a box grater. In order to prevent something that essentially looks like the iconic “cheese pull” (think of splitting open the two halves of a grilled cheese sandwich, or pulling a single slice of pizza away from the rest of the pizza) from happening to this sauce—which would prevent it from becoming creamy—three things absolutely must be true: you haven’t used a cheese that was pre-grated and processed with an anticaking agent, you’ve grated your own cheese as finely as possible, and you are not combining the sauce and the pasta in a hot pan or over a heat source. Be sure all of these things are true before you proceed any further.

When the pasta finishes cooking, drain it, and place it in a saucepan off the heat. Combine the pasta with your pepper-cheese-water paste. As it is now, the paste should be too thick to be a sauce on its own. Stir and toss to combine. Start adding pasta water (and keep mixing) until an emulsified sauce forms. You will probably add another cup or so of water, but I cannot say for sure, since I do not know exactly how starchy your pasta water was, or how thick you had made your paste. Your objective is to make a creamy sauce (without any cream) that coats each strand of your pasta, but which isn’t too watery.

Serve, optionally garnishing with even more grated pecorino and freshly ground black pepper. 

Photo Credits to J. Kenji Lopez-Alt and Serious Eats 

Classic Roman Carbonara

Italians, but especially Romans, are known all over the world for their basic pasta dishes which are much greater than the sum of their parts. There are four basic sauces from Rome that any home cook can and should master. The first is carbonara, which we will cover this week. Following carbonara, they also have cacio e pepe, alla gricia, and amatriciana. (I covered amatriciana late last year, and you can find that recipe by clicking on this link.)

The four Roman sauces are as follows: carbonara is an egg and cheese-based sauce; cacio e pepe is pasta water, pepper, and cheese; alla gricia is cacio e pepe plus guanciale; and amatriciana is a tomato sauce with chili and guanciale.

Carbonara, authentically, contains eggs which have barely been cooked. My version of the dish cooks the eggs, so any risk of foodborne illness is removed, but, if executed properly, there should barely be any textural change between the raw eggs and the eggs that have gone through my process.

In a wide, shallow pan, dice some guanciale. Guanciale is a cured pork product like pancetta, but they come from different regions of the pig. Guanciale comes from the jowl/jaw, while pancetta comes from the belly (familiar to the average American home cook as the source of bacon). As such, pancetta and guanciale are both deeply flavorful, cured pork products. Because the traditional recipe calls for guanciale, so will mine, but I will add the caveat that if guanciale is unavailable, pancetta is a perfectly acceptable substitute. Add just a touch of olive oil—barely a tablespoon—to your skillet, and when it comes up to temperature, add the guanciale. Cook the guanciale in the oil until rendered and crispy, like you would bacon. Reserve the guanciale.

Carbonara was invented as a dish for the poor in a time of necessity, so the traditional recipe calls for whole eggs. Two eggs per portion will provide enough sauce, but that may be too heavy. My modification is to instead use 1 whole egg and 1 fewer egg yolk for a given number of portions (3 portions should call for 3 eggs and 2 yolks; 4 portions should call for 4 eggs and 3 yolks; etc.). Beat this in a large bowl until no streaks of white remain. Season this very liberally with freshly ground black pepper. The name of the dish may have come from the fact that the copious amounts of black pepper in the dish resembled the carbon dust on men’s clothes when they returned from mining or otherwise working with coal in Lazio and elsewhere. Into the beaten eggs, place ½ ounce of cheese per egg or partial egg (3 portions call for 3 eggs and 2 yolks, giving 5 parts, thus calling for 5/2 ounces of cheese, etc.).

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.

This dish involves cooking over a double boiler. Put an oven mitt on your non-dominant hand; you’ll need your dominant hand free to whisk and use a ladle. Set a pot of water onto a burner and bring it to a simmer—not a boil!—and place the bowl that contains the egg and cheese over the double boiler. Be sure that two things are true of the water: 1) it never comes above a simmer and 2) it never touches the bottom of the bowl. If either—or worse, both—of those things are true, you will not maintain a loose, “sauce-able” texture, and you’ll end up with tiny curds of cheesy scrambled egg.

Work on adjacent burners. My highest-powered burner is my left-front, so I like to work on my pasta on my left and my sauce (any sauce, not just carbonara) on my right. As soon as the water in the left burner reaches a rolling boil, the pasta goes in. Simultaneously, the right burner should have the pot of simmering water ready to go. With your nondominant (mitted) hand, place and hold the pot into the double boiler, i.e., put it into the top of the pan but hold it steady so your whisking doesn’t destabilize it. Whisk constantly. If you don’t, you will end up with cheesy scrambled eggs. There is a time and a place for scrambled eggs; carbonara certainly isn’t either of those. Periodically, use your mitted hand to remove the bowl from the double boiler, and whisk for a few seconds off the heat, to further help control the temperature of the eggs and prevent scrambling.

When the pasta is about halfway done (about 5 minutes into the cooking process), take the eggs off the double boiler, momentarily put your whisk down, switch to a ladle, and place 2 ladlefuls of starchy water in a heatproof container. Put the ladle down and return to the whisk. Then, practically drop by drop to start with, start pouring the water into the egg-and-cheese mixture. DO NOT dump all the water in at once. If you do, you will end up with irreversible scrambling because the eggs were over simmering water and the pasta water was vigorously boiling; that temperature difference will be enough to scramble the eggs if you are not careful. As you add more pasta water to the eggs, add the remaining pasta water faster. You will certainly need to use 1 ladleful; the second is there in case you want to slightly loosen the consistency of the sauce if it still seems too firm. Curdling is prevented by constant whisking, which disrupts the egg protein networks and prevents them from seizing up when they come in contact with the boiling water, which is hotter than the eggs.

When the pasta is al dente per the package’s instructions, immediately drain it, turn off the double boiler, and, off the heat, combine the pasta and the sauce.

Garnish with parmigiano reggiano (or, more authentically, since this dish is from Lazio and not Emilia-Romagna, use pecorino romano) and the reserved guanciale.




















(Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Lenten Recipes: Week 5: Simple Caprese Salad

1. Wash, core, and slice 4-5 large vine-ripened tomatoes.

2. Slice 6-8 ounces of (buffalo-milk) mozzarella cheese.

3. On the intended serving platter, build alternating overlapping layers of cheese and tomato

4. Season with salt and freshly cracked black pepper

5. Drizzle with olive oil, and optionally (lightly) with balsamic vinegar, preferably aged in oak

6. Scatter whole leaves of Italian basil throughout the salad

7. Serve

(Credit to the Wikimedia Commons)

Viral TikTok Tomato Feta Pasta

In February 2021, one recipe went so viral on “food TikTok” (not a separate app, just the section of the audiences/creators on TikTok whose content preferences revolve around food) that according to multiple sources there was a run on feta cheese in Finland because this recipe got so popular.

I am not usually up to date with what's trendy, and when I am, I don't usually care much, but this has been an exception. Of all the food-related topics to go viral, this is one of the few that has managed to do this because it is good (my family can attest to this flavor combination working remarkably well-- this is the crux of the flavor profile of one of our favorite pizzas), so it not only merits my attention but also my promotion.

Feta comes in a variety of textures and it can be made from a variety of kinds of milk (i.e., from different animals). Cow, sheep, and goat milk are all used for feta, but 70% sheep-30% goat is the most traditional. Feta’s texture depends on how long it ages, usually no less than 3 months. It is commonly sold either as a block or already crumbled. For this recipe, buy the highest-quality majority-sheep block feta you can find. As a second choice, if no sheep feta is available, go for goat feta, leaving cow feta only as a last resort. Whatever milk your feta is from, make sure to buy it as a block and not pre-crumbled.

Place the block of feta in the center of a baking dish and surround it with an equal amount of cherry tomatoes (1 pint). Drizzle olive oil over the cheese and tomatoes. Add freshly ground black pepper to taste. Do not add salt. (Traditionally made feta is already salty enough.) Place in a 400-degree oven for 25 minutes or until the feta melts and the tomatoes burst out of their skins, releasing their juices. While the feta is in the oven, bring 1 gallon of water to a boil in a large pot. Cook 1 pound of short pasta (penne, rigatoni, farfalle, casarecce, etc.) and cook according to the package instructions. Time the pasta so it finishes at the same time as the tomatoes and the cheese finish in the oven. Using a short pasta rather than a long one will allow the feta and tomatoes to get into the shape of the pasta in a way that is next-to-impossible when using a long pasta. Not all shapes of pasta work for all sauces.  

Reserve 1 cup of the cooking water in a heat-proof container. This water contains starches that leeched out from the pasta. Together with the proteins in the milk in the feta and the pectin in the tomatoes, this will emulsify the sauce. Drain the pasta, having reserved that cup of water. Combine the cheese and tomatoes with the pasta. Stir and create your sauce. It should emulsify on its own, but if it doesn’t, or if it does and is still too thick, take advantage of the leftover pasta water to adjust the consistency and create/maintain/reestablish an emulsified sauce.

If desired, chiffonade some basil (gather up several leaves and roll them into a bunch, then cut the bunch narrow ribbons) or simply tear it into the pasta and mix. Optionally, crack more black pepper. Serve.

If you make this, be sure to leave a comment down below letting me know!