Guanciale

[slkinsey]

In NYC, you might be able to source it at DiPaolo's on Grand St.

In NYC, the source for guanciale is Salumeria Biellese. They make their own, and it's as good as any I've had anywhere.

[SeaGal]

Any further suggestions suggestions on how to put guanciale to use?  Just treat it like extra special pancetta?

←

I would think you could use it in many dishes that call for sauteed bacon or pancetta as a seasoning ingredient. I used it in a spring pea and lettuce soup I made and it was delicious.

←

I'd be delighted if you'd supply an additional detail or two...

←

It's a somewhat fussy and lengthy (but very tasty) recipe, which I'd be happy to PM you if you want it, but basically it consists of rendering the guanciale, using some of the fat to saute the mirepoix, and then simmering the strips of meat along with the peas, lettuce and other veg. I then removed the guanciale before pureeing the soup and adding cream and garnishes.

[hathor]

I couldn't help myself. All this talk about carbonara and cacio&pepe, and I had all the ingredients...so yesterday's lunch was cacio & pepe with bucatini pasta. I know guanciale is heresy in the dish, but sometimes heresy can be so damn delicious.

[weinoo]

In NYC, the source for guanciale is Salumeria Biellese.  They make their own, and it's as good as any I've had anywhere.

←

I want to mention that DiPalo's carries guanciale as well - it's from the Iowa farm called La Quercia - here's what they say about their process:

We started La Quercia to create premium quality American prosciutto. Our appreciation for prosciutto grew out of the three and a half years we lived in Parma, Italy, prosciutto's area of origin. Our ambition to create our own came from our desire to take the bounty that surrounds us in Iowa to its highest expression. We seek to contribute to the growth of premium artisan-made American foods by offering fine quality, dry cured meats -- and Iowa with its abundance is the natural place to do this.

I've tried their guanciale and prosciutto; they're both damn good!!

[Busboy]

Not sure how you locals would rank this source among the pantheon on NYC cured pork vendors, but mine came from Biancardi's Meats, up on Arther Avenue in da Bronx. A friend of mine has a daughter who went off to Fordham last year and he's taken to dropping by AA whenever he goes up. Last time, he called me from his cell and said "what's that stuff you keep tellng me to get when I'm up here?" He says the butchers look at him with greater respect now that he asks for the hard stuff.

[weinoo]

Not sure how you locals would rank this source among the pantheon on NYC cured pork vendors, but mine came from Biancardi's Meats, up on Arther Avenue in da Bronx.  A friend of mine has a daughter who went off to Fordham last year and he's taken to dropping by AA whenever he goes up.  Last time, he called me from his cell and said "what's that stuff you keep tellng me to get when I'm up here?"  He says the butchers look at him with greater respect now that he asks for the hard stuff.

←

I've had the stuff from up there, and it's damn good too!! I think butchers like it (as do cheesemongers, fish guys, etc.) when their customers appear knowledegable.

[hathor]

  Last time, he called me from his cell and said "what's that stuff you keep tellng me to get when I'm up here?"  He says the butchers look at him with greater respect now that he asks for the hard stuff.

←

I must still have the Sopranos on my mind. I read that sentence 3 times before I figured out that you meant a cell phone!!

[Maureen B. Fant]

If making for 1 person - how many eggs?

←

Probably one small yolk, skip the white, which many purists do anyway, no matter how much they're making.

(just realized I'm responding to a four-year-old post, but I suppose carbonara is eternal...)

Edited June 27, 2007 by Maureen B. Fant (log)

[Maureen B. Fant]

I couldn't help myself. All this talk about carbonara and cacio&pepe, and I had all the ingredients...so yesterday's lunch was cacio & pepe with bucatini pasta.  I know guanciale is heresy in the dish, but sometimes heresy can be so damn delicious.

Heresy? Cacio e pepe with guanciale is pretty much "pasta alla gricia" or "l'amatriciana in bianco" and is my fave of the Gang of Four (cacio e pepe, carbonara, matriciana, and gricia).

Edited June 27, 2007 by Maureen B. Fant (log)

[hathor]

I couldn't help myself. All this talk about carbonara and cacio&pepe, and I had all the ingredients...so yesterday's lunch was cacio & pepe with bucatini pasta.  I know guanciale is heresy in the dish, but sometimes heresy can be so damn delicious.

Heresy? Cacio e pepe with guanciale is pretty much "pasta alla gricia" or "l'amatriciana in bianco" and is my fave of the Gang of Four (cacio e pepe, carbonara, matriciana, and gricia).

←

Gang of four!

Yesterday was carbonara con piselli, so I'm still looking to be a heretic!

[Maureen B. Fant]

Does anyone have a definitive answer to the origins of the dish?

I've heard both that it is an ancient traditional dish of italian woodcutters, and that it was invented for American serviceman in WW2.

Or is it something in between?

PS

I feel that a controlled hand with the nutmeg can do wonders to many pasta dishes, I know the french don't like it. So it must be good!

←

NOT World War II powdered eggs! It is truly a dish made out in the mountains by charcoal makers and is, in any case, one of the group, which I call the Gang of Four (cacio e pepe, gricia, carbonara, matriciana), easily made outdoors by people who had to stay away from home out in the Apennines, such as shepherds and, as said, charcoal makers. I recently spoke with someone who swears he was personally taught how to make carbonara by actual Apennine charcoal makers. Matriciana/amatriciana is anomalous because of the tomatoes, which I think were actually added when people from northeastern Lazio and Abruzzo migrated to Rome and started opening trattorias. In any case, tomatoes don't grow happily (or at all) at the altitude of Amatrice, and the true matriciana is the gricia.

Official carbonara ingredients (besides the pasta and salted pasta water): egg yolk, guanciale, black pepper, pecorino romano

Considered OK today by many but not all: also the whites, pancetta, parmigiano reggiano mixed in with the pec ro.

Never ever: anything else

Now, a dish based on two ingredients that play well in the background as well as foreground does indeed lend itself to variation, and that's OK, BUT when you vary it, you have to stop calling it carbonara. You can say it's spaghetti del giorno, based on carbonara. But you can't say it IS carbonara. I enjoyed the remark about Lombardia and the nutmeg. I wonder how long they've been making carbonara up there, because it's certainly native to Lazio.

[Maureen B. Fant]

Yesterday was carbonara con piselli, so I'm still looking to be a heretic!

←

You're still safe, if near the edge. As I expounded in another post, carbonara can indeed be varied, just as long as you change the name.

In the 1970s, and even in isolated pockets of the Eternal City today, pasta dello chef, della casa, di this and di that, was almost always a carbonara variation, with peas and mushrooms, though often this was with cream and prosciutto rather than egg and guanciale. But at our local Hostaria Nerone, fettuccine Nerone is one of those overloaded carbonaras to this day. We have a friend who simply always orders it.

[slkinsey]

In NYC, the source for guanciale is Salumeria Biellese.  They make their own, and it's as good as any I've had anywhere.

I want to mention that DiPalo's carries guanciale as well - it's from the Iowa farm called La Quercia...

Yea, I've had their guanciale as well as some from various Arthur Avenue vendors. I've bought imported chunks from Italy. You can even get guanciale at Fairway. It's all good. I mean, it's guanciale, rightt? What's not to like?

What, in my mind, makes the guanciale from Salumeria Biellese stand out is that it has a funkier, more "fermented" flavor than any of the other examples I've sampled in the NYC area -- and to my palate, it's not a particularly subtle difference. That "fermented funk" (which is also what distinguishes some of the best salumi at Lupa from other local examples) is what made me fall in love with guanciale, so that's what I look for.

Perhaps we should have a guaniale tasting?

[Pontormo]

Yea, I've had their guanciale as well as some from various Arthur Avenue vendors.  I've bought imported chunks from Italy.

←

You purchased guanciale imported from Italy legally in the United States? I was told by a neighborhood grocer that they only sell domestic pancetta because importing the Italian product is illegal.

I am not sure why, exactly, since we get Chilean sea bass, lamb from New Zealand...

[slkinsey]

As far as I can tell, rules for this kind of thing change all the time according to the whim of the USDA and politicians. But a cursory google search for the string "imported pancetta" reveals plenty of people who claim to be selling it or using it. And, of course, there are plenty of things you can get (like <60 days aged raw milk cheese) if you know where to shop.

[hathor]

Yea, I've had their guanciale as well as some from various Arthur Avenue vendors.  I've bought imported chunks from Italy.

←

You purchased guanciale imported from Italy legally in the United States? I was told by a neighborhood grocer that they only sell domestic pancetta because importing the Italian product is illegal.

I am not sure why, exactly, since we get Chilean sea bass, lamb from New Zealand...

←

That might explain why the pancetta in the US is usually that round stuff; and it could go part of the way to explain why Whole Foods had a problem with Italian prosciutto.

Then again...it may not mean anything.

[Pontormo]

That might explain why the pancetta in the US is usually that round stuff; and it could go part of the way to explain why Whole Foods had a problem with Italian prosciutto.

Then again...it may not mean anything.

←

1) In Florence, I bought round rolled pancetta all the time. May be a regional thing.

2) WFM's refusal to sell Prosciutto di Parma is different. I think when I started a thread on the topic, I reported what I was able to discover until stonewalled. From what I understand, the company's concern was with the consortium of Prosciutto di Parma and the drugs fed piglets during the first 30 days of their lives by some of the members of the consortium. This is against WFM's policy since it wants its meat 100% natural. Nonetheless, it leaves the decision up to regional managers. In my vast region, the decision was to discontinue sale.

The representatives of WFM found the producers of Prosciutto di San Daniele more than willing to admit culpability. (I got the impression the Parmese told WFM to stop being such Puritanical Imperialists, but don't start a rumor based on inference.) Brilliant of them, really. They agreed to cease such awful practices and as a result, a type of prosciutto I personally had never heard of prior to participation in the regional cooking project has a brand new, large market throughout the United States, Canada, and now the U.K.

FYI, the scrupulous Iowans at La Quercia pledge that they raise their pigs drug-free to produce a very good version of Prosciutto di Parma. WFM only sells their product in those little vacuum-packets of sliced ham I don't like; the stores in D.C. are always out of the hams and the expensive, shiny red special prosciutto cutters they bought when training their teams to slice prosciutto all serve purely as decoration.

Now who's crankier, Sam or me?

[jmolinari]

Wouldn't la Quercia prosciutto be "prosciutto di Iowa"

And I love how US laws won't allow importation of stuff like guanciale, or for the longest time wouldn't allow prosciutto (and to this day, the prosciutto has to be made in a special process for the US market), but they'll allow Chinese food products full of chemicals and poisons which literally kill or injure people.

I love our representatives.

[Busboy]

We made a fine carbonara with our guanciale according to an ascetic recipe Pontormo passed along. Wonderful.

Then, it being fresh pea season and us having been stuck with all these egg noodles after going all authentic for the first batch, we made something with cream, peas and egg noodles, all topped with guanciale left over from the first batch. That was pretty swell, too. Maybe better.

But I promise not to call it "carbonara".

[Frog1879]

Carlovski -- re: dishes containing liberal amount of black pepper. Joyce Goldstein's The Mediterranean Kitchen has a recipe for a beef stew that is basically meat, tomatoes, onion, garlic, and tablespoons of freshly ground black pepper (maybe some red wine too? my memory fails me)... perhaps as many as 4 or 5T. Served with grilled bread. Sounds strange but it really works, was a fairly regular part of our winter dining for a few years.

←

According to Bill Buford in his book Heat this type of preparation is traditional in Tuscany except there is a specific cut (can't remember exactly which one, but it was tough of course) and it used wine instead of tomatoes. He was surprised because there was no browning of the meat or sauteing the onion. Everything went into a pot and was simmered in the oven overnight. Sounded great to me!

[Frog1879]

I have seen it prepared with cream in the USA. Disgusting.

←

Unfortunately I've had it in Rome prepared with cream Granted the restaurant was chosen for its view of the Pantheon rather than the food, but I was still disappointed.

[Pontormo]

We made a fine carbonara with our guanciale according to an ascetic recipe Pontormo passed along.  Wonderful.

←

And thanks to the generosity that is the Busboys, I was handed a sizeable amount on a day I wisely brought a cooler to the farmer's market. Amount of the guanciale from the Bronx, that is.

So, I got to try my first domestic carbonara w the guanciale instead of pancetta. I recognized why Kevin72 adds bay leaves, et al (right? ) to the dish when he makes it, given the coating on the meat that seems otherwise much, much more fatty (and fattening ). When fried up, the results are so much more like American bacon than US-produced pancetta. Not sure why. Delicious.

[Busboy]

Another dish made with guanciale!

Article here.

Recipe here.

The Meat of the Matter in a Pasta Debate

By FLORENCE FABRICANT

Published: January 16, 2008

FOR a simple dish, pasta all’amatriciana is freighted with controversy

People in Amatrice say it originated in that central Italian town, as the name implies. But in Rome, about 60 miles away, chefs proudly claim it as their own and say its name has nothing to do with its origins.

In Amatrice, the dish is simply pasta, tomatoes, cured pork and cheese. But Romans include onions and olive oil. Even the type of pasta is in dispute.

After half a dozen plates of it during a recent trip to Italy, one detail became clear: for any pasta all’amatriciana to be authentic, it must be made with guanciale — cured, unsmoked pig jowl.