The Porky Pasta Sauce I Can’t Stop Thinking About
And other recipes inspired by my European vacation.
After two weeks in Europe, I find myself craving two things: a ham sandwich I had in Porto and the gnocchi I had in Rome.
The two-ingredient sandwich was recommended to me by my Culinary Backstreets tour guide (more on that tour in next week's letter), and it’s nothing more than presunto (the Portuguese equivalent of prosciutto) on pão rústico, a crusty-yet-tender rustic roll. There were no condiments, no toppings, nothing but meat and bread. It costs 3 euros and it was perfect. I guess I could recreate it at home, but I’d have to make the bread from scratch, and it would not cost 3 euros. (We don’t have a recipe for pão rústico, but we do have a recipe for Portuguese-Style Sweet Potato Rolls. I doubt a pile of prosciutto would be bad on those.)
The gnocchi, which came highly recommended from Arianna Pasquini (Chris’ Italian food guide), was pillowy-soft, with a simple sauce of tomatoes, guanciale and pecorino Romano cheese. It was just as perfect as my sandwich, but will be easier to recreate at home, since we have recipes for both gnocchi and spaghetti all’Amatriciana, which can be combined to make gnocchi all’Amatriciana.
But—confession time—I've never actually made our “classic” gnocchi with whole potatoes. Our Gnocchi in an Instant (made with dehydrated potato flakes) is so good and so easy, I’ve never strayed from it. Maybe now is the time to level up.
Another Roman pasta I enjoyed in Italy was a very rich bowl of Spaghetti alla Carbonara (pictured below), a classic Roman combination of pasta with eggs, guanciale and pecorino cheese. It's a "simple" recipe, but the eggs can go from raw to scrambled in an instant; the window for achieving that luxuriously creamy consistency is quite narrow. To keep things silky, all the cooking is done in a single skillet so we can harness the thickening effect of the starch released by the pasta as it cooks in a scant amount of water. We add the yolks, tempered with a little of the pasta-cooking liquid, at the end, and the residual heat of the pasta and pan heat them to just the right degree without the risk of curdling.
If that sounds a little heavy for these quickly warming days, we also have Pasta alla Papalina, which roughly translates as pasta for the pope. According to pasta lore, during the early 1930s, then-Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli asked Cesaretto Simmi, a restaurateur with several eateries near the Vatican, if he could prepare a lighter, more sophisticated version of the rich and eggy dish. Simmi swapped the traditional pairing of guanciale and pecorino Romano for prosciutto and Parmesan: a slightly less robust yet equally delicious combination. We’ve incorporated frozen peas as well, which have become a common addition, to add some pops of green and freshness.
Dessert-wise, I ate a lot of gelato, but I also enjoyed a sour cherry tart with a shockingly tender, cookie-like crust. I knew sour cherries were big in Rome, having made our Ricotta and Cherry Jam Tart, but was surprised by just how sour the filling was (and how much I liked it). Luckily, the branches of my neighbors’ sour cherry tree hang over the fence into my yard; perhaps my next cherry tart will be made with homemade sour cherry jam, for maximum tartness.
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Claire Lower
Claire Lower is the Digital Editor for Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, with over a decade of experience as a food writer and recipe developer. Claire began writing about food (and drinks) during the blogging boom in the late 2000s, eventually leaving her job as a lab technician to pursue writing full-time. After freelancing for publications such as Serious Eats, Yahoo Food, xoJane and Cherry Bombe Magazine, she eventually landed at Lifehacker, where she served as the Senior Food Editor for nearly eight years. Claire lives in Portland, Oregon with a very friendly dog and very mean cat. When not in the kitchen (or at her laptop), you can find her deadlifting at the gym, fly fishing or trying to master figure drawing at her local art studio.
