{"id":15241,"date":"2018-01-08T23:46:37","date_gmt":"2018-01-08T23:46:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=15241"},"modified":"2018-01-08T23:46:37","modified_gmt":"2018-01-08T23:46:37","slug":"la-gricia-the-perfect-warm-winter-meal-in-15-minutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=15241","title":{"rendered":"la Gricia, the perfect warm winter meal in 15 minutes"},"content":{"rendered":"

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“la cucina de na vorta<\/em>”<\/p>\n

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We’ve been enjoying this simple pasta from Lazio<\/a> for decades, and I highly recommend\u00a0it to anyone who appreciates a delicious, genuinely honest dish, dalla cucina dei poveri<\/em>, with a\u00a0surprising\u00a0sophistication but a simplicity that allows it to be fully assembled and on the table in only about 15 minutes.<\/p>\n

There are only 6 ingredients (4 if you discount salt and pepper), and the only\u00a0one most people may not have lying around at home might be pancetta or, better, guanciale,\u00a0to which I’d add for those who\u00a0aren’t vegetarian, ‘and why isn’t it there’?\u00a0 It’s so easy to keep a chunk of guanciale in the freezer, and if it’s hard to find, pancetta is almost as good, but it must be in chunk form.\u00a0On Sunday\u00a0I had some ‘pancetta pepato<\/a>‘ for the first time ever; I don’t know where it fits on the beautiful scale that stretches between regular pancetta and guanciale,\u00a0but\u00a0it was pretty awesome,<\/p>\n

My relationship with this dish started in 1989, with a newspaper\u00a0article by Fred Plotkin published in the New York Times<\/a>, and Barry and I have shared it many times since, both at home in New York, and in Rome,\u00a0dining outside\u00a0the piccola trattoria<\/em>, ‘da Lucia<\/em>‘, the\u00a0Trastevere restaurant featured in Fred\u2019s article<\/a>, where\u00a0Lucia Antonangeli began serving “la cucina de na vorta<\/em>” (the cooking of once upon a time) at her family’s restaurant in 1938.<\/p>\n

It’s one of the very few recipes I use to which I never<\/em> add or subtract a thing; it’s perfect, and it’s a classic in the classic sense.\u00a0 The only variation that will ever be found in our home is the type of pasta used: Will it be long or short, and which long, which short? From what I have learned\u00a0the choice\u00a0seems to be debatable anyway.<\/p>\n