Cookbook Club – Milk Street: Tuesday Nights

The cookbook for our March Cookbook Club was Milk Street: Tuesday Nights. Due to host availability we had scheduled it for earlier in the month than usual, which turned out to be a lucky thing since COVID-19 may keep us from gathering for awhile. It looks like we’ll all be limited to sharing meals together virtually for the foreseeable future, so to practice virtual eating of our Milk Street meal, go to my Cookbook Club site. For now – my dish!

When I go out for Italian food, Pasta all’Amatriciana is often my dish of choice – I adore the spicy tomato flavor with crisp bits of pancetta. So when I saw that Milk Street had a recipe for it, I figured it was time for me to learn how to make it for myself.

I boiled spaghetti and a chunk of pecorino in 2 quarts of salted water. Reserving 1 1/2 cups of the cooking water, I drained the pasta (and ate the chunk of pecorino!) when it was a couple minutes shy of al dente.

In the meantime, I cooked the pancetta until crisp, and removed from the pan with a slotted spoon.

In the same pan, I sautéed garlic until golden brown, added red pepper flakes and cooked another 30 seconds, then added white wine and continued cooking until most of the liquid had evaporated.

I added drained canned tomatoes and cooked until heated, then stirred in a few tablespoons of reserved tomato juice.

I stirred in the reserved pasta water and brought to a simmer. It was way more pasta water than I usually use and I was afraid that the pasta would get overcooked, so I cooked the liquid down by about 50% before adding the drained pasta, even though the recipe said to add the pasta immediately and toss and cook until most of the liquid is absorbed. Even after having reduced the cooking liquid, it took awhile for most of it to get absorbed, which meant the spaghetti was not as al dente as I would have liked.

Off the heat, I stirred in the crisped pancetta, olive oil, and black pepper.

I topped with grated pecorino to serve. The flavors were fantastic. My only complaint was that the pasta was more cooked than I prefer. Next time, I will pre-boil the pasta an even shorter amount of time.