Recipe: This Comforting Amatriciana Pasta Wins Both Weeknights and Dinner Parties

When your stomach and your pantry are nearing empty, turn to pasta. The Italian staple ranks high on the effort-to-outcome ratio – you don’t have to do much to create a delicious meal. That’s clear in Deborah Kaloper’s cookbook Pasta Night, which features more than 60 comforting, carby pasta recipes.

With this well-designed carb bible, you can really choose your own pasta adventure. Got an afternoon? Make plump potato gnocchi from scratch (and emerge from the kitchen covered in flour). Need an impressive dinner party recipe? Craft elaborate crab-laced squid ink linguine. Or just clear out your pantry with staples like spaghetti carbonara and cacio e pepe.

This recipe for bucatini alla amatriciana falls into the final two categories. It’s a crowd-pleaser at any dinner party, while also low-effort enough to whip up on a weeknight. Amatriciana was originally born in Amatrice, north-east of Rome. The stars of the dish – guanciale (cured pork cheek) and pecorino romano – are both specialties of Lazio, the surrounding region.

Kaloper’s amatriciana makes the most of the guanciale, which you cook in oil and its fat until it’s crispy golden brown. The salty meat cuts through the sweet tomato sauce and adds depth to the final dish. You can usually find a slab of guanciale at your local butcher. (Hot tip: call ahead and check if they’ve got it in stock, before you lose a weekend arvo driving to every butcher in a 10-kilometre radius.)

Finally, don’t overdo the salt – you get plenty of it from the fatty pork cheek and pecorino cheese.

Bucatini alla amatriciana

Serves 4–6

Ingredients

2 × 400g tins whole tomatoes
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
250g guanciale, diced into 1cm cubes
1 tsp dried chilli flakes
500g fresh or dried bucatini
20g butter
Sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper
60g pecorino, finely grated, plus extra to serve

Method

Tip the tomatoes into a bowl and lightly crush them with your hands.

Heat the oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add the guanciale and cook, stirring frequently, for 7–8 minutes, until golden brown. Add the chilli flakes and cook for a further 1 minute, then stir in the tomatoes and cook for 12–15 minutes, until the sauce has reduced and thickened slightly.

Meanwhile, bring a large saucepan of salted water to the boil and cook the pasta to 1 minute less than al dente. Drain, reserving 60ml (¼ cup) of the pasta cooking water.

Just before serving, stir the butter through the sauce and season with salt and pepper, to taste. Add the pasta to the sauce and toss to coat.

Add the reserved pasta water and cook for a further minute or so until the pasta is al dente. Stir through the pecorino. Divide the pasta among warmed pasta bowls and sprinkle over a little extra pecorino.

Images and text extracted from Pasta Night by Deborah Kaloper, published by Smith Street Books in 2023 ($29.99). Photography by Emily Weaving.