Bridgestone-

That photo where the tomatoes have just been added to the pan is delectable (as are the rest)! Thank you for posting and thank you to Antonious for the original recipe.

-Mary

Wow, what a great post Bridgestone!

For those looking to duplicate, the Binny's across the street from Manny's has (at least as of last Saturday) La Querica guanciale. I bought a nice sized hunk but I have not used it yet, so I cannot speak fully to its goodness. Still, the Quercia products are generally so good, I expect this to be the same.

Bridgestone wrote:And, after a little searching (and I'm still not sure that I found the posts I originally had in mind - isn't there a post somewhere where GWiv makes a batch of bucatini all'Amatriciana?)

Bridgestone,

Beautiful, really wonderful.

The post where I make Antonius's recipe is here, though when I saw just how gorgeous your guanciale is I thought it would also be delicious in an application such as grilled guanciale from the now shuttered Timo.

Guanciale set atop mascarpone polenta w/grilled dates stuffed with gorgonzola and mascarpone


Enjoy,
Gary

Thanks everyone!

Man, if I didn't search every way I could think of to find that post you linked to, Gary... I knew it was there but couldn't find it. My post obviously makes more sense on the tail end of that one. I'd switch posts myself but now that I've gotten some responses am afraid that I'd end up making a mess of the guanciale thread. If one of our kindly, talented moderators feels that the effort to move my post and these following posts is worthy, please feel free to. Otherwise, I suppose it works here, too as the recipe does, in fact, contain guanciale.

Sorry for making a mess of things! I really, really did search before posting!

Ha....Bridgestone...no post of yours is EVER a mess...

I have such european pork product envy!!!!


Shannon

For what it's worth, I've tried the guanciale from Fox & Obel and I'd recommend to stay far, far away. Maybe it was a bad batch, but it wasn't good. At all. When it cooked up, it tasted only of bad bacon -- and if I had wanted bacon, I would have used bacon!

Now what Bridgestone photographed? That looks like the guanciale I remember from Rome. Excellent pictures!

danimalarkey wrote:For what it's worth, I've tried the guanciale from Fox & Obel and I'd recommend to stay far, far away. Maybe it was a bad batch, but it wasn't good. At all. When it cooked up, it tasted only of bad bacon -- and if I had wanted bacon, I would have used bacon!

Now what Bridgestone photographed? That looks like the guanciale I remember from Rome. Excellent pictures!

Bad batch. Or you don't like guanciale. I'm fairly certain I've eaten more of F&O's guanciale than anybody here (it was a weekly purchase for me for over two years), and it both resembles Bridgestone's photo and tastes wonderful.

(Unless there's been a recent change in supplier)

Dmnkly wrote:(Unless there's been a recent change in supplier)

I've heard several rumblings of changes for the worse at F&O since the new owners took over. This may be yet another example.

Bridgestone,

Many thanks for all the kind words and also for trusting my recipe to such a degree. Your meal looks to have turned out really nicely!

As I have mentioned in a few posts (from some years back) on LTH, bucatini alla matriciana is one of a family of related dishes from central Italy, a family that includes the equally famous spaghetti alla carbonara. With carbonara taken as the starting point, I discuss the family as a whole and some of the history (and fantasy) about the origins of the individual dishes in a paper that appeared in the Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on food and Cookery 2006. Eggs in Cookery. Due to space restrictions, I could only include in that piece a portion of my material on the subject but will publish this material in extenso in the hopefully not too distant future.

Nice choice of beer too... (wink)

Saluti amichevoli,
Antonius

Bad batch. Or you don't like guanciale. I'm fairly certain I've eaten more of F&O's guanciale than anybody here (it was a weekly purchase for me for over two years), and it both resembles Bridgestone's photo and tastes wonderful.

(Unless there's been a recent change in supplier)

Well, I "hope" it's just a case of a new supplier, as that would mean that I've been living a lie for the past 5 years, thinking that I liked guanciale! ^_^

I don't know what it was, exactly, but I just felt that the pork tasted a bit tinny more than anything. I've had much better success with carbonara when I had used pancetta from any number of sources (Sam's comes to mind). On the other hand, as I recall now, it may have been the very last of the guanciale that I got that night, and it could have been sitting there for who knows how long. If I see that they have a larger (and presumably newer) hunk of guanciale, I'll give them another shot.

danimalarkey wrote:

Bad batch. Or you don't like guanciale. I'm fairly certain I've eaten more of F&O's guanciale than anybody here (it was a weekly purchase for me for over two years), and it both resembles Bridgestone's photo and tastes wonderful.

(Unless there's been a recent change in supplier)

Well, I "hope" it's just a case of a new supplier, as that would mean that I've been living a lie for the past 5 years, thinking that I liked guanciale! ^_^

I don't know what it was, exactly, but I just felt that the pork tasted a bit tinny more than anything. I've had much better success with carbonara when I had used pancetta from any number of sources (Sam's comes to mind). On the other hand, as I recall now, it may have been the very last of the guanciale that I got that night, and it could have been sitting there for who knows how long. If I see that they have a larger (and presumably newer) hunk of guanciale, I'll give them another shot.

danimalarkey,

The continuation of this thread made me absolutely crazy. So crazy in fact, that I had to go out Monday, first to Bari Foods for San Marzano tomatoes, anchovies, cheeses, a couple subs, etc...and then to F&O for guanciale.

I have to say that F&O's guanciale was beautiful, exactly the same stuff that I've been getting from them for the last three/four years. But I had a small end piece of it in my refrigerator, and I made the effort to use it along with the new stuff rather than throw it out. I went to slice it and it had dried out to the point tht it was difficult to cut. Taste and texture wise, it was more concentrated in flavor.

Perhaps there was a rotation issue when you bought that last chunk. I got some borderline/questionable smoked fish from them a while back, so I agree that they aren't flawless. And I have to say F&O's staff in the charcuterie department isn't even close experience wise to what you see for instance in a Zabar's.

Anyway, we had a most enjoyable dinner last night thanks to Bridgestone, Antonius, GWiv and other LTH contributors and this most recent chunk of F&O's guanciale made for an especially luscious bowl of pasta.

And I have to say F&O's staff in the charcuterie department isn't even close experience wise to what you see for instance in a Zabar's

So friggin' agreed. They know how to order (bellota, chorizo de soria, etc.), but I've never found them particularly engaging or knowledgeable on the sales end, and have had significantly dried-out or even slightly turning sausages from them on several occasions. Sometimes, you have to buck up and just throw that $115-worth link or roll out.

Hi,

At $115 of spoiled meat, I would be rather motivated to return it.

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:Hi,

At $115 of spoiled meat, I would be rather motivated to return it.

Regards,

He meant the store needs to throw it out rather than sell it.

Dmnkly wrote:

Cathy2 wrote:Hi,

At $115 of spoiled meat, I would be rather motivated to return it.

Regards,

He meant the store needs to throw it out rather than sell it.

Thanks - I guess I misread it. I have seen this also with wild mushrooms priced to the sky and virtually rotting in display case. I will bring it to the attention of the manager who isn't always delighted by my diligence.

Regards,

OK, looky what I brought back to Montréal last Saturday night from KC, and guess what I'm cooking for Sundee afternoon dinner?



Yee-hah! What a trio: Antonius, GWiv and Bridgestone--who could resist that sort of culinary force?? Not I.

I'll document...

Geo
PS. I thought that setting the photo in the meter-deep snow on my patio would help mise en scene.

At $115 of spoiled meat, I would be rather motivated to return it.

...

He meant the store needs to throw it out rather than sell it.

Thanks, Dom. I could have written that more clearly. Cathy, I have no compunction about returning even $3.20 of off lamb stew meat to Whole Foods, or collecting a basketful of expired yogurt, sausages, and condiments at Dominick's and turning them in at the Customer Service desk, so we've probably made the same enemies.

Geo wrote:PS. I thought that setting the photo in the meter-deep snow on my patio would help mise en scene.

Nice frig, but must be tough to regulate in the summer.

From Gary:

Nice frig, but must be tough to regulate in the summer.

Unfortunately, you're right: the thermostat varies wildly...

But it makes grilling a lot nicer when the Big Frig is defrosted:



I'll send you a photo on the 4th of July—it *should* be clear by then.

Geo

Bridgestone wrote:Man, if I didn't search every way I could think of to find that post you linked to, Gary... I knew it was there but couldn't find it.

Sorry you didn't think to look at the recipe index, which has links to the original recipe, G Wiv's photos, and another version of the dish posted by Choey. There's a Google box on the recipe page that searches LTHForum, as well. So if you're looking for an LTH recipe or photos of it, that's a good place to start.

Well, LAZ, I had a recipe (Antonius' buried in the guanciale thread - the one I initially posted my reply to) so I guess it didn't occur to me to look through your recipe index. I'll try to keep it in mind for future reference.

Hej Bridgestone,

Perhaps you're already aware of this but there is also an extensive (though likely not exactly comprehensive) index of posts (ca. 60 items listed) by me on specific dishes with recipes or descriptions in varying levels of detail buried over in the Reference Forum (which I shall now bump up it order to render it more easily found in case anyone is interested in perusing it). The list was originally composed over two years ago but I do believe I updated it on occasion.

http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=55649#55649

A

So. We did it, yesterday (=Sunday) afternoon. It was wonderful. But if you think I'm going to try to match my photos up against the others', well, you have another think coming!

But mostly what I want to report is that the La Quercia Green Label guanciale is exquisite: very rich, very clean porky flavors. It sweated beautifully, and married with the tomatoes and onions perfectly. Class act.

We had it with lightly garlicked rampini, and Parma of Pittsburgh's sicilian sausage, arguably the finest instance of the type to be found.‡ Made a most excellently perfect Sunday dinner.

Our tnx to all you LTHers who put us onto this delight. Nicely enough there's enough guanciale to do it several times more. (I'm assuming that it will freeze well?)

Geo


‡ Pace Sazerac: http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t= ... ight=parma

LTHForum,

A friend kindly gifted me a chunk of guanciale from Salumi in Seattle and thoughts turned to Bucatini alla Matriciana, actually Linguine alla Matriciana as my supply of bucatini had mysteriously disappeared.





Thanks again Antonius, I tip my hat toward Tri-Taylor each time I make this dish.

Linguine alla Matriciana


Enjoy,
Gary

This thread has my stomach roaring. Great looking meals over the years.

G Wiv that pork jowl and the resulting dish looks exceptional.

Also note this thread about making your own guanciale.

Not the most photogenic of dishes but one of my favorites…a straight up no frills version with guanciale, tomato, red pepper, bucatini and cheap pecorino. Doesn't get much better or easier than this.

I don't know Alek -- looks pretty damn good to me.

West Loop Salumi makes a fantastic guanciale. Bought some bucatini to honor it alla matriciana, but hubby wanted carbonara, so I picked up wild duck eggs from Amish Healthy Foods and spaghetti and it was heavenly. Now to think of something to do with that package of bucatini....

Smassey--

Here's a bucatini recipe that recently caught my eye: Sicilian pasta with cauliflower.

Geo