Guanciale, one of Italy's tastiest secrets.

If you’ve ever read this blog before and/or haven’t been hiding under a rock, you know that I love Italian delicacies. Unfortunately with the exception of prosciutto di Parma and Parmigiano and Pecorino, most Italian meats and cheeses are either hard to come by outside of Italy, or extremely expensive. Sure, knock-offs are widely available since Italian food has become immensely popular around the globe, but the true taste of Italy is hard to come by.

One of these delicacies is guanciale. Guanciale translates to ‘little cheeks’, but there’s nothing little about it – not in size, nor in flavor. Guanciale is a cheek though. It’s a pork cheek, cured and generously seasoned with amongst other spices, lots of black pepper. Guanciale looks a little like bacon, the consistency and taste however is much, much more delicate.

When we visited Milan last month I brought back a guanciale. I also brought two different sausages and a piece of speck, 3 different cheeses (large chunks) and 4 kilos of flour home with me, but today I’m writing about the guanciale.

Guanciale is for sale at every supermarket or butcher.

One side is heavily seasoned, the other side has the chewy (cleaned) skin.

Guanciale is the meat that’s traditionally used for pasta all’amatriciana and pasta alla carbonara. Or that’s what the internet likes me to believe. I absolutely adore guanciale, there is no way to describe it. If you like bacon (and really, who doesn’t) you’ll like guanciale. It’s better than bacon! And no, that’s not heresy, because really it’s just bacon with even more flavor.

The guanciale cut up in strips

The first thing I used my guanciale for (I got a whole piece, so it’s quite large) was for a 1-dish-meal version of Pasta all’Amatriciana. I hadn’t had time to buy groceries and my zucchini plant had shed it’s last fruit, I had guanciale, I had tomatoes, I had pasta and I figured it just had to do.
Do it did! The pasta was delicious, the guanciale gave it just the nice little different kick that you wouldn’t have had with bacon or another meat. It was the perfect way to inaugurate the food I’d smuggled* home!

Adding cheese into the pan before serving

The finished dish, delicious!

*Since I’m within the EU, it obviously wasn’t smuggling, but traveling with 4 kilo’s of white powder and very smelly (garlicy sausages, cheese) in my suitcase, it sortof felt like I did!

Fresh, hand-rolled rigatoni with a cheese and parsley sauce.

I walked into Duikelman to buy a speculaas plate. The mold to make the Dutch windmill cookies that are known throughout the world. Now it’s always dangerous to walk into Duikelman. If you like cooking, it’s pretty close to what heaven must look like. So far it’s been utterly impossible for me to go in there and just browse around and leave the shop empty handed. I always find something I want.

I walked into Duikelman with a misshion. The mold I promised Giulia. However, I stumbled upon this little plate which lead me to a new adventure in pasta making.

A little stick and a ribbed piece of wood can be exciting to a fresh pasta enthusiast.

The description of the plate said it was for making gnocchi or rigatoni. The plate itself is used to make the little ribs that hold the sauce extra well. For gnocchi a lot of people just use the tines of a fork, but rolling them over this plate is the other option. The plate came with the little stick, a stick you can use to roll a sheet of pasta around to make hollow pasta, or maccheroni, such as penne. Rigatoni is a hollow pasta, not unlike penne, with ribs. And that’s where the full use of this simple little thing comes in. You roll small sheets of pasta around the stick on the plate and when you press it together to close the hollow tube, the outside is ribbed and  the final outcome’s name is rigatoni.

Hand rolled rigatoni, waiting to be cooked.

I saw the plate at Duikelman and the crazy cook inside me decided this was something I needed to try. It would be fun. And fun it was. Albeit a lot of work – taking much, much more time than fresh tagliatelle, spaghetti or capelli d’angelo – it resulted in yet another great tasting home-made pasta dish, that just looked a little different.

Rolling a sheet of fresh pasta.

I decided to pair the fresh rigatoni with a very simple cheese and parsley sauce. A basic white sauce with two kinds of cheese, so fresh cracked pepper and some parsley from the garden. It was delicious.

Cutting sheets of fresh pasta to roll into rigatoni.

I doubt I’ll be making rigatoni very often, or for more than two or three people, as it is a lot of work. But I will make it again and I can see it being a fun activity for a cooking club or with kids. It’s much like playing with play-dough, only tastier!

Rolling rigatoni, fresh pasta is always a treat!

Oh, and as a side note, Laurens shot this picture of me while I was working on the pasta. This is why you need to wear aprons and might avoid wearing black clothes when your hands are filled with flour.

Whenever I need a recipe or food idea, I usually look up a blog. Often that will be other peoples blogs. Whenever I know that I’ve written a post about something myself, I will look it up on my own blog though. So when Simone of Jungle Frog Cooking asked me to join in the 7 links project, I got excited. A post looking back on my own favorite posts. Looking back onto the posts that deserve a little extra attention.

In the year and a half that I’ve been blogging. there have been enough posts that I remember. Ones that I like to look back to myself. In this post I put them together for you.

My most beautiful post

Sprinkling chocolate over Tiramisu

This was a post very early on in the blog. We had really only just started making photo’s specifically for the blog. As I started sprinkling the chocolate Laurens told me to stop. He started placing his flash elsewhere, moved cutting boards around to reflect the right light and tried to choreograph the photo. When he said okay, I started sprinkling more chocolate over the tiramisu and hoped he got the shot he wanted as I was running out of chocolate. The picture tuned out amazing, or so I think. The Tiramisu was very tasty too. the secret – make it in advance!

My most popular post

A swiss roll ice cream cake - delicious

The one single post that has been getting the most hits ever since it’s been posted – even after moving the whole site to a new domain, is the step-by-step post of a swiss roll ice cream cake I made for Daring Bakers last summer. The challenge was to make everything yourself, from swiss rolls to 2 kinds of ice cream and a sauce. It tuned out to be a lot of work, but very tasty! I haven’t made it again since, but I’m glad to know I have the skills to make such an awesome dessert if I need to!

My most controversial post

Grocery store meats, not very appetizing!

In May of 2010 I had just about had it with the terrible quality of the meat sold at our local grocery store. I wrote a long rant about the quality of meats at grocery stores and illustrated it with this not-too-appetizing picture. Since we moved into our new home in October of that same year, I’ve been buying 90 percent of my meats at the butcher. I already knew that the taste and overall quality would be (and indeed is) much better, but in all honesty, it really isn’t that much more expensive either. A rant about the quality of food seems a little controversial though.

My most helpful post

The best home-made cinnamon rolls in the world, no questions asked!

Cinnamon rolls were my first breakfast-pastry-love. And you can’t go much better than a fresh baked Cinnabon from a mall somewhere. Warm, a little gooey with that wonderful cream cheese icing on top. Yep, I love my cinnamon rolls, and I found/tweaked a recipe that mimics my favorite type pretty much perfectly. Judging from popularity and comments, both on- and offline, I’ve got to say that this is my most helpful post. Also the trick with the ceramic cups to make sure they sit close together seems to be a keeper!

Most surprising success post

A sliced of bread with the pastrami piled on.

I honestly have no idea why this post is so popular in page views. It’s an explanation on Dutch sandwich lunches and a request for a good pastrami recipe. To make my own. Despite the fact that there are a bunch of people who look at the post every single day, no-one has sent me their favorite recipe yet. I guess they just come here to see if I have one.

Post that didn’t get the attention it deserved

Delicious, crispy catuccini. Perfect for soaking in espresso or vin santo.

These beautiful and very tasty cantuccini didn’t get all that much attention and I bet I know why. It was the second post of that day. Posted only a little while after I posted that I screwed up my cantuccini. It was the first time I made cantuccini and I had certain expectations. Halfway through it looked like the cookies didn’t even come close to meeting those expectations. The fact of the matter was, I had just made them a little larger than I thought I did. They turned out to be delicious, and they deserved a LOT of attention. However, they didn’t get it, and that’s just sad!

Post I’m the most proud of

Fresh pasta, hanging to dry before cooking.

This might be the hardest post to choose. There are so many posts I’m proud of. More so, there are so many things I’ve made that I’m proud of. Cooking, grilling, smoking, baking, all kinds of things have been made since I started this blog. I’ve experimented a lot. So what did I choose? I’ll tell you. I chose my very first post. PArtially because I love this picture, and partially because that’s what I should be proudest of. The fact that I dove in and started the blog and gave myself the option, or challenge, to make all those other things I’m proud of. I’ll always cherish that first post, and hope that if you’ve never seen it, you’ll go there and check it out.

Now to continue the 7 links project, I have invited 7 other bloggers who’s blogs I’d love to see through their eyes. I can’t wait to see their surprising, favorite and helpful posts! And thanks again Simone, for inviting me! IT was hard, but fun!

Giula of Juls’ Kitchen

Jill of JBean Cuisine

Kelly of Condensed Stew

Marica of Cooking with Marica

Regula of Foodwise

Sara of Cocina para Emancipados

Zita of Zizi Adventures