Amatriciana - Round 2!

An attempt was made at creating an Amatriciana sauce many months ago, when I just didn't have the right ingredients on hand. I didn't this time, either, and I substituted bacon for the pancetta or other unobtainable cured Italian pork product that Mario Batali's recipe called for. This is the first recipe of his that I have made!

It's such a simple sauce - one of my favorites, so it makes sense that I continue to try to perfect it. This was pretty darn close. John and I decided to cheat a little and use elbow pasta instead of the messier spaghetti (or bucatini - spaghetti with a hole) in the recipe.


Even more exciting than the sauce, I finally used a Home Goods gift card (that we received as an engagement gift!) to purchase a desperately needed large saute pan. Kind of. It's actually a casserole, which seems to me to be a saute pan without the handle. I have no plans to be flipping anything around anyway, so this was a great find, and it has already proven invaluable. Isn't it lovely?!