Pasta alla gricia is the happy meeting of the melted fat of salt-cured pork jowls and grated pecorino
Between new year and epiphany, I had two separate lunches with two separate Roman friends who live in London but were back for the holidays. Our lives in reverse, I had just returned to Rome after two weeks with my family in London. I have known both friends for more than a decade, and it is even longer since we swapped countries, yet we are still having the same conversations about work, weather, words, nostalgia and bread, which is really just a way of talking about belonging to two places, and holding on to the good and flawed parts of both. Both conversations ended in the same way, with the friends telling me that they were reluctant but ready to go home, but first needed to buy guanciale to take back with them.
Guancia means cheek, and guanciale are the salt-cured pork jowls that hang like pepper-dusted paddles above salumerie (deli) counters in shops and on Roman market stalls. Unlike the more familiar pancetta (salt-cured pork belly) with its equal streaks of meat and fat, guanciale, like my cheeks after festive eating, is mostly fat. Cured with salt, and flavoured with only red or black pepper, the fat of guanciale has a thick, almost sweet and delicate flavour, which melts into a deeply flavoured and seasoned cooking medium.
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