The cured italian meat pancetta comes either rolled (rotolata) or flat (stesa). Rolled pancetta is often sold thinly sliced. Flat pancetta comes as a slab. You can use it in any dish that would benefit from an underlying, mild pork flavor.
Here's an easy way to prep thin slices of rolled pancetta. First, stack 3-4 slices and roll them up like a cigar. If you want short strips (like lardons), cut the pancetta cigar in half lengthwise. Skip this step if you want the strips to be long.
Then slice the cigar crosswise. Toss the pieces around with your hand to separate them.
To dice slab pancetta, cut a few slices crosswise as thick or thin as you like. Stack the slices, then slice off and discard any unwanted tough skin.
Cut the slices into strips lengthwise.
Rotate the strips 90 degrees around and slice them crosswise to finish the dice.
When you want a dish to have quintessential garlic flavor that permeates each bite, mince it. You can mince with a knife, or a garlic press.
Either way, you need to free the individual cloves. To do that, press down on the head with the heel of your palm. Apply firm, even pressure so the cloves don't fly all over the place.
To peel an individual clove, cut of the hard stem end where the clove attached to the bulb. Either stop the cut just short of the skin on the other side and peel the skin around to remove it, or make the cut all the way through and squeeze out the clove. The older the clove, the easier the skin releases.
You can also peel it by setting the side of your knife blade on the clove and pressing down until you feel the skin release, though not hard enough to pulverize it, or the skin will get mixed in with the garlic.
To mince with a knife, smash the peeled clove with the side of the knife. Then just run your knife back and forth across the smashed clove, chopping as you go until it's as fine as you like.
If you don't want individual little pieces of garlic and have a press, just put the whole peeled clove (or cloves, if you can fit them) in the press and squeeze. Use your knife to trim away any clinging garlic.
what you should know
Often called "Italian bacon," pancetta is different from its American counterpart in one important way. Bacon is usually smoked (and only sometimes cured), while pancetta is pork belly that is cured and spiced but not smoked.
roll vs. slab Pancetta can be prepared in two ways: as a roll (rotolata), in which the fat and muscle spiral around each other; and as a slab (stesa), in which the fat is almost entirely on one side.
make and prep your own Rolled pancetta is most often sliced paper thin. With slab pancetta, you often get a slightly thicker slice you can then dice. (If you want to cure, roll and age your own pork belly, check out Chow's step-by-step guide on making pancetta.)
if you lack guanciale Pancetta is often used in place of guanciale, which is the less commonly available cured pork cheek called for in traditional pasta dishes like carbonara and all'amatriciana.
if you lack pancetta If you can't find pancetta, you can use bacon in its place. Do you need to blanch the bacon before using it? Depends on how you want the finished dish to taste.
what you need
It's more focused on lardons than pancetta, but Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery is our favorite of Jane Grigson's contributions to the world of food reference.
More recently, author and blogger Michael Ruhlman has updated the world of charcuterie with the appropriately titled Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing.
In Pig Perfect, Peter Kaminsky goes on a pilgrimage in search of the world's best cuts of pork. He mostly succeeds.
what you do
Tender, bitter and salty, this recipe for lima beans and radicchio with pancetta is Italianesque comfort food.
Not as comforting, though, as this fettuccine with pancetta, egg and parmesan, a variation of classic pasta carbonara.
Another classic winter dish: Italian cabbage and white bean soup.
This hearty lentil soup with chorizo and potatoes combines the mild spiciness of the Spanish sausage with the porky richness of pancetta.
Even though it's out of season, we've seen some beautiful asparagus lately. Food miles be damned: we've been eating a lot of this sautéed asparagus with pancetta and garlic.
What do we mean by shimmering oil?
What do we mean by shimmering oil?
Shimmering oil is hot oil that is nearing its smoke point.
At room temperature, common cooking oils like vegetable and olive oil seem fairly thick. Put them in a pan and heat them though, and they thin out when you swirl the pan. As they get hotter, they tend to "flow" and coat the pan more easily.
In the right light, when you look at oil that's at a good temperature for sautéing -- nice and hot, but not yet smoking -- it shimmers. It forms "tines" like those on a wine glass. It looks colorful, iridescent even.
Shimmering oil is good for sautéing because it increases the chances that the food won't stick. Hot oil immediately seals the bottom of food, creating a natural barrier between it and the bottom of the pan.
Chopping is probably the most common way to prep an onion. Chopped onions show up in anything that needs the basic, earthy pungent flavor that onions give. Chop them larger for longer-cooking dishes like stews and rustic soups, and smaller (call it a dice if you like) for anything from salsas to sauces to ragouts.
To start, cut the onion in half through the root. The root itself will help keep the onion together for chopping
Rotate the onion 90 degrees and cut off the papery end (not the root end). This will make the skin easy to peel away and discard.
Peel back the onion's papery skin. It's often easiest to peel away the first layer of the onion along with the skin.
Make a series of diagonal cuts (roughly 45 degrees) into the side of the onion. Keep more space between the slices for a large chop. Make the cuts closer together for a small chop or a dice.
Now make a series of horizontal cuts to finish shaping the chop or dice.
Finally, rotate the onion again and slice crosswise against the checkerboard pattern you made in the onion. The chopped pieces will fall away from the onion.
A pulse is another name for a number of dried legume seeds from pod plants including kidney beans, chickpeas, peas, lentils, soybeans and peanuts.
Because they pack high energy and low water content, pulses can be stored easily for long periods (unlike fresh vegetables). Mixed with grains and fresh vegetables, they are a vital source of vegetarian protein. Pulses are also cheap, making them a popular ingredient around the world, frequently eaten in everyday dishes like Indian dal.
