Guanciale & Sun-Dried Tomato Pasta

This isn’t an official/deeply-italian pasta recipe, it’s more of a…rustic pasta recipe, but it is incredibly delicious and probably the best pasta recipe I, personally, have come up with. With the help of ChatGPT of course. Also, note: this is not a recipe with a really saucy sauce, it’s more like pasta + sticky oily sauce with meat attached, kind of like cacio é pepe. Here’s the recipe.

Ingredients

• Pasta, of course. Spaghetti or Linguine are good here.
• 100g guanciale, diced
• 80g sun-dried tomatoes (in oil), thinly sliced
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 1 shallot, finely chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1/3 cup dry white wine (I chose Muscadet)
• 1 tbsp fresh oregano, roughly chopped
• 50g Pecorino Romano cheese, grated
• Olive oil (for sautéing, if needed)
• Salt

Instructions

1. Chop everything.

• Sun dried tomatoes into thin strips
• Onion + Shallot finely chopped (that means basically one step less chopped than diced, not necessarily uniformly chopped)
• Guanciale diced
• Garlic minced

2. Render guanciale: In a large pan, cook guanciale over medium heat until crispy and the fat renders out (5-7 min). Remove the guanciale with a slotted spoon; leave fat in the pan.
3. Sauté aromatics: In the rendered fat, cook onion until translucent (2-3 min). Add garlic and sun dried tomatoes, cook for 1 min.
4. Deglaze: Pour in white wine, scrape up the fond, and let it bubble until reduced by half.56. Add oregano: Stir in fresh oregano and cook 30 sec.
5. Boil pasta: now is a good time to start cooking the pasta while the sauce is reducing. Make sure to add salt to the pasta and don’t overcook it, you want it al dente, not overcooked, otherwise it will probably break up or get mushy in the final step when you add it to the sauce/meat.
6. Finish cooking pasta: When it’s al dente, add the pasta to the pan with the onions/sun dried tomatoes/white wine reduction sauce. IMPORTANTLY — DO NOT DUMP THE WATER. Keep at least 1 cup of the pasta water.
7. Add the guanciale: in with the pasta/reductions/onion sauce.
8. Toss + finish: Turn the heat off, toss the pasta thoroughly, and add the pecorino cheese.

Serve it hot. The white wine really makes the dish!