This was Pasta all'Amatriciana - Pancetta, Onion and Tomato.
Homemade pasta sauce with simple ingredients is always a winner. This was one of such examples. According to wiki and other sources, traditional Amatriciana sauce is made with guanciale (cured pork cheek), pecorino cheese and tomato. Pancetta is a common alternative to guanciale, which I did't have. In fact, pancetta we bought at an Italian deli in Baltimore was the promoter of this project, so if we don't use the pancetta, I wouldn't think about making Amatriciana.
Onion seems common to be added, especially in Roma, so I added half of one onion. Onion added sweetness and made the sauce not too meaty, which I appreciated. Garlic seems not so common but can be another option. I thought about it a little bit, but skipped it to keep the flavor simple. Half a teaspoon of crushed red chili pepper was in. Lidia and Cook's Illustrated did so. I flipped an Italian cooking book by a Japanese chef who has a long time experience of studying Italian cuisine in Italy to see how he fixes this sauce. He uses white wine. It may be not so traditional but the result could be sophisticated. I adapted it. But that was it. Some other recipes titled Amatriciana I have seen online called for carrot, celery, Balsamic vinegar, etc.. No No No. In terms of a kind of pasta, Bucatini or Spaghetti seems traditional. We didn't have those thick long pasta in hand but Capellini and J wanted to eat the sauce with Capellini. No problem at all. I wish to have pecorino. But milder Parmesan cheese was not bad in this case. Fresh parsley was probably not traditional, but I had a bunch of parsley in the refrigerator. Red likes green. So, why not? After all, my Capellini all'Amatriciana was superb. J loved it. Simple but very flavorful. No doubt that the pancetta brought the wonderful flavor in the sauce. It was a really good product, much better than what we had before. I remembered an Italian man in the TV saying a chef is the star in French cuisine while ingredients are the star in Italian cuisine. I see the point.
