I have an offal confession to make…I’m not keen on it. Offal that is. I can cope with a kidney, flirt with a faggot and suck up to a sweetbread, but in general, I prefer muscle to organ. (Please no trolling from the PC elite, it’s all above board). Liver is the worst for me. I hate the smell, and the sight of it takes me back to my youth when my mother used to buy and cook it for the dog…and at the same time eat raw slivers of the stuff. Yes, I lived in a strange household and these things stay with you and influence the choices you make in life. For living proof, look at what I married!
For our final meal in Rome, I’d saved the best till last. Namely, Armando Al Pantheon, a small restaurant, coincidentally beside the Pantheon in the heart of old Rome which serves some of the best cucina tipica in the city. It was here I’d resolved to end my offal aversion to offal and never again to use so many offal jokes (I’ve stopped now I promise)
Opened in 1961 by Armando Gargioli, the restaurant gradually gained a reputation for traditional Roman cuisine. Armando’s sons joined him. Claudio in the kitchen and Fabrizio front of house. Armando retired in the 90s and Fabrizio moved into the kitchen to help Claudio with daughter Fabrizia and the food is still some of the best in Rome.
It’s very small, only 14 tables and I’d booked well in advance. We were starving after a day tripping around Il Vaticano and being harassed by more professional street hawkers than I’ve ever seen anywhere in the world. We were ready.
It was with some trepidation that I ordered my starter – Coratella d’Abbacchio. Basically, it’s lamb heart, lungs and liver fried with white wine, lemon and peas. I was cured! It tasted out of this world. Creamy and not the least bit irony or livery. I even grabbed some bread and did fare la scarpetta ( mopped up the juice).
It was meat again for the Lemster, a simple plate of cold cuts. And herein lies the problem with trying to convey just how mind blowing a plate of salumi can be when it’s the best you can get.
Oh, I can (and will) wax lyrical about the paper thin slices, the way the fat literally melts on your tongue because it’s sliced so thin. But when, and if, someone thinks ” Ooh sounds good, I’ll have some of that” and they pop to Aldi or the like and add to the plastic waste of the planet by buying 6 slices of Parma ham on a plastic tray, I’m on a hiding to nowt aren’t I?
“It’s just meat innit?” I can almost hear them shout into the ethereal nether regions as they scour Google for ” hitmen for hire- food reviewers a specialty “. You’ve got to have the good stuff and, I suppose, it helps to eat it in a little tratt with the sights and smells of a Roman summers evening all around.
I waited for the little signals that told me she was happy. The curling of the upper lip, the quick, furtive glances from side to side almost screaming “nick it if you dare!” and the bat like curling of her arms around the whole board in that protective posture I know and love so well. I sighed. I do love to see her happy in her work.
I glanced at our waiter, a rather surly chap, and struggled to decide if his expression was surprise, admiration or dread. Just a little point here. The number of times I read on Tripe Advisor “reviews” from English punters that the waiter was ‘miserable’, or ‘rude’ or ,worst of all, ‘inattentive’ makes me despair. Many Italian servers (better say servers, ‘waitress’ would probably land me in Wormwood Scrubs), can be a bit, shall we say, brusque? They’re often very busy, especially in the tourist haunts in the height of summer, and their philosophy is get the job done but always, in my experience, politely.
So, true to my word, the offal is well and truly put to bed but the other part of the title refers to that little bit of Italy we all know…Pasta! Rome has several iconic pasta dishes that we in Britain manage to screw over with monotonous regularity when we get it over here.
My favourite, and the one I ate at Armandos, is Cacio e Pepe. It was one of the lesser known Roman pasta dishes until the hipsters got hold of it a couple of years ago then it was everywhere like a huge, hairy beard furball. It’s simply pasta, cheese and lots of pepper. But wait, as usual it’s not that simple. Over here it was ruined by restaurants using spaghetti and parmesan to please the UK punters who think that’s the only thing Italian to come out of Italy.
The pasta should be long and thin…ish. You want to slurp it up, that’s the sensual pleasure of it. Tonnarelli is good. The cheese HAS to be Pecorino Romano. It’s a sheep’s milk cheese from Lazio and has a sharp, salty taste. Never, ever Parmigiano Reggiano (Parmesan). Why? Because it’s a creamier cow’s milk cheese and doesn’t have the punch of pecorino to counter the hot pepper. Speaking of which, loads of course, of coarse, freshly ground black pepper is best. In some places in Rome whole peppercorns are just bashed in a mortar a bit to keep them really coarse. Then, to get this creamy, sharp sauce that clings like Loctite to the pasta, you need to drain it then add the cheese and pepper then a bit of the pasta water so that that starchy water binds the sauce into a cheesy, smooth, homogeneous delight. Here it is:
Post meat, Lemmy had plumped for that other Roman pasta dish that we in the UK simply delight in ruining, Spaghetti Carbonara.
Now we know it over here as spaghetti, bacon, eggs and (I feel sick saying it) cream. So let’s get this out of the way now. Never, ever, ever should the words Spaghetti, Carbonara and Cream share the same paragraph, page or bloody menu or cookbook. There are those who “know” Italian food who will swear on their childrens’ iPhones it has cream but that is simply bollocks.
Carbonara uses spaghetti, for once we get that right, the “bacon” should be guanciale , cured pig’s cheek, or at a push, pancetta, which is cured pork belly. The eggs can be eggs but then the comparisons stop. Cook your pasta and stir in whisked, raw eggs to hot pasta with that splash of pasta water again. The heat of the pasta will cook the eggs and the starchy pasta water will create that creamy sauce yet again. Add your bacon, bit of cheese, pecorino please and the job’s done. Ecco qua:
Armando’s is a delight. Claudio bobs out from time to time to see if everyone’s OK, the whole place just makes you feel warm and fuzzy. We left at about 11.30pm (they eat late in Rome) and briefly contemplated bedding down for the night at the main door of the Pantheon only 20 yards away. After all, it was the only bloody chance we’d got of beating the queues and getting in. A real bed won though, after a few swift ones at the mohito bar down the road.
Rome done. Lecture over.
Craig's Crockpot 
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