Without a doubt, Bruce Willis's core set as a crease-caster John McClane in the "Die Hard Slow" series is "Yippie-ya-yay, pork cheek!". At least as accurate as the "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!" in the English original - without the swear word at the end allegedly a typical cowboy exclamation, on closer inspection but only a chorus line from the harmless thirties-songs from Bing Crosby "I'm An Old Cowhand".
Then rather the pork cheek. The culinary has a lot to offer. If this part between the throat and snout of the sow but not only the place in which sit the wonderfully crumbly stingable cheeks, so the almost life-long moving mass muscles. Further down the chin is the greasy area of the cheek, which also has a particularly valuable consistency. In the north of Germany, it is valued as a smoked charcoal deposit, in Italy as the smoke-free, but calorie and flavor-strong general-purpose kitchen weapon Guanciale.
Even if hardly any food takes smoked aromas as delicate as pork fat, it is this un-smoked delicacy that makes the original spaghetti alla carbonara taste so good. Unlike in this country, where mostly smoked bacon is used. Or in northern Italy, where you at least take Pancetta. In Latium and Umbria, on the other hand, the cooks prefer to use the baking bacon, which has been salt-cured for several weeks and then air-dried for months.
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Wagner recipe: guanciale prawns with fennel and pineappleIn southern Europe, mild, wind-swept air has always been used to preserve a variety of slaughterhouses, especially pork. This has produced a variety of barely or no smoked Salumi specialties such as the world famous ham from Parma, Norcia, Berico-Euganeo (Veneto), Carpegna (Marche) and San Daniele (Friuli), or the Culatello di Zibello from the upper leg , the shoulder ham Spalla Cruda, the beef bresaola, the rolled pork belly Pancetta, Calabria the neck bacon Capocollo, and the Guanciale.
At the pasta cooking, hold the cheek
With this noble baking we had already cooked those two Italian noodle classics in our small hobby kitchen, which are falsely always prepared with smoked bacon: Carbonara and Pasta All'Amatriciana. After all - in both cases, the alternative use of top smoking products such as mildly smoked South Tyrolean bacon (Pancetta Alto Adige) would be less palatable than our current recipe for "Guanciale Shrimp with Fennel Salad and Hasselback Pineapple".
Here, Backe enters into a sensational aroma and texture relationship with the juicy freshwater prawns. An ordinary smoked bacon could never do that, as alternatives at most other air-dried Italo-classics such as Gola or at least 22 weeks matured Lardo di Colonnata in question, which was previously - similar to the Abruzzo Guanciale - stored in Tuscan marble quarries as an energy source for the workers ,
However, nobody has to be afraid to feed themselves with this late-summer Nobel-BBQ winter bacon. After all, the paper-thin sliced baking slices just weigh a few grams per serving. The crisp freshly marinated fennel salad with orange juice is just as light as the pineapple, which we carved fan-shaped before grilling for the best Swedish Hasselbackkartoffel tradition.