But before I get to that, let’s go ahead and address the failures since they are sitting in my Flickr, waiting to be discussed on the internet by people just like me who are still new to this whole cooking/baking thing and still have to google the appropriate way to slice an onion (honestly, the knife skills class I’m taking at the end of the month cannot get here soon enough). 

First up, pasta all’Amatriciana last night. I should clarify that this wasn’t an actual failure as I don’t think I did anything wrong in the cooking, it was more of a failure of understanding the limitations of both my nostrils and my tastebuds. I learned a valuable lesson about reading comprehension to boot.

I actually have pasta alla Gricia written on my Bi-Monthly Menu of Doom, because this recipe caught my eye during my daily read and I thought, hey, authentic Roman pasta dish? Neat! It used a meat I had never heard of nor seen though I knew that Liberty Heights Fresh sold Salumi meats since my pancetta comes from there. Plus I would get to run around saying guanciale for a few days, and that’s always fun. The fact that it was PORK JOWL didn’t seem to trigger any red flags for me, probably because it was grouped with pancetta and proscuitto, which I love. Apparently the description as “piggy” didn’t register either because I continued to look forward to making this dish even after I went to 6 different stores looking for bucatini.

The day I chose to make the recipe, I got a little concerned, finally, about relying so heavily on a meat I was unfamiliar with to flavor an entire meal, and I knew I had a can of good quality tomatoes in the cupboard, so I went with the all’Amatriciana and dug up a recipe in the NY Times. I still didn’t find any bucatini though I did grab some perciatelli which, as far as I can tell, is for all practical purposes the same thing. I was so frustrated that I ended up picking up a pasta that just looked pretty – spinach garganelli in this case – and made it instead.

From the second I put that guanciale in the pan to saute, I knew I was in trouble. Internet, I grew up next to a farm that had pigs, I am overly familiar with the smell of pig and this? This smelled overwhelmingly of pig. Not pork, oh no, pork is a delicious smell. This literally smells like you shoved your nose against a filthy hog and inhaled deeply. And worse, being 8 months pregnant, your nose is so sensitive to smell anyway that I had a hard time just keeping lunch down while I was making it. But you know, there are plenty of delicious foods that smell terrible – salmon and cabbage, to name a few – so I trucked on.

We ate salad for dinner. It tasted like it smelled – worse, the taste came forward after you swallowed, so you were teased with tasty tomato sauce, and left with greasy pig. I was so disappointed, but you know, now I know that my palate is just not sophisticated enough to appreciate guanciale and apparently neither is my husband’s. My 2 year old didn’t seem to have a problem with it though.

The failure revolving around this whole lemon tart from Smitten Kitchen will be chronicled tomorrow. For now, I’ll leave you with a photo and the link to tonight’s delicious taco and salsa dinner, which was not a failure:

Grilled Skirt Steak Tacos with Caramelized Onions and Roasted Tomatillo Salsa, which we served up with some refried beans and added some roasted red peppers and shredded sharp cheddar and Monterey jack cheese to the tacos themselves.