Cooking for a cause: Woodbridge social club dishes up pasta all'amatriciana to help Italian quake victims

On Saturday, Woodbridge's Lazio Club Canada joined restaurants around the world in a global effort to raise funds for the victims of the Aug. 24 earthquake in Italy, by serving a pasta dish made famous by the region hit hardest by the tragedy.

The Toronto-area social club dished up plates of pasta all'amatriciana, a dish popularized by the Italian town of Amatrice, which is still reeling from losing 230 residents in the quake.

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In the rustic dish pasta is tossed with tomato sauce and pork jowl, and topped with pecorino cheese. The effort was one of many that has been put together in the last few days.

Italian food blogger and graphic designer Paolo Campana launched an appeal on Wednesday. "Pasta all'amatriciana is a symbol," he told The Associated Press. "So I decided to use this symbol to help."

He asked restaurants to put the dish on their menus and donate two euros ($2.91) per dish sold — one from the customer and one matching euro from the restaurant — to the Italian Red Cross.

He says he knows it's not a lot, but hopes that if many people take part it could make a real difference.

Since his appeal, the effort has spread to regions of Italy where the dish isn't traditionally eaten, and also gone international.

British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver said on Facebook Thursday that he, and 700 chefs at his international chain of restaurants, will be serving up pasta all'amatriciana and donating two pounds ($3.42) per sale to the rescue effort.

Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food International, which promotes traditional cooking with sustainable ingredients, has also called on restaurateurs worldwide "to put the symbolic dish of this devastated town on their menus."

At the time of the quake Amatrice had been planning to hold the 50th edition of a food festival, known as a sagra, celebrating their namesake dish.  

The local Hotel Roma, now in ruins, was set to be the heart of the festival.

"Let's hope that [Amatrice] will be reborn again," Luca Palombini, the assistant chef at Hotel Roma, told The Associated Press on Friday, speaking from the San Salvatore Hospital in L'Aquila, where he was being treated for a broken foot. "I hope it will be reborn and that we will move forward, even better than before."

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