Arrabbiata Sauce

Tomato, garlic and chilli cooked fast in oil, with no meat and no cheese anywhere in it.

Vegan.

Ingredients

• 5 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 cloves garlic, sliced thinly
• 3 dried red chillies, crumbled, seeds and all
• 600 g ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped, or tinned plum
• 1 teaspoon salt
• a handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped
• 400 g penne

Method

1. Warm the oil over a low heat and add the garlic and chilli together. Cook them 2 minutes, no more, until the garlic is barely coloured and the oil has turned faintly orange. THE CHILLI IS BLOOMED IN THE OIL and the oil is what carries the heat through the dish — this is an oil-and-heat sauce where amatriciana is a fat-and-salt one.
2. Turn the heat up, add the tomatoes and the salt, and cook hard for 10 to 12 minutes, stirring. It should spit.
3. Cooked fast and uncovered it stays sharp and keeps its red; a long slow simmer turns it sweet and dull, which is a perfectly good sauce and not this one.
4. There is no meat in it and no cheese on it. Pecorino would flatten the chilli, which is the only thing the dish is about.
5. Boil the penne until just tender and drain it, keeping a little water.
6. Toss the pasta through the sauce with a splash of the water, stir the parsley in off the heat, and serve.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Italy · All recipes