Pasta al Pomodoro

The sauce finished in the pan with the pasta and its water, not ladled over it.

Vegan.

Ingredients

• 800 g ripe tomatoes, or tinned San Marzano
• 400 g spaghetti
• 5 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves, whole and lightly crushed
• a large handful of basil
• 1.5 teaspoons salt

Method

1. Warm the oil with the whole garlic cloves over a low heat until they smell, then lift them out. Whole and removed, not chopped and left in: chopped garlic browns and takes over.
2. Add the tomatoes, crushed by hand, and a pinch of salt. Simmer 15 minutes only — long enough to lose the raw edge, short enough to stay red rather than brown.
3. Boil the pasta in well-salted water and pull it out TWO MINUTES EARLY, while it is still too firm to eat.
4. FINISH IT IN THE PAN. Tip the pasta into the sauce with a ladle of its water and cook it hard for those last two minutes, tossing constantly. The starch in the water and the oil in the pan emulsify into something that clings — this is the whole difference between a dressed pasta and a pasta with sauce sitting on top of it.
5. Add water a splash at a time if it tightens. It should move loosely in the pan right up to the moment it is served.
6. Tear the basil in off the heat, with a last spoon of raw oil, and serve immediately.

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