Pasta Arrabbiata

Pasta and sauce

1. Homemade pasta arrabbiata is a wonderful, simple dish for a good lunch. It cooks very quickly, and the sauce is ready at the same time as the pasta. I’ll say right away that this is not an insanely hot sauce, not even a very hot one. The heat is usually felt in the aftertaste and fades fairly quickly.

   Take the ripest, even slightly overripe tomatoes, preferably with as few seeds as possible. Use short pasta; I like tortiglioni best. Don’t use long pasta here: there is quite a lot of sauce, and it should fill the hollows in the pasta.

   

2. Put the pasta on to cook right away. Bring 2 l of water to a boil over high heat in a large pot and salt it with 14 g of salt (7 g per 1 l of water). Add the pasta and cook for the time on the package: short pasta usually cooks in 9-11 mins, which guarantees it will be cooked al dente.

3. Fry the garlic and chili. Peel the garlic and the fresh chili, chop them fairly coarsely and fry in olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat for 2-3 mins so the garlic doesn’t burn. Add 0.5 tsp dried chili flakes.

   

4. Prepare the tomato flesh and add it to the pan. In the simplest case, use a can of tomato pulp: it doesn’t need blending, just crush it with a fork or in your hand. In season, when you can buy very ripe tomatoes with few seeds (I love these varieties), peel the ripe tomatoes. If they are large enough, you can peel them with a sharp knife, as the skin comes off easily. Chop the flesh finely with a knife. Don’t use a blender, as you’ll get a “thin” purée. If the tomatoes have many seeds, remove them with a knife and grate the flesh.

   Add the tomato to the pan and stir well.

   

6. Simmer the sauce and add the parsley. Salt the arrabbiata sauce and, if you like, add a little ground black pepper and sugar. Pepper and sugar are not usually added, but tomatoes often have a very strong taste and aroma with some tartness, and these additions will soften it a little. Simmer the sauce covered over low heat for 10-12 mins, then remove the lid and turn up the heat to evaporate the excess moisture until the sauce thickens.

   Pull the leaves off the parsley sprigs, chop them with a knife and add them to the sauce right away. Basil is often used instead of parsley, so give it a try.

   

Combining pasta and sauce

1. Mix the pasta with the sauce. Drain the cooked pasta in a colander and mix it with the arrabbiata sauce right away. It is important that the sauce coats the pasta completely: because of the hollows in the pasta, a good part of the sauce will fill them. Leave the pasta with the sauce covered, off the heat, for 1-2 mins so the pasta soaks it up, then stir once more.

   

Serving

1. Serve the pasta while it is hot, dividing it among plates. In Roman taverns the dish is often generously sprinkled with grated pecorino cheese. That is a matter of taste, as the main thing in this dish is the heat of the chili.

   Don’t store and reheat it: since it cooks so fast, you can always make it fresh. Pasta with such a hot sauce is a very popular dish and is even mentioned in films.