Pasta with Ground Chicken in Tomato Sauce

Spaghetti is probably the most common type of Italian pasta. For a long time the standard spaghetti was a dried strand of dough, round in cross-section, 2 mm in diameter and half a meter long. Later the length was halved, and that is the spaghetti we know today. There are many varieties. Alongside the usual round ones, there are flattened, thin, thick, hollow, shorter ones and so on.

I like thin spaghetti of regular length and a little over 1 mm thick best. They are called capellini (Italian Capellini). The term comes from capello, meaning hair. This pasta comes from the north of central Italy. Local names include Capelli d’angelo (angel hair) and Capelvenere (Venus hair). It cooks in just 3-4 minutes, which makes it ideal for a quick breakfast.

Bring 2.5-3 liters of water to a boil and salt it at 7 g of salt per liter. As soon as the water boils, add the spaghetti. The pasta softens almost immediately, so you can push it down with a spoon and submerge it in the pot completely. Cook the pasta for exactly the time stated on the package. Never overcook it. Pasta is cooked until al dente, “to the tooth”: the degree of doneness (not only for pasta, but also rice and vegetables) when it is ready but you can still feel a barely perceptible firmness in the center.

The topping for the pasta, chicken in tomato sauce, takes little time. Peel the ripest red tomatoes and remove the seeds, cutting out the stem end as well. This is easy: scald the tomatoes with boiling water and peel them the way you peel an apple. The seeds and stem end come out with a knife. It has always surprised me that people make dishes and call them chicken with tomato paste. Why, when tomatoes are available either fresh or as canned pulp? Perhaps it is not like that everywhere. Pasta with chicken fillet is tastiest with fresh tomatoes.

Put the tomato pulp in a chopper. Add the red bell pepper, seeded and cored, and a peeled garlic clove. Add a pinch of salt, ground nutmeg and one scant spoonful of sugar. Blend everything until it is like thick juice. Most importantly, blend it so that no noticeable pieces remain. Otherwise the chicken pasta will have hard bits, usually from the pepper, because the cooking time is short and the pepper simply will not soften.

Trim the chicken fillet of membranes and any remaining bone. Grind it in a meat grinder to make mince. I admit, at one time we cut the chicken fillet into pieces with a knife, but capellini is so delicate that fine mince turned out to be much better.

Heat 3 tbsp of the best olive oil in a frying pan. Fry the chicken mince for 5 minutes, stirring constantly and breaking up lumps with a spatula. Mince tends to stick together, which you don’t want. The pasta is better without large lumps of chicken.

Pour the prepared tomato puree into the pan. If the puree is too thick, add a few tablespoons of water; it will boil off in the end. Stir the sauce and cover with a lid. Simmer over medium-high heat for 10 minutes. Then remove the lid and, stirring, cook off the excess liquid to the sauce thickness you like. This takes a few minutes.

Drain the cooked pasta in a colander to let the water run off, then transfer it to the pan with the chicken in tomato sauce. Very carefully, trying not to damage the delicate capellini, toss everything with a large fork. The pasta with chicken mince should warm through under the lid for 2-3 minutes.

Serve the finished pasta with chicken in shallow bowls. This is easiest with a special spoon that has large vertical prongs along the edges.

Usually a little sauce is left at the bottom of the pan. Spoon it over the pasta on the plate and, of course, garnish with fresh herbs or a couple of olives.