Intentional Eating

After a terrible failure last week (bad bread, wrong chilies, old garlic), I fired up some Bruce Springsteen last night and got to work on this spaghetti dish. Pasta All’Arrabiata is a classic, spicy Italian dish. The sauce is not very heavy and it goes down like comfort food. Best of all, it’s an easy dish to make and is asks for no outlandish ingredients. Here is the recipe I used, from Serious Eats:

Jamie’s Spaghetti All’Arrabiata

- serves 4 -

Adapted from My Last Supper by Melanie Dunea

Ingredients

• 7 tablespoons / 100 ml olive oil, plus more for drizzling
• 2 dried red chilies or peperoncino, crumbled or finely chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, finely [minced] [how to mince garlic]
• 1 red onion, finely chopped [how to dice an onion]
• 3 14-ounce / 400-gram cans of plum tomatoes, sieved, or 3 1/2 cups / 800 ml passata
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 18 ounce / 500 grams spaghetti
• 1 teaspoon / 5 ml red wine vinegar
• 3 tablespoons / 45 grams stale bread crumbs
• 1 tablespoon fresh thyme, chopped (optional)
• Fried sage leaves (optional)

Procedure

1. Heat about 5 tablespoons / 75 ml of the oil in a large sauté pan over low heat. Add the chilies, garlic. and onion, and cook gently for around 3 minutes. Add the tomatoes and let them cook until the sauce is quite thick, about 20 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, bring a large pan of salted water to a boil. Cook the spaghetti in the salted boiling water according to the packet instructions. Drain the pasta, reserving about 1/4 cup / 60 ml of the cooking water.
3. Once the sauce has thickened, add the red vinegar and season to taste with salt and pepper.
4. To make the pangrattato, heat the remaining oil in a pan over medium heat. Add the bread crumbs and thyme, if desired, and fry until the bread crumbs are crispy, about 3 minutes.
5. Add the drained pasta and the reserved pasta water to the sauce, and toss to coat. Drizzle with extra-virgin olive oil and serve with the pangrattato over the top. if you like, you can garnish with fried sage leaves.

I deviated slightly from this recipe. First, I only used 10oz of whole grain spaghetti and was perfectly satisfied with the noodle to sauce ratio. Second, I added a lot more pangrattato (fried breadcrumbs) than was recommended. I really like the texture that the pangrattato added, but I’m sure it it wasn’t short on calories either. If you don’t have any stale bread at home, just lightly toast fresh bread, remove the crusts, and chop it up.

Cutting this particular recipe in half or thirds might be difficult, but the pasta makes great leftovers. Let me know if you like this recipe as much as I did.