Angry Pasta!!

I like pasta. Or as I called anything red with pasta when I was a kid "Spaghetti."  It was probably the first thing I ever cooked for myself that tasted like real food -- not just boiling a hot dog or grilling a burger which being a California boy, I could do as soon as I could walk.  And for the longest time I always made it the same way - like my mom.  Her recipe was embedded into my DNA as "Italian Spaghetti." An onion, some hamburger meat and some cans of Hunts tomato sauce with some dried oregano mixed in,  spooned over Spaghetti.  I never dreamed there was stuff like  penne, or farfalle or rigatoni.  No, just nice standard spaghetti with ground beef, an onion and 2 cans of tomato sauce, that's what I got. And what I learned to love.

When I moved out on my own, this was my signature  (read: only) dish and I eventually began to make bold experiments, like bell peppers and mushroom and basil and marjoram, each batch slightly different with more elements and aromatics added till it was a spectacular explosion of what can only be described charitably as chaos.

But now twenty years later I've reversed engines and gone back to as simple as simple can be, allowing a few strong flavors to shine on their own and not be masked in the fog of stovetop wars.

Now my go-to weekday night pasta which I do 2-3 times a week and think about it hard each time, is the pure and delicate Arrabbiata.  "Angry pasta."


It start with the simplest of ingredients*:

*this is super cheap too = added benefit of feeding 4 or 5 people on about $4 worth of produce and pasta

• 8 Roma tomatoes
• My best olive oil
• Fresh Garlic
• Red pepper flakes
• fresh parsley from the garden
• bonus:  fennel seeds ground or pressed in a mortar and pestle -  my spirit animal

The fresh tomatoes are halved and then grated into a large bowl to create a sauce senza pelle. Into the sauce I pour a glug of my best olive oil and a half dash of salt.  That gets set aside for a while.

About 6-8 cloves of garlic get pressed almost to he point of just being pulpy garlic juice in my motar/pestle, then minced.  

Yo, I'm ready!

A deep skillet is heated med low, leaning toward low and 3 tbls of olive oil or so is put in cold. 

Now usually to sauté you heat up the skillet hot and then add the oil, but for this I start it all together on a very low heat and let it come to fruition together. 

I add in my garlic and a large dash of red pepper flakes and kind of nudge them around a bit. Nothing much happens at first  (low low low heat).  But then after a bit, slowly they start to just kind of tremble and vibrate as the oil begins to heat.  It's critical that you watch the heat like a fox staring into the hen house.  You need to just shimmer the garlic to opaqueness, no browning or burning it as this  slow heat method opens the garlic to let the oil infuse it slowly.  If you can hear it sizzling, it's too hot. If the garlic and pepper flakes stop their little hippie spinner dance, it's too low.   Delicate, delicate. These things are delicate and require your full attention.

 When the aroma from your kitchen begins smells like any side street in Palermo, anytime, toss in a half a handful of that parsley you went out and cut from the garden, washed in cold water to make it stand up to a crisp attention, then chopped it roughly before tossing it into the undulating skillet.  

About a minute later when you can smell the blended richness taking over and the parsley is limp but not burnt, stir in the tomato sauce*  (roughly 15oz of your grated red sauce) and turn the heat up to high to bring the sauce to a full boil then down to a simmer.

*If you don't feel you have the time or energy to hand grate your tomatoes, by all means get a can of salt and herb free diced tomatoes from the store. But stay away from pre-fabbed canned tomato sauce, you don't know where it's been.

Taste taste taste.  It may be perfect as is.  That has happened to me once, maybe twice  But it likely needs fresh ground pepper, some more red pepper flakes if it's too meek or (my fav) some fennel to sweeten it a bit to counteract the red pepper flakes if you got too over zealous while adding that  large dash  (a glass of red wine is marvelous when cooking especially with friends and conversation, but two can be too much and effect your judgement when adding aromatics) of red pepper flakes earlier. Maybe some more garlic powder or a light dust of black pepper.   Make it just how you like it, it's all good. But you should never lose the piercing bite of the red pepper flakes. Angry, not emotional..... That is your mantra.

Simmer and taste and simmer some more to the desired viscosity.  I like mine slightly thickened but still a tiny bit runny at the extremities.  Kind of how my body feels most days as I leave my mid-youth behind forever, but your milage may vary.  When you have it in the state where you want it, remove it from the heat till the pasta is ready.    You didn't forget the pasta, did you?  Dang, I hate it when that happens.  Actually the whole process here takes just slightly less time to achieve then boiling water and readying your pasta, so start that large pot of salted water at the same time you start crushing and mincing your garlic.  It's soul killing to have the arrabbiata ready and smelling like twilight and a glass of red wine in Sicily and then having to wait 13 minutes for your water to boil and cook the pasta.

I like this dish with any pasta really, mostly favoring penne or chitarra (a thick spaghetti, about twice normal size) while Patty likes farfalle.

When the pasta is just edging past al dente, strain it in your colander,  shake to fluff and then dump into the skillet, now back on the stove top and cranked to medium high.  Stir and blend while the sauce comes back go a simmer and cook off the remaining moisture  (or add a half a ladle of the pasta water if you need to go the opposite direction) Throw in the fistful of freshly chopped parsley while you're heating it through and sweating out the last of the al dente and you're good to go.

Plate it and grate fresh Parmesan, or Assiago cheese and give it one more blast of cracked black pepper

Angry pasta  (Arrabbiata)

This is pretty much simple aromatic perfection.  But I won't yell at you  if you add elements to taste.  I like some Italian sausage and if I  have a half an onion I need to use up before it darkens or half a green bell or some fresh basil, I'll use them all with abandon.  There is no hard and steady rule.  you can't really call it Arrabbiata if you add all that, but it sure does all taste good.

e e