|
|
|
|
eat
rome
without leaving home
Since the dawn of time, controversy
has raged among non-italians over how to make a genuine pasta
sauce. I used to think Olive Oil was Popeye’s girlfriend…
Then I married a Sicilian! But in the next five minutes, your
romebuddy will teach you the secret of true Italian cooking.
Follow the links below for four, quick, simple, and most importantly,
genuine Italian recipes
The important thing to realise
about Italian cooking is that you don’t need to crap around
with ready-made sauces from the supermarket. They’re invariably
horrible, with sharp, over-spicy flavouring.
However, although fresh is always best, you don’t need to
spend extra on fresh tomatoes. Those tinned peeled plum tomatoes
that the British serve on toast for breakfast in their B&B
hotels can be picked up for as little as 8p a tin in some supermarkets,
and if you follow these recipes, they’ll taste almost as
good as the ones fresh-picked in Mama Tommasino’s garden
down in old Corleone. I can recommend the Cirio brand of tinned
toms though.
Pasta should be never be
overcooked. Seven or eight minutes boiling time is usually adequate,
or five or six minutes if you like it ‘al dente’ (slightly
hard).
Where these recipes mention oil, they mean Extra Virgin Olive
Oil. There is no substitute.
Finally, a word about sieving the tomatoes. You can just mash
the whole peeled tomatoes down into the pan but they are best
sieved. The sieve in question is not some fancy electric food-processor
attachment, but a small mechanical stainless-steel gadget, which
can be picked up for less than a fiver on any Italian street-market.
It looks like something your granny would have used to recycle
her ration books into custard-powder with during World War II,
but every modern Italian household has one in constant use today
and it’s the best and only thing for the job. I’ll
try and shove in a gif of one soon so you can see what it looks
like. Moulinex make them, but there’s many copies just as
good. They’re harder to find in England and certainly more
expensive (if that big kitchen and catering equipment place on
Westbourne Grove is still there, they might have them), but worth
the effort of searching out.
All measures given are approximate, and you’ll want to experiment
according to taste and the number of portions you need.
Also, these sauces often taste even nicer when you reheat any
left over the next day - they mature.
The main thing is, these recipes are EASY. And QUICK.
GO for it!
The
Basic Sicilian Pasta Sauce
Pesto
and Carbonara
Wanna learn Italian?
|
