Pasta Arrabbiata
I know I have been missing since long, but I am back now with another one of my favorites! Even though I have been cooking quite frequently, I haven’t found time to pen down my experiences.
This one is simple, tasty and makes up for cozy and lazy evenings. A perfect cheat meal which can be made a “little” healthier by making some conscious changes here and there!
Its PASTA time!
Pasta Arrabbiata, a classic Italian dish with pasta tossed in with your favorite veggies in a rich and flavorful tomato sauce!
Let’s get started right away this time.!
First things first! Choice of Pasta! You have over 350 different shapes to choose from. Get your favorite one! Penne, bowtie, fusilli, spagetti, anything! Mixing up multiple of them might be a good idea as well, but if you are doing so make sure that you are cooking each pasta shape separately because all of them would have a different cooking time and no one likes to eat underdone or an overdone piece!
Cooking pasta is an easy yet a tricky step. Fill up your utensil with plenty of water and bring the water to boil. Keep your utensil covered, it would speed up the process (science bitchhh!). Once the water is boiling, add in lots of salt. And when I say ‘lots’, I mean a hell lot of salt. We aim to make the water as salty as the sea. Add in like 3 tablespoons of salt. Why though? So that when your pasta is cooking, it can absorb in some of the salt and get flavored while getting cooked. It really makes a lot of difference in the final taste of your dish.
Some people suggest adding in some olive oil to the boiling water as well, but not me. Because that just makes your cooked pasta more slippery and it becomes difficult for your sauce to bind onto your pasta.
Back to the process: after adding in the salt let the water come to boil again and add in your pasta into it. For two servings get roughly 5 handfuls of raw pasta. Cover up the utensil and let your pasta get cooked!
Start the preparation for your tomato sauce in parallel. We aim to blanch the tomatoes in order to cook them as well as remove the skin easily. Take 4 medium sized tomatoes, and make 4 cuts on it as shown in the picture below.
This is to make peeling the skin easier. Now to blanch them, add them into a pressure cooker and fill it up with water till the tomatoes are submerged in it. Set the cooker on high flame till you hear 2 whistles and then turn that off.
While you are waiting for the pressure cooker to set off noise in your kitchen, prep up your veggies. Finely chop garlic, 10–12 cloves and 1 medium sized onion. Prep up your other veggies as well, bell peppers (1 medium sized — chopped into squares), broccoli (3–4 flowers broken into smaller bite sized buds), zucchini (a quarter chopped into squares), tomato (half medium sized chopped in squares), whichever you have and want in your pasta.
Do not forget your pasta, keep checking on it. When do you know it is cooked? Use a fork and stick it in your pasta, if it goes through smoothly, it is done. If you are still not sure, just take out one of the pasta and take a bite. You might have to do it multiple times to make sure your pasta is well done. I did not time it but cooking your pasta should take about 8–10 minutes. When your pasta is done, drain out the water and keep it on the side. Make sure you do not let it stay in the water anymore otherwise it would keep cooking and become mushy!
Once your tomatoes are blanched, take them out of the cooker and peel off the skins and throw them in a mixer grinder. We aim to make a tomato puree with them which would server as a base for our pasta!
We are now ready to start putting all the pieces together!
Take a non-stick pan and oil it up a little. Start with cooking your garlic till it turns light brown which is when you add in your onions. Let the onions cook till they become translucent-ty. Next add in your bell, peppers, zucchini, broccoli and saute them for a while. Last add in your tomatoes and stir everything. Once you see things cooked in your pan, add in the tomato puree and let everything cook for a while on medium flame.
Pro-tip: Never add in the entire tomato puree at once. Go little by little. This makes sure that you are not overdoing the amount of tomato puree in your pasta.
While your sauce is cooking add in a tablespoon of tomato ketchup, lots of chili flakes (2 tablespoons), mixed herbs (1 tablespoon) and oregano(1 tablespoon). These are the things that will help you fight the sweetness of the tomatoes in the sauce. I also like adding in garlic powder (A big fan of garlic, not a secret anymore). After mixing up everything, taste your sauce and adjust the spicy-ness for yourself.
The final step, add in your cooked pasta to the sauce and mix it up well.
If you are feeling a little crazy, you can try tossing your pasta instead of stirring it up. This is the preferable method, specially when your pasta is fragile and might break with your wooden spatula.
Once your pasta is well mixed with the sauce, its time to serve it on a plate and top it off with some cheese. Not a lot of it. Preferably, parmesan cheese, but you can also do away with the Amul cheese blocks you find the in the market.
Astala-vista, hokus-pokus, your pasta is ready to be feasted on!
Let me know if you get to try this dish and how it turns out. My friends seemed to have loved it when I made it the last time.
Also I would love to hear what you guys think of this blog and how I can improve. My apologies for the hideous pictures this time. I promise to make them better the next time.
Liked it? Don’t forget to show your appreciation. Kill that claps button on the bottom. Would mean a lot! :)
Until next time!
Cheers!
- Rachit
Read my previous posts here and keep following us for new stuff.:
- Mera Tofu h Teriyaki
- Fettuccine Aglio-e-olio
- What’s better than one cheese? THREE!
