Tomato pasta #1 | The OG

The mother recipe for the most dependable of meals

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Tomato pasta is our staple meal. It’s the dish that I’ll pull together when nothing else appears possible. It’s the dish that everyone eats without argument (the opposite, in fact: it is universally loved and magically ends meltdowns). And it’s the dish that balances our budget — by cooking this a couple of times a week (as a parent, often more), we can afford to spend a bit more on other meals.

Also, I enjoy cooking and eating it. It can be either a mindless or a meditative experience: just chucking it on makes a welcome change from recipes development; but also, if I want, there is time and repeated opportunity to contemplate the nuances the dish, to constantly tinker and tweak (although I think I’ve got it down to a pretty fine art — see below).

So I thought I’d share just a fraction of my lengthy thoughts here, along with a much shorter, user-friendly recipe (watch the video and scroll to the bottom for that).

You might not need the latter — I expect many of you are also tomato pasta experts. But I’m using this as the starting point for a monthly ‘Tomato Pasta’ column. Which will not actually continue to discuss tomato pasta. Rather I plan to seek out and offer other dishes that could perform a similar roll — repeatable, relatively speedy, crowd-pleasing, budget-balancing recipes. Because I do love that tomato pasta is a staple that I can cook either mindlessly or mindfully, depending on mood. That will continue forever, I’m sure. But I could do with branching out just occasionally. Maybe you’d like to as well?

What’s your Tomato Pasta? Please get in touch with suggestions for dishes that you think would suit this theme.

Some notes on ingredients and process

The tomatoes

The platonic ideal of a sugo di pomodoro probably involves fresh, on-the-money ripe or tinned San Marzano tomatoes, pulped by hand using a food mill or, worst case, crushed through the small holes of a potato masher.

A combination of those tomatoes, a mill and a patient cook are rarely to hand in London on a rainy February evening when the rest of the household is demanding dinner within 15 minutes.

For those of you also in the UK (and perhaps elsewhere), the answer is Mutti’s ‘Polpa’ (finely chopped) range of tinned tomatoes.

According to their website, the tomato variety is Rotondo di Parma, grown in Emilia Romagna and surrounding areas. I know no details beyond that, and have done no due diligence beyond a web scroll and taking their marketing at face value. But what I do know to be (anecdotally) true, is that the content of these tins are consistently bold in flavour, with a fine balance of sweet and acidic. These chopped tomatoes taste like (drumroll…) good tomatoes and, perhaps most importantly, the texture is ideal for a low-effort pasta sauce. The richly coloured, lightly textured liquid flows from the tin. It’s not a silky smooth (and soulless?) passata. But nor is it a mix of inconsistently-sized lumps and watery juice, as is the case in most other tins. This is not an advert. Just use them.

Side note: I have a lot of love for a pasta sauce made of slow-roasted tomatoes (essentially confit). While this can become a very quick meal when utilising tomatoes cooked on a different day, it remains a step or two beyond a tinned tomato sauce on the time:reward graph, so isn’t relevant to the theme of this column. It’s also dependent on decent fresh tomatoes, so not relevant to February...

Butter

There are two other elements that you will either knowingly nod your head at, or consider game-changing.

The first is that your sauce sauce should include butter. This might seem odd to some, particularly those reaching for a bottle of extra virgin olive oil. But as it melts, the butter mellows and rounds the natural sharpness of tomatoes, moves the sauce firmly into comfort zone (if it wasn’t already), and seems to bind and gloss the sauce a touch too. It might, somehow, make the tomatoey tomatoes taste even more tomatoey.

Onion. Not chopped.

The butter trick is typically credited to Italian cookery writer Marcella Hazan. She’s also the source of the other potentially game-changing element: a peeled and halved (or quartered but otherwise unchopped) onion, which sits in the tomatoes as they simmer, and is then (obviously) removed prior to eating.

It’s such a low-key move you might think it’s half-hearted or unimportant and not worth bothering with; I wonder whether it originated with a nonna forgetting to chop and add an onion to begin with, or just throwing a warped, part-used onion in a sauce as it was lying around with no other purpose.

The effect is not minimal nor incidental, though. Indeed, as a result we get a (totally hassle-free) savoury edge to the sauce, without a hint of astringency, and the smooth mouthfeel remains uncorrupted by badly cut (and undercooked) alliums.

Aromatics

I put garlic in mine. Just a small clove, very, very finely sliced (or crushed to a paste with the blade of my knife, if I can be bothered). As with the onion, it goes in once the tomatoes are already in the pan, rather than as part of a sofrito. Tomato sauces that begin with frying onions and garlic often end up with a bitter edge.

Herbs? Sometimes. If I happen to have a sprig of basil floating around I’ll add it with the onion, and remove at the same time. It undoubtedly adds a pleasing fragrance. But it’s not essential and not something that I would panic about omitting or shop for (indeed, this sauce is not something I ever specifically shop for — the ingredients are simply somehow always to hand).

No to dried oregano (it’s not a pizza), and no to rosemary, thyme, herbs provencal or anything else you might, by habit, throw into a chopped tomatoes-based ragu.

Chilli flakes? Anchovies? Not today — this is a family show.

Balance

I forget in which of her essential books this line comes from, but I recall that Rachel Roddy once wrote that the skill of creating a tomato sauce lies in coaxing the best out of the minimal ingredients in the pan. We do this through seasoning. Yes, salt, and plenty of it. But also sugar and vinegar. Counterintuitively, hitting the right balance of sugar ensures the tomatoes are acidic enough, and the vinegar highlights sweetness.

More often than not I’ll use sherry vinegar. Because I like it. But sometimes a lesser amount of red wine vinegar is fine, or at other times a slug of balsamic (the latter might mean I add less or no sugar, depending on the sweetness of the balsamic).

Timing

I’ve read plenty of tomato sauce recipes that say ‘simmer for 30, 40, 50 minutes’ or more. But the very nature of this meal means it’s a 10-15 minute sauce. 15 minutes if I remember to put it on before the pasta, 10 if I don’t. Either way it’s fine — thanks to the aforementioned brand of tomatoes, the butter and the seasoning…

The pasta

I imagine purists demand spaghetti or linguini. I like the sauce coating those shapes too. But let’s be honest, many others are fine.

‘Whatever’s in the cupboard’ is probably the most truthful answer. Followed by ‘whichever shape my son’s least likely to reject’ this week. Given the choice, those that catch and cup the sauce are best: mezzi rigatoni, orecchiette, conchiglie gemelli, mafalda corta.

The pasta water

I don’t think a tomato sauce benefits from the addition of a glug of starchy water when sauce and pasta are mixed together.

In part that’s because although there is butter in the sauce, there’s not so much that this benefits from the emulsion process between that water and the butter, oil or cheese in the way that is evident in, say, an aglio e olio or cacio e pepe.

Also, to this point we’ve created delicious alchemy from a handful of ingredients. Why dilute that?

What I do do, though, is drain the pasta through a colander badly / impatiently. You could achieve the same level of ‘dampness’ by using tongs or a slotted spoon to directly transfer the pasta from boiling water to sauce.

Cheese

Yes: Parmesan or pecorino at the end as a generous garnish. Although occasionally I’ll add a bit when tossing the pasta through the sauce, so it melts, binds and adds even more salt and umami through the core of the dish.

Personally I find tomato sauces enriched with mascarpone, ricotta, burrata or cream a bit sickly. And as with the pasta water, why adulterate this gloriously simple sauce.

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The recipe

Serves 4 (easily halved…)

2 x 400g tins Mutti Polpa — finely chopped tomatoes (or good quality tinned plum/San Marzano tomatoes, crushed with a hand mill or potato masher)

1/2 a small onion, peeled and halved

40g salted butter

1 tsp caster sugar (or more to taste)

1/2 tsp sherry vinegar (or more to taste)

Generous pinch of flaky salt

1 clove of garlic, very finely sliced

Sprig of basil (optional)

440g dried pasta

Parmesan to serve

1. Put a large saucepan filled with heavily salted water on to boil.

2. While that’s coming to temperature, empty the tomatoes into a medium-sized saucepan set over a moderate heat. Fill the tin(s) around 1/5th deep with water, swill to clean and decant into the saucepan.

3. Add the onion, butter, sugar, vinegar, salt and garlic (and basil if using). Bring to a gentle simmer, stirring just occasionally, and checking that gentle simmer doesn’t become an angry one, nor does the sauce reduce by more than a quarter.

4. Once the water is at a rolling boil, add the pasta and cook according to packet instructions (probably around 11-12 minutes). Once al dente, drain the pasta through a colander and quickly return it to the pan — so that it’s slightly wet.

5. Remove the onion from the sauce (and basil, if using). Taste and consider adding a pinch or drop of salt, sugar or vinegar.

6. Transfer most of the sauce into the pasta and vigorously stir and toss, ensuring every piece is coated.

7. Divide the pasta between bowls/plates. Add the last remnants of sauce and then a snowstorm of finely grated Parmesan.

   

What do you think? Is this your chosen method too, or do you disagree (violently or constructively — either is fine)?

If you have a suggestion as to what other dishes could feature as ‘tomato pasta’ style weeknight solutions, please let me know.