Penne all'arrabiata - A Recipe

Ingredients

1 can of peeled tomatoes, or home-made passata

An onion, finely chopped

Chilly

Olive oil

Tomato paste (not essential)

Salt to taste

Penne pasta

Grated parmigiano cheese

Method

Before we begin, let me make a few things clear. 

Firstly, the word arrabiata means angry in Italian, therefore the successful execution of this dish perches precariously on its spicy nature. Italians being very descriptive and emotive in their description of food, the hot-blooded nature of this sauce is key. If you don't get the right level of spice right you will have failed to create a true arrabiata sauce, delivering merely a mildly-miffed sauce which is basically...failure.

Secondly, the secret to Italian cooking is to bring out the most of each individual ingredient of a recipe to orchestrate a delicious combination of flavours. Easy.

Thirdly, the most important preparation for an Italian dish is the procurement of the best products and highest quality ingredients.These should be chosen with love and an eye for detail, something that will develop over time, I promise you.

Remember these principles and you can't go wrong. Forget and you're just not doing it right.

Now we can get down to business.

Pour some olive oil into a pan. Heat, and add the onions. You can also add garlic at this point if you want. Personally I think the onions are enough and I don't like garlic, but add it if you want. I don't care.

When the onions are browned, add the peeled tomatoes. Remember, these should be good peeled tomatoes, preferably imported from Italy. But if you want to support local brands go ahead, buy the bland peel made from unripened, improperly prepared tomatoes which undermine the integrity of your meal. Again, I don't give a crap. 

Add the chillies. These could be dried flakes or a freshly cut, fleshy red fresh chillies. Taste it! Assess if the anger is present. If not, add more, for frig's sake.

At this point you can add some surprise extras to the sauce. Yes, improvise. I don't want to scare you, but you should experiment. Add an anchovy to give it a salty, tangy taste. 

Throw in some olives, maybe some capers. But beware! By adding these you come dangerously close to making a putanesca sauce. Again, Italians are very evocative with their names. Putanesca basically means prostitute-style. Can you imagine plonking a plate of pasta in front of a guest and saying "Yeah, I made it just the way you like it - prostitute-style"? It wouldn't go down well with either you male or female guests. So maybe set aside the prostitute theme and just stick to angry for now.

Anyway, allow the sauce to simmer on a low heat. Add the tomato paste at this point if you wish, to give it that extra kick. Add salt. Again, taste!

Put the penne on the boil. If you aren't quite sure about your pasta types (sigh), take a look at this useful chart.

Now comes the tricky part. The timing. 

The pasta sauce needs to reduce down to a point where the watery part of the tomato has evaporated, YET not too much so that it has lost its saucy consistency. Get it?

Ideally, the pasta should be cooked in sync with the transformative alchemy of the individual ingredients into the sublime end product of a true arrabiata sauce...But if that doesn't happen it's OK. Just remove the sauce from the stove and wait for the pasta to cook. (eye roll) Take a sip of wine, it will do you good.

This is another point where you can add a bit of a flourish to your dish. Why not add some cream? Or whatever? Experiment!

I'm seriously not going to go into detail about adding the sauce to the strained pasta. You know how to do that. As you surely know how to plate it. And smother it in parmesan cheese.

There! Was that difficult?

Serves 4.