As a kid, I never liked pasta. Thick spaghetti was just not my thing and I was always disappointed when I had to eat it as a kid. Just give me pancakes I thought. But over the years, I started to enjoy pasta's a lot more, especially when I started to make my own. Because, before making my first pasta, I consulted YouTube and started browsing for "Traditional Italian pasta sauce", which of course is a lot more work than this recipe, but it was a lot of fun to try it out myself.
So here I am, in Izmir, making some pasta for Burcu, and she really enjoyed this one lol.
Below you'll find the list of all the ingredients that this dish is using. You can always add your own ingredients, but for the simplicity of this recipe, I'll just show you what I used for this one.
You can add any vegetable that you like to this dish. Green beans, leek, eggplant, whatever you want. I usually put some leek in this, but got a shitton of green onion instead.
The magic lies in how you prepare the sauce, this will add so much more flavor to any pasta, I don't understand why people skip it.
For the first step of making the sauce we will infuse the olive oil with garlic, onion and anchovies.
If you don't like fish, you don't have to worry, the anchovies will completely dissolve in the oil and will remain tasteless during the rest of the dish. They are the real tastemaker of the sauce
Cut everything in little pieces except for the anchovies, the goal here is to completely dissolve the anchovies in the oil, and soften the onions. You will need to do this on low heat for about 10 minutes.
Once the onions are soft, like there's no crunch left when you taste a piece, you're good to go to continue to step 2:
Cut the tomatoes in 4 pieces (or chop them into smaller pieces), and make sure to save the liquid that you spill. Adding tomatoes to the sauce has basically the same goal as for the onions, make them soft, and let all that good liquid blend in with the rest. Salt & Pepper to taste, I usually never add salt to the sauce, but instead use a bunch of salt in the pasta, that will be super tasteful!
After a while, you'll be able to crush all the ingredients in the pan, making it a bit more of a base for the sauce.
Step 3 is the easiest part, and most people start with this one. Adding everything in the pan.
Adding these ingredients is easy, just let it simmer for a bit, and blend in with the base of the sauce. The pasta sauce is optional, you can also replace that with tomato paste and more water. Since the water here in Turkey is not recommended to drink, I bought basic tomato/pasta sauce which comes down to the same thing, but with more processed stuff in it.
Keep in mind that how harder the vegetable, the longer it needs to be in the pan. For example, carrot is pretty hard compared to green beans, so increase the cooking time accordingly to your own taste.
So, cheers! your sauce is done! You can leave it on for a simmer, or you can put it off the stove, and heat it whenever your pasta is ready.
Making the pasta is fairly easy, however, there is a small trick to add a lot of flavor to your dish by simply adding salt to the water. Every Italian who knows how to make pasta, will tell you: the water should taste like the sea, which is pretty salty. If you're afraid you will be using too much salt, you don't have to be because most of it will stay in the water, you just infuse the pasta with the salty flavor of the water. You could also use a bouillon cube (not sure if this is translated right, Google it if you're uncertain what it is)
Make sure the sauce is hot for serving, and that you're able to pour it over (cold) pasta as well.
The leftovers of the sauce we will keep, as the sauce is amazing to use for a cold and refreshing pasta salad!
Do you have a secret tip for making your pasta, like adding a bit of the pastawater to the sauce? Or replacements for salts, etc? Let me know ^^
Cheers
Ruben
