I made some garbage pasta a bit ago.

I should really learn how to properly photograph food or I’d have some kind of photo accompanying this post here. Nonetheless, I made this pasta out of the tail-end of the pantry Sunday night. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s certainly cheap and tastes a lot better than any of the sauces you’ll get out of a glass jar from the store.

Philosophy

Philosophy? Philosophy. Yes. This is the “fishing lesson” portion of the recipe. If you just want the recipe and don’t want to learn some fundamentals of pasta-sauce making, then skip to the “ingredients” heading below. Before I started getting intensely interested in Italian cooking I was really into learning the basics of Chinese cooking. I never learned as much as I wanted, but I learned enough. I have my own well-seasoned wok, all the basic sauce and an awesome rice cooker. But I mention this because there are actually some similarities between the basics of Chinese sauce making and Italian sauce making.

Most of this comes through in the start of a good sauce. In both Chinese and Italian [red] sauces, for the most part the cooking begins with some oil or fat, garlic and then some herbs/spices. China favors peanut oil, garlic, red peppers and ginger. Italy varies, but what I’ve found basically comes down to a similar basis. Red pepper, garlic, olive oil and then some mixture of herbs usually containing some basil and oregano. There are plenty of recipes and sauces in both of these cuisines that use none of these ingredients, but I’m an amateur and so are most of us. Let’s keep it simple and easy to digest. Ok, so basically the big take-away here is that it’s important to flavor the initial cooking oil with intense and robust aromatics. By infusing the oil with all these awesome flavors and attributes they can merry and mature with all the other elements of the sauce.

That’s where this recipe begins. I was hungry, had no real groceries but a few spare cans and a box of pasta. Knowing what I know about sauces, I was able to pull off a pretty damn tasty dish with little to no resources. Oh. And this is important. Use bacon fat. While in Italy a professor of mine recommended me a really simple marinara sauce that used panchetta [use bacon if you can't find it or don't want to spend the $] shallots, garlic, some herb mixture and canned tomatoes. It became a staple in our apartment because it was so damn cheap and delicious. Now in America, that isn’t so cheap since Pecorino Romano isn’t $4 a wedge and neither is panchetta. But there are ways around those barriers. Cheaper ways…

Ingredients

1. Bacon or Bacon Fat [2-3 T.]
2. Penne or whatever pasta you want to use
3. Large can of whole tomatoes
4. Some green, red and yellow peppers [not totally neccessary, i just had a frozen bag of them]
5. Half an onion chopped/diced
6. A few T. of balsamic vinegar or better yet, some red wine [just use a decent acid]
7. A few T. of Olive Oil
8. Handful or so of Parmesan Cheese [the cheap powder kind]
9. Red Pepper Flakes
10. Oregano
11. Basil
12. Half a head of Garlic chopped
13. Touch of sugar

Directions

Ok. First off start boiling the water for the pasta. Next, if you’ve got straight up bacon, render it down. Otherwise throw in your bacon fat and then the olive oil. Once it’s nearly browned, add in your garlic and about a T. of red pepper flakes. After about a minute, before the garlic is brown, throw in your half onion, chopped. Saute that until the onions are translucent then put in your peppers or whatever other frozen vegetables you want to add. You could add cooked chicken here or whatever. Make it your own, but do so at your own risk. Let that mix around for a bit and then throw in your tomatoes. Here, since I don’t have a food processor, I hand smash the whole tomatoes with the wooden spoon. It’s a bit of a pain but it works and makes for a rustic and chunky sauce.

Now the sauce is pretty “safe”. You don’t need need to constantly attend to it other than breaking down the tomatoes into smaller bite-sized chunks. The longer this cooks down the better [within reason]. Essentially you’re trying to concentrate the sauce a little bit. The tomatoes aren’t exactly homogeneous and have a bit of excess water. After about 30 minutes or so it’ll start looking like a sauce. In the meantime, add in oregano, basil and a touch of sugar to taste. Generally, you’ll need a healthy amount of the herbs here. Don’t add any salt just yet because we’ll be adding in the parmesan at the end, which is pretty salty.

Now the water should be boiling pretty well and you can finish the sauce off. Add in the balsamic/red wine or whatever decent tasting acid you want to put in there [this helps round out the body] and then the cheese. Stir it around and give it a taste. This is basically up to you at this point. If it needs salt, add it. If it needs a touch more sugar, add it. Basil? Oregano? Shot of olive oil? Go ahead. But be modest in your estimates and taste often. It’s really important. Now the sauce is good to go and can simmer and get a little more delicious as you cook the pasta.

Throw in about a palm-ful of salt into the water. I’m not kidding. Too many people either don’t salt the water before cooking pasta or don’t salt it enough. There’s a lot of water in there, and salt is going to make all your pasta way more flavorful. Some people like to put a bit of oil in as well to “separate the pasta”. I’m not sure if it works or not, but I do it anyway. Call me superstitious. For the penne, it takes about 7-8 minutes and i usually have to bite about 3-4 pieces before I’m sure it’s ready. This is a feel thing, but you want the center most part of the pasta to just barely be cooked. The residual heat will cook it the rest of the way and leave you with a firm, full-bodied piece of pasta. Drain, put it back in the pot and then poor the simmering sauce over the pasta and mix. Serve on a plate with a bit of parmesan o’er top of the dish.

This should stuff about 3 hungry people, or serve 4 people who’ll probably need garlic bread to go with it.