Cooking for 1 in a 2 room Airbnb - Angry Pasta Edition

As you might expect, there is a lot of pasta cooking here in this location. Of course, that's happening all over Rome as well as Italy at large, but in this wee kitchen with no oven, I have some limitations that necessitate stovetop work. 

So in keeping with this series of posts, I'm making do. 

I got a little excited about tomatoes while shopping here. And because I'm across the street from the health food store, I immediately got some farro spaghetti. Farro is an ancient grain that more or less fed Imperial Rome. It is often now cooked with beans in a soup or just by itself as a side of healthy grains. It could be used in a cold salad. I feel a little less bloated when I consume farro pasta. It tastes no different than ordinary pasta, to me. It doesn't fall apart into a million pieces when cooked, the way that other alternative pastas (made with rice, lentils, etc...Italy has become quite creative in the goal of enabling her large gluten-intolerant population to still enjoy a bowl of pasta, and I admire her for it) tend to do. I shipped as much as I was allowed to put in one box with our household goods, back in May. I'll be putting it into my suitcase for the trip home in November, too. 

During the long months of Covid lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, I taught myself as much as possible about really making a pasta dish the way that a local restaurant would - with simple but star ingredients, resourcefulness and restraint, salt and the magic of pasta water. These things, combined with a good knife, a cutting board, a pot for boiling water, a pan for assembling the dish, and a pair of tongs...and a lot of things are possible. This approach has served me well in an extended stay hotel this summer, and this little rental for my Fall teaching gig. 

And now I am done with the sometimes infuriating 'lead-up to the actual cooking part' that bloggers are fond of. At least you did not have to scroll past 10 ads and several paragraphs to get here. 

I have kindly refrained from just taking basil from my neighbors' little pots outside their doors. Don't think I wasn't tempted. Instead, I wound up with more than I needed from the farmers' market. 

Gratuitous extra virgin olive oil photo. Nothing fancy, but probably cheaper than in the states, because this will double for eliminating that nasty squeak on a hinge, soaked in a cotton ball and placed inside your ear if you are prone to ear infections from showers (hi, nice to meet you)...or essentially any other type of lubricant you might need. Nope. Not kidding. Ask an Italian physician. Or a Greek one too, probably. 

If I could put my whole head inside the bag and just breathe in...I'd suffocate in a cloud of wonderful oregano. 

I approached this pasta all'arriabbiata (all-ARR-ah-bee-AH'-tah) literally, angry pasta, which should be spicy) with the basics: cherry tomatoes, a tube of tomato paste, garlic, chili flakes, salt, olive oil, one pat of butter, grated parmigiana (aged for 40 months, which yields an almost crunchy, crystallized flavor bomb) and that farro spaghetti. Yes, you do see fresh basil in that photo above, but here's a secret: just buy some fresh (i.e., refrigerated) or jarred pesto...that will do fine for a dish like this. 

As Samin Nosrat (author of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat) says repeatedly: put enough salt in your cooking water so that it is like the ocean. Because - I think - the Italian cook has both fine and coarse grain sea salt in the kitchen (and why not, when you have this many miles of coastline on a peninsula?), toss in the coarse grain for salting the water. 

Color me lazy, but after working with the 5 or 6 cloves of garlic (chopped, after being peeled, after being nuked for 10 seconds to loosen the papery covering), I did nothing to my fresh tomatoes. No slicing, no seeding...just whole. I put them in the hot pan with olive oil and covered it so that the skins would char and split. About 2/3 of the way through, I squeezed a quarter cup's worth of tomato paste into the middle. Helped along with the trusty wooden spoon, the fresh tomatoes are gently macerated with a heaping spoonful of chili flakes and some Calabrian oregano.  Chopped basil (or your heaping tablespoon of pesto) goes in too. The tomato paste carmelizes a bit. Into the mix goes the chopped garlic...late stage, because you do not want to burn it. 

Since I'm working with some high heat and things are drying out, I ladle some of the hot pasta water into the sauce, stir my pasta (which I have not broken in order to get it into the pot...no Italian food laws were broken in the making of this dish...well, probably) and...

Argh! There are no tongs here. Mental note to self: bring tongs for next Airbnb gig. 

I reserve another ladle-full of pasta water. 

I drain the pasta in one of those flimsy mesh strainers. I place one pat of butter in the sauce, and then pop my drained pasta into the tomato sauce. 

I should insert here that adding oil to your drained pasta so it doesn't stick to itself is a bad idea. It negates your pasta's ability to allow the sauce to cling. Also, no cold water on the cooked pasta. Why would you do that? 

Act fast. Drain for a bit (it's ok if a little water is still in there), and then put it into the sauce. Toss liberally, but not like a crazy person. Add a little of that reserved pasta water if things aren't liquid enough for your liking. Drizzle the mixture with olive oil if you like that added flavor (I do! I do!).  

Now, there are just straight-up butter tomato sauce recipes for pasta. And they're good. But I have arrived at a phase in my life when I need a lot of garlic and chili in my deserted island tomato & spaghetti dishes. So, angry pasta soothed with one pat of butter, it is. 

Miraculously, there is a box grater in this kitchen. So I grate some 40 month-old parmigiana. I'm not bothered by large pieces versus little bits. I think I like the large pieces better.

Italian food rule #1: it is a cardinal sin to drown your pasta. This is the sauce-to-pasta ratio that you learn to prefer while you're here, so if you go home anywhere else in the world and create a bowl full of sauce with a few buried pasta noodles in it, that's between you and your culinary gods. 

Note: I am not above getting heavy with the cheese. That's between me and my culinary gods. 

This photo is a study of the good pasta surface, you might notice. Tiny, tiny bits of sauce are clinging to that roughened surface of the noodles. 

Point being: this why the pasta does not require drowning.

But that's it, readers. Be happy while eating your angry pasta.