This Ain’t Olive Garden

Linguine Marinara

Spending my honeymoon in Rome ruined Italian food for me. It isn’t that the food in Rome is bad, of course. It’s that most Italian food in America is so horrible. Lest you think I’m a globetrotting snob who thinks he’s too good for the Olive Garden, this was my first and only trip to Europe. Still, it was enough to ruin me for life. And, let’s be honest, we’re all too good for the Olive Garden. Life is too short to eat Bologna Alfredo. I don’t care if it comes with unlimited salad and breadsticks.

Forget about the fancy Italian dishes that we all mispronounce. Let’s stick with the basics: linguine marinara. Why, you ask, is it so hard to find good pasta with tomato sauce? Well, I’ll tell ya. This is another case of something being more about the technique than the actual ingredients.

Linguine marinara should be a really simple dish – and it is. But I’ve eaten it after another cook prepared it using the same exact ingredients and the result was completely different. Often, the other cook (usually my wife – sorry dear) will also notice the difference in taste and will ask me “what else does it need?” as if a pinch more this or a little more that will fix it. I’m sorry to say, it isn’t really about that. It’s about the entire cooking process.

What I really love about the pasta I had in Rome is that it isn’t pasta with sauce piled on top. It’s a marriage of pasta and sauce. It’s like pasta and sauce went through the teleportation machine from “The Fly” only without the fly. It isn’t the way we grew up eating pasta but damn if it isn’t good.

Before we get to the recipe, let’s talk about the process and a little bit about the ingredients:

1. Tomatoes: Go canned. Common cooking wisdom tells us that fresh is better than canned when it comes to fruits and vegetables. In general, that’s true. However, when we’re talking tomatoes for pasta sauce, it’s another story entirely. It is really difficult to find good, ripe, fresh tomatoes year-round. For consistent flavor, go with canned whole plum tomatoes. Certified San Marzano tomatoes are really good but expensive (Cento is a popular brand). But I’ve gotten really good results with Progresso and, in a pinch, Hunt’s.
2. Pasta: Stop overcooking it. You know how day-old spaghetti always tastes better? That’s because you’re hung over. Actually, it’s because the sauce has soaked into the noodles. To get the same effect, you want to slightly undercook your pasta (by about a minute or two) and then finish cooking it in your sauce.
3. Pasta II: No oiling. When I was a wee lad, we always added oil to the pot before dropping in the dried pasta. My mom said it was so the noodles wouldn’t stick together. Sometimes we’d also toss the cooked pasta with some oil before adding the sauce. The problem is that the oil coats the noodles and interferes with the sauce absorption process. If your noodles stick together in the pot, you need a larger pot with more water and/or less pasta.
4. Pasta III: No rinsing. When I was a mere pup, we would dump the (over) cooked pasta into a colander and rinse it with cold water to cool it off a little. Unless you’re making pasta salad, you do NOT want to do this. Your pasta will become waterlogged and nobody likes a floppy noodle (TWSS). Plus, this also interferes with the sauce absorption process. There’s no room inside the noodle for the sauce to go.
5. Parmesan cheese: Grate it yourself. Use a block of good Parmesan and grate it right before you use it. Don’t use the pre-shredded cheese that has the texture of fingernail parings. And for heaven’s sake, don’t use one of those shakers of powdered Parmesan that smells like feet (though they’re okay for pizza).

 

INGREDIENTS:

• 28-ounce can whole plum tomatoes
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• 1 yellow onion – diced
• 2 large carrots – diced
• 2 ribs celery – diced
• 2 cloves garlic – thinly sliced
• ½ cup dry white wine
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• Kosher salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 6-8 leaves fresh basil – cut in ribbons
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter (optional)
• 1 box dried linguine
• Parmesan cheese

 

INSTRUCTIONS:

• Put 6 quarts of cold water into a large pot and place over high heat. Add 2-3 tablespoons of salt and cover. If it starts to boil before your sauce is ready, take the lid off but keep the pot on the heat.
• Put olive oil into a large sauté pan over medium / medium-high heat.
• Add the garlic and cook for less than a minute. You do not want to burn or toast the garlic – it will turn bitter. If it burns, throw it out and start again.
• Add the onions, carrots, and celery. Sweat the vegetables until they are soft and translucent, stirring occasionally, but do not let them brown.
• Add the tomato paste and stir. Let it cook with the vegetables for a few minutes until it turns a slightly darker red.
• Put the plum tomatoes into a bowl along with their juice and crush each tomato thoroughly with your hands.
• Add the white wine to the vegetables and stir, scraping the bottom of the pan. Let it boil for just a minute.
• Add the crushed tomatoes and juice. Season with kosher salt and black pepper. Let the sauce just come to a low bubble and reduce the heat to low. Stir occasionally.
• After around 20-30 minutes, use a stick blender and lightly puree the sauce (be careful – don’t burn yourself). If you don’t have a stick blender, use a regular blender and do it in batches. Don’t go crazy blending it to death. A few pulses with the blender should break down the vegetables and tomatoes and give you a nice sauce.
• Taste the sauce and correct the seasoning if necessary.
• Cook the linguine according to package directions but stop it 1-2 minutes short of its full cooking time (slightly al dente).
• Return your sauce to medium / medium-high heat in the large pan. Add the basil (and butter if you like).
• Drain the pasta and toss it into the pan with your sauce. Let it cook in the sauce for 1-2 minutes, stirring gently.
• Transfer the finished pasta into a large serving dish and top with a moderate amount of freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

Makes 4-6 servings (depending on how much you eat!)