This one is not very hard, especially if you already got some ready home-made ragù, if you don’t you can always use store bought sauce or some other gimmick. You’ll figure it out, just open the fridge.

About pasta

No Italian recipe would be deemed authentic without a rant about the fact that noodles aren’t all created equal. Some ground rules.

Careful about mixing cooking times across shapes
Shapes have preferred pairing
Salt the water
Cook for the bite (al dente) nobody likes flaccid pasta

Ragù lends itself to most pasta shapes. You can’t really go wrong. We use orecchiette because they remind me of my grandpa and his Apulia origins.

Ingredients

Beside the sauce and the noodles you only need salt for the cooking water, parmesan and some parsley for garnish. We also like to throw in some cavolo nero but you could add any curly kale or other less-watery leaves such as spigarielli or such, stay away from spinach.

Lightly steam the greens on top of the ragù while that’s heating up in a pot or a pan large enough to mix both sauce and pasta together.

Cooking

Beside boiling the pasta and heating up the sauce there is very little cooking involved here. Make sure you leave the pasta very wet and keep a touch of extra water at hand.

Cook the pasta 20% less than what recommended (ie. 10 minutes on the pack = 8 minutes of cooking). You want to finish to cook the pasta together with the sauce.

Plating and serving

You may not think that the secret ingredient here is.. bread. Yes more carbs. Toast it lightly with some olive oil and dry rubbed garlic. You’ll need the bread to do the famous ‘scarpetta’ ie. drag a piece of bread on the plate to scoop up the extra sauce. You worked hard for that sauce, you deserve it all.

Once the pasta is cooked serve with a generous serving of freshly grated parmesan and some freshly chopped parsley.

Next day is great microwaved for 20 seconds, if you are a hooligan, or in a small pan on medium heat with a touch of water.