Italiano cuisine is famous in the world. There would not be anyone who has not tried pizza in their lifetime even if you are from a totally different country and never visited Europe. But unlike in other countries, Italian pizza is much healthier than the ones available outside Europe. The main Italian food consists of pizza, pasta, salad, meat and so on. The cuisine is also famous for deserts.
The easiest Italian dish that you can cook is a simple pasta with tomato sauce (it is not ketchup). Although there are many advices on how to prepare it, the preparation by a massive Italian will always taste better due to the style of preparation. It is not not a fast food in which you boil pasta and add the flavouring, there is much more to it. I have cooked pasta from the first month that I reached Italy, but I do not consider that as my first Italian dish. It was a rather another way in which you can cook. I learned to prepare pasta in authentic way from my roommate Pierluigi who is a great cook. The food that he cooked was always better than the what I cooked. It didn’t seem to be much different from my way of cooking. I used to see him cooking, but still never understood what was really making this difference.
It was time for me to really dig into this and to understand the secret. So one day, I cooked asking him the exact procedure asking him to watch me while cooking. There were clearly important aspects which was never taken in account. So here I will explain how to cook a simple Italian pasta that was prepared by myself. The below recipe is for pasta with olives in tomato sauce. Although the procedure with olives, the same can be used with other ingredients like eggplant, green peppers, zucchinis and even tuna.
Ingredients required for 4 servings:
Pasta 500g
Tomato sauce 500g
Black olives 100g
Olive oil 2 tablespoons
Garlic 2 medium size
Dried leaves – Oregano 2g, basil 2g
Salt as required
Heat olive in a pan at medium flame and add garlic when it’s warm enough. Wait for the garlic to turn golden yellow, or of you have a good nose the odour would give you a better indication when the garlic is ready. Add the whole pasta sauce into the pan and close it with it’s lid. Allow it to cook at low flame. Start boiling water for pasta in another vessel. Once the water boils, add salt and pasta into the boiling water. Take note of the time and cook pasta for prescribed time. All pastas would have cooking time mentioned on the packet. Open the lid of the pan with the sauce and add salt oregano and basil leaves into it. Stir it so that it does not burn at the bottom. Pay attention to the sauce and stir periodically so that it does not burn. When the pasta needs 5 more minutes to be ready add olives into the sauce. Continue cooking with the lid on low flame.
When the pasta is ready, filter it out and mix it with the sauce. Serve hot. Add cheese like parmigiano on top to serve it in typical Italian way.
The common mistake that is made is most people start cooking pasta before starting to prepare the sauce. This will result in the sauce being cooked inadequacy. Also, cooking the sauce at high flame for short duration will not serve the purpose.
Note: Parmigiano is not added for all pastas. For example,it is never added if it contains fish. Some don’t add it even for pastas made with olives.