Spaghetti with tomatoes and garlic: composition, ingredients, step by step recipe with photos, nuances and cooking secrets

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Gone are the days when we ate pasta and meatballs for dinner. European cuisine is increasingly capturing our country. Today it is fashionable to eat spaghetti bolognese or something else with an incomprehensible and strange name. What is spaghetti and what do they eat with?

Spaghetti is long and thin pasta from Italy. They are widely used in Italian cuisine and are the basis of a huge number of dishes. Most often in Italy, spaghetti is served with tomatoes and garlic. But there are many other types as well. Popular, for example, spaghetti with tomato sauce, spaghetti with tomatoes, cheese and garlic, spaghetti with garlic and butter. Known in Russia and spaghetti bolognese. But still, one of the most classic recipes is spaghetti with tomatoes and garlic.

Spaghetti appeared in Italy as early as the 13th century, but acquired its name only in 1842 due to the fact that they looked like thin twine (ital. spago). Today there are about176 types of pasta. Initially, "spaghetti" was called pasta 50 cm long, but due to the fact that they were inconvenient to store, the length was halved - up to 25 cm. It is also interesting that in each region of Italy, pasta is prepared in its own way.

It's easy to guess that there are a huge number of recipes for spaghetti with tomatoes and garlic. After all, only in Italy there are 20 regions, each of which uses its own tricks and secrets in cooking spaghetti. We will focus on one of the simplest options. Cooking will take you about forty minutes. So how do you make spaghetti with tomatoes and garlic?

Ingredients

To prepare dinner for 6 people you will need:

• 4 ripe tomatoes;
• 2 tablespoons olive oil;
• 1/4 teaspoon crushed red chili;
• s alt and ground black pepper to taste;
• 2 tablespoons sunflower oil;
• 1/2 cup shredded cheese;
• 8 fresh basil leaves;
• spaghetti.

For Basil Garlic Oil:

• olive oil - 1/4 cup;
• 8 whole garlic cloves;
• 10 fresh basil leaves;
• 1/4 teaspoon crushed red chili.

Tomato sauce

The first step is to prepare the tomato sauce. Remove the skin from the tomatoes with a sharp knife. Then cut the tomatoes in half and remove the seeds. In a wide saucepan, heat 2tablespoons of olive oil. Add tomatoes, crushed red pepper, season lightly with s alt and pepper. After a few minutes, the tomatoes will become softer. Then they need to be removed from the pan, finely chopped. After that, cook the tomatoes for 20 minutes until they are soft and the sauce is smooth. If the sauce is too tart (perhaps your tomatoes were unsweetened or not fully ripe), add 1/2 teaspoon sugar. If you want to use a tomato-garlic sauce for spaghetti, you can also add garlic along with the pepper.

Basil-garlic oil

While the tomatoes are cooking, make the basil-garlic butter. Heat 1/4 cup olive oil in a small saucepan over low heat. Add chopped garlic, basil leaves and chopped chili peppers. The saucepan should be on low heat so that the ingredients heat up slowly. When the garlic starts to brown slightly, turn off the heat and let cool for 10 minutes. Strain the oil, discard all the solids so that the mass is homogeneous.

Spaghetti

For high-quality cooking, you will need a pot with a capacity of at least three liters. Fill it 2/3 full with water. As soon as the water boils, s alt it and put the spaghetti in the pan without breaking. If the spaghetti sticks out, don't worry - wait a minute: they will soften and completely go into the water. They need to be carefully laid with a wooden spatula (so as not to cut the pasta with sharp metal). Be sure to stir the spaghetti for the first two minutes so that they do notstuck together. When the water boils a second time, turn the heat down to medium. Continue to stir spaghetti occasionally. Never cover them with a lid!

See how long to cook spaghetti, according to the recommendations on the package. If you reduce this time by a minute, you will get spaghetti al dente. Such spaghetti should make a slight click or crunch when eaten. Drain the spaghetti in a colander (it's better not to pour the water from them yet). If you are used to washing pasta and then greasing it with oil, then do not rush to do this with spaghetti, experts do not recommend it. According to the recipe, we send spaghetti with tomatoes.

Combining sauce and spaghetti

Add spaghetti to cooked tomato sauce. Cook over medium heat, stirring steadily (you can even shake the pan a few times), until the pasta is soft and the sauce is smooth. If the sauce seems too thick, add some of the water left over from cooking the spaghetti. Remove the pan from the stove and add the butter, basil and grated cheese (the pasta should be turning orange).

Time to serve

Put the cooked dish on plates. We recommend putting them in a slightly warmed deep plate. For convenience, use special spaghetti tongs to lay them out neatly and beautifully. Drizzle a little basil-garlic oil over each serving. If desired, you can decorate with herbs or basil sprigs and sprinkle with cheese again. It is important to remember that spaghetti changes its taste with repeated use.reheat, so it's best to eat them right away.

What to serve spaghetti with?

If you are wondering what to serve spaghetti with, we hasten to reassure you: spaghetti is an absolutely self-sufficient dish that is not considered a side dish. Experts say that pasta along with meat leads to a violation of carbohydrate metabolism. The Italians themselves are sure that it is impossible to get fat from pasta if you do not mix them with animal proteins (meat, fish). It is recommended to eat spaghetti with vegetable (tomato) and mushroom sauces.

This is interesting

In Russia, spaghetti began to be actively introduced in the late 80s - early 90s. In parallel, pizzerias came into use.

Familiar to us, multi-pronged forks were invented specifically for eating spaghetti.

All pasta in Italy is called the word "pasta", which means "pasta dough".

Pasta has its own holiday - October 25th is World Pasta Day.