Spaghetti with Fresh cherry tomatoes

ready in: 20/25 min — difficulty: easy

btw, this recipe is going to stick a lot to the fresh tomatoes pasta, it's going to have just few additions, so... don't worry too much, it's very easy as a recipe, also for the grams i am very much going by feelings and for how i get usually, i do not weight stuff, i just go by eye straight up lol... so, if after the first time you noticed there wasn't enough capers or anchiovies or whatever, feel free to add more! same for the passata too or other stuff, it's a recipe, not law :P

ingredients for 4 people

method

  1. Add a pot of water to boil, it has to be big enough to contain the pasta, make it as the pasta inside (if spaghetti it's different but you know... a big pot.) and fill it with water up to 3/4 and put it to boil.
  2. in the mean time, wash the cherry tomatoes and cut them in 4, then take the capers, olives and anchiovies and cut them in very small pieces, you can mince them straight up, right after put a pan with a couple of spoons of cooking oil to heat up
  3. be careful to not start burning the oil, you notice that if the oil starts actually fuming, that's dangerous, don't breathe it and wait until it cools down a bit (so ofc turn off the stove) when the oil is hot enough and ready drop the tomatoes in and the mix of minced stuff too, you will notice if the oil is warm enough because it's a lot more runny and less dense in the pan.
  4. when you drop all the ingredients let them rest for a bit and give them a good salt, this is beacuse the salt will take out itself the water from the tomatoes and will help make the sauce sauc-ier, after like a minute turn lower the stove where the tomatoes are, you don't want to fast cook them, they gotta go slooooow
  5. when the water boils salt the water (the quantity of the salt i think i did mention in the main post before heading to the recipes... go and check that.) when you salt the water it will stop boiling... wait until it boils again and drop the pasta! right after you can add the actual tomato passata in the pan
  6. as the pasta boils be sure to stir from time to time so it doesn't stick to the bottom, and also after few minutes the pasta is cooking, this time there is NO NEED to add boiling water, not in the general sense, you can still do that on your behalf, but it's less important because the tomato passata will dense things up a bit, so, no worries for that
  7. follow the cooking time mentioned at the beginning for the pasta, and when it's ready strain it, but first if you want to be sure, save a small glass of boiling water IF you think it will be needed after (for this you still want to keep a bit of water, you may never know if it's too dense and you want to soften a little the density), then, strain it and add it to the pan
  8. put the stove temperature of the tomato sauce to it's highest and keep stir the pasta inside, let it warm up properly and get hot, give it good 10 or 15 seconds, then turn off the stove, move away from the stove the pan and add a spoon of extra virgin olive oil, and mix again for good 5 or 10 seconds (i am talking in seconds but trust me, 15 seconds of stirring are not that small amount of time.)
  9. serve it, and if you like it, add some grated cheese at the end.

$ don't worry if the first result might not impress you. the more you do the better it gets, this is a really good recipe to grasp the basics for cooking pasta, the rest becomes quite easier