Pasta: how to create the perfect penne and fresh tomato sauce

Penne with Fresh Tomato Sauce

Spaghetti or any other pasta shape al sugo di pomodoro, fresh tomato sauce, is another typical Italian dish, very easy to prepare and really tasty. For what my family is concerned, it’s one of the sauces I introduced to our regular menu and we all loved it: it's quick to prepare, easy to eat and to digest, but overall it's so yummy! I consider this sauce the most handy to delegate any member of my family to make it. Learn from this, mothers, and free up your precious time!

Last suggestion but not least: don’t underestimate this sauce just because it is so simple to prepare, very economic and no time consuming: it will come out so useful during all your life in loads of other recipes, trust me.

Let's start creating penne and fresh tomato sauce

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Ingredients 4 servings

1. Tomato passata, 800 g

2. Garlic, 1-2Cloves

3. Basil leaves, 7-8

4. Nutmeg freshly grated, 0.5 tsp

5. Extra virgin olive oil (EVO), 4-5 tbsp

6. Pasta (any shape of your choice), 400g

7. Parmesan, at your taste

8. Salt and pepper

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Let's jump to the method

1. Get ready all ingredients.

2. In a medium size pan, warm up the olive oil, then add the crushed garlic.

3. Light fry it until golden, not burned.

4. Add the tomato passata and stir.

5. Add 1/2 tsp sugar or the quantity at your taste to get rid of the tomato bitterness (without overdoing: it does not need to be sweet as a dessert!).

6. Add 1/2 glass of water and stir.

7. Add 1/2 tsp grated nutmeg and the basil leaves. Add a pinch of salt and pepper.

8. Bring the sauce to a boil, then low down the heat and simmer for 15/20 minutes. Stir from time to time, making sure the heat is not too high. If you think it’s drying out, you can add some water.

9. Get ready a large pot of water for 800 g of pasta of your choice and bring to a boil. Ideally, for every 100 g of pasta you should use 1 litre of water and 10 g of salt for each litre.

10. Just after boiling, add the salt and then the pasta, following the cooking time instructions written in the package. Don’t forget that the best pasta, should be “a lenta essicazione”, meaning slow drying when produced and it should be written in the package.

11. Once ready, transfer the pasta into a capacious serving bowl, add the sauce and a generous amount of parmesan cheese.

12. Serve your penne and fresh tomato sauce (or any other pasta shape) and…BUON APPETITO!

Penne with fresh tomato sauce