Recipe No 265 pasta sauce Original 2013

Tomato and salami pasta sauce

Spicy salami combines with morsels of fresh tomato and sweet red onion in this well-liked pasta sauce. It is an easy sauce to prepare. Care in preparation of the ingredients and attention to detail during the cooking and serving make this an excellent dinner party dish.

You do not need to use the highest quality salami in this recipe. Remove the tough skin before slicing into short, thin strips. After cooking, the edges will have a delicious crust and the rest will be tender. Our salami was effectively spicy and this permeated our sauce which delicately coated the pasta.

In this recipe we used what might be called ‘semi-dried’ pasta. The rolled pasta sheets were hung until the edges were very dry and the sheet was just pliable enough to be handled. We passed them through our tagliatelle cutter after cutting off the dry edges. At this stage we’re unsure of the definitive effects of doing this, but one observation which added to the quality of this experience was that the pasta was not at all ‘gloopy’, even after the addition of cheese.

Pasta dishes are often thought to be an easy affair, but our experience is that there are good pastas and bad pastas. This is a very good one which, as a small serve, makes for a fantastic first course.

Marcus Longfoot and Simon Paterson

Time

Prep:

Total:

Difficulty
moderate
Yield
4 serves • 400 g
Metric Imperial

Processes

  • Extra virgin olive oil (1 tbsp)
    15 g
  1. 01
    Heat in a fry pan over medium heat.

  • Salami, cut into short, thin strips
    110 g
  1. 02
    Add to pan and cook the sausage for to allow fat to render.
  2. 03
    Remove and set aside. Retain oil in the pan.

  • Red onion (1 onion)
    200 g
  • Garlic (2 cloves)
    6 g
  1. 04
    Add to pan cook until tender, about .

  • Truss tomatoes, deseeded, flesh and juice only, diced (reserve truss) (5 medium)
    400 g
  • Lemon (1 tbsp)
    15 g
  • Salt (½ tsp)
    2 g
  • Pepper (pinch)
    0.5 g
  • Brown sugar (½ tsp)
    2.1 g
  • Thyme (½ tsp)
    0.4 g
  1. 05
    Add to pan and simmer for with the lid off to reduce some of the tomato liquid. There should be some juice left and after this time which should be retained because it will soak into the pasta.

  • Butter (1 pat)
    10 g
  1. 06
    Add to pan and stir until melted and fully amalgamated with the remaining juices. Return salami to pan and gently toss to combine.
  2. 07
    Immediately put the fresh pasta into the boiling salted water (with tomato truss) and cook until tender but still with some texture. Begin testing for doneness after no more than .
  3. 08
    Drain the pasta. (If you are not using ‘semi-dried’ pasta, reserve a quarter of the cup of the cooking water.)
  4. 09
    Return it to the pan immediately and gently toss and stir to combine.

  • Regiano, good quality, very finely grated (1 small wedge)
    20 g
  1. 10
    Grate over the pasta and gently toss to combine. (If the pasta is a too gloopy at this stage, add a little of the reserved cooking water, a tsp at a time, until the pasta loosens and has a silky sheen.)

  • Basil, very small whole leaves (¼ cup)
    2 g
  1. 11
    Garnish with chives, micro basil or small leaves of any basil.

Notes

We retained the truss from our truss of tomatoes and put it into the water we were boiling for the pasta. The water turned a distinctive shade of green. We removed the truss just before dropping the pasta.

The first time we made this we also made two kinds of pasta. One of them was flecked with thyme and the other was not. Both of them were made with the same dough base and we challenged ourselves to distinguish the flavour of the thyme when we tasted the thyme pasta on its own. To our mutual surprise, we could definitely taste the thyme and Marcus explained the flavour as herbacous and subtle, an assessment with which I totally agreed.

Making ahead

Prepare the Pasta dough. Prepare the tomatoes as they have to be carefully cored and the juices pushed through a fine sieve which catches the seeds. This creates a nicer texture in the final result and the sauce seems pleasantly sweeter.

Storing

keeps in the refrigerator for up to 3 days

Food pairings

Sous vide duck breast with shards of crispy skin, creamy mash potato, asparagus and a port sauce.

Categorisation

Category
pasta sauce
Meal
component
Cuisine
italian
Diet
vegetarian
Tags
marcus longfoot pasta pasta sauce simon paterson