Spaghetti alla Crudaiola

The Crudaiola is a Southern Italian Summer favorite. It requires very little prep, only a few ingredients, and can be eaten hot or cold, but is typically served cold on a hot day.

While you can use regular tomatoes and go skins on or off, cherry tomatoes with skins removed are what were used whenever I was served this dish in Italy. This is easiest done by blanching in the boiling water before adding the pasta. They start to float when the skins are ready to be removed. I like the texture of lightly mashed tomatoes with the spaghetti. You can quarter the skinned tomatoes and then mash, or mash them whole, just look out because they tend to explode if whole and mashed too quickly. Or if you don’t want chunks, the tomatoes can easily be thrown in a blender and pulsed to desired chunkiness. If you don’t like the bite of raw garlic, you can lightly sauté the garlic and set aside. To save on dishes, do it all in the same pan, saute the garlic in the olive oil, remove garlic and oil, add water and boil, blanch tomatoes, remove, then add pasta. Less mess.

Make sure that while the pasta is cooking to give the noodles a stir every couple of minutes. This keeps the noodles from clumping. After the pasta is done cooking, mix a little of the sauce with the pasta to keep the pasta from sticking together as it cools. Plate up the noodles with a twirl and add the desired quantity of sauce. Finish with Grated Parmigiano Reggiano.

This recipe is perfect for two. Grab another plate and enjoy.

There’s no wrong way to eat pasta, but here’s a tip, the Italian way to eat spaghetti is to use a soup spoon with a fork to lift the noodles from the plate and twirl them so you don’t have those stragglers. That way you get a clean next of noodles on the fork before it hits the mouth. Spoon is only used for twirling.