There are surely perks that come with having an Italian husband! One of them is having an Italian mother-in-law who is always happy to teach me some Italian recipes 😀 She taught me this one the last time we were there and we love it. The Italian kitchen is quite simple. No funny ingredients, just qualitative stuff. Here is mammottina’s recipe for pasta all’aromatica!
The first time I actually ate this was 2 years ago, when friends of us came to Italy the same moment we were visiting. I didn’t know this before, but I remember it being so rich and pure in flavor. It’s also not too heavy, so perfect for summer/indian summer 😉 I made this for 2 people.
Ingredients
- Pasta of your choice (we used penne, around 100g per person)
- 300g of tomato sauce
- 1 little red pepper
- 1 clove of garlic
- 2 big hands of basil leaves
- 1 hand of fresh parsley
- 5-6 sage leaves
- 3-4 sprigs of rosemary
- Grated parmesan (also a big hand)
- 50g of pine tree nuts
- 1 hand of walnuts
- Olive oil
Now don’t be afraid of this seemingly long ingredient list. They are easy to find ingredients that most supermarkets carry.
How to make it
The easiest thing to start with is to put the pine tree nuts and the walnuts in your kitchen machine and mix them up until they look like this:
Chop up all your herbs very finely until they look like this:
Lastly, if you have fresh parmesan, grate it already:
Alright, now that is done, you can put your pan on the fire and put the tomato sauce in with the finely chopped garlic and some olive oil and let it simmer on low fire for a good 10 min, while you cook your pasta. You will see the tomato sauce dense a bit, that is normal. This is not a very liquid sauce 🙂
Boom! Ok, when your pasta is cooked al dente (the only right way), it’s same to create the magic. Drain the pasta, and then follow this order:
- Put the pasta back in the pot and add the nut mixture. Stir.
- Then add the chopped herbs. Quick stir.
- Add the grated parmesan. Quick stir.
- Lastly, add the Tomato sauce and give it a last stir.
The herbs are supposed to be raw when you add them, so you are not supposed to cook them in the sauce. I know, to me it was also a surprise 😀 But it adds so much more flavour! In the end, you want it to look like this:
And that’s it! Not too hard, right? Donatella (Vittorio’s mother) taught me a few more recipes, that I will also share soon!
Buon appetito! Xoxo
labellita.com 