Fusilli Pasta with Tomato Sauce - Rossella's Cooking with Nonna

To everyone .

I'm Marcella Rago from cooking with Nona .

And today I'm going to be bringing you one of the most basic Italian recipes .

This is a very simple pasta , just a pasta with a tomato basil sauce .

And this is my go to recipe for when I don't know what the heck to make when I don't know what I really want to eat .

This is the easiest thing to throw together .

I honestly think that people could make this recipe even in the middle of like a natural disaster because you have all of these ingredients probably in your cupboards right now .

Go look , you probably have everything I'm gonna use today .

And uh , it's gonna be really , really easy and quick .

I'm going to be using some and fun fact , this is rosella's favorite pasta to use .

I love because I think that they hold sauce really , really well .

And I love the texture and I like to eat them with almost anything .

So we're gonna use sushi today and then we're gonna go in with some canned crushed tomatoes , some extra virgin olive oil , garlic basil , a little bit of salt and some pecorino cheese to tie it all together at the end .

And this is a really quick sauce that you can make while the pasta cooks in the water .

So , the first thing we're gonna do is it drop or pasta into salted boiling water and give it a quick stir .

There we go .

And next we're gonna come right over here to our saute pan .

Don't make the flame too , too high .

I'm gonna get our extra virgin olive oil in here and for exact measurements and the full recipe just head over to cooking with nona dot com and we'll have everything listed there for you and I'm gonna wait for our olive oil to get hot .

You definitely don't want to do too much olive oil .

I my basic rule is a thin coat all over the , the bottom of the pan .

That's all you're aiming for .

You don't want a sauce that's swimming in oil .

And when you're gonna saute garlic , it's important to get it to a nice , a nice uh heat level , your olive oil , you don't want to smoke or anything but you want it nice and hot .

So you get a nice sizzle on your garlic .

So I have some garlic .

I love garlic .

This is totally up to you .

Some people don't like garlic whatsoever .

I just slice some garlic .

It's maybe it's a little heavy on the garlic , but I like the garlic .

If you don't like garlic , leave the garlic whole and uh just saute it like that .

And then you can actually pull it out right before you add your tomatoes because you just really want to infuse the olive oil with some garlic flavor .

And a lot of people don't necessarily want to like eat big chunks of garlic .

I do that .

So I'm gonna get our garlic in here and we're gonna wait for a nice golden color .

OK ?

So our garlic is nice and beautifully golden and it smells really , really wonderful .

Right now .

We're gonna go in with our tomatoes and these again are just canned crushed tomatoes , stir stir stir .

You're gonna get a nice , nice sizzle and I use the can crush .

But if you are whole plum peeled tomatoes kind of people , then you just put them in a bowl , crush them up with your hands .

Same thing if you wanna use a pasta or a tomato puree , go right ahead .

This is amazing and this will be ready by the time our pasta is finished cooking .

So right now I'm gonna go in with a little bit of salt again , I get a lot of flack because I kind of like things on the saltier side and this is for me .

So I'm making it the way I like , OK , just salt it little bit and you wanna make sure your heat is high enough for the first few minutes .

I wanna say you want to give it a nice boil at first and then we're gonna lower the flame and let it simmer .

This looks really , really nice .

And so once it starts to boil like this , gonna add a couple leaves of fresh basil .

Now I get a lot of questions about basic tomato sauces .

It's something that people get a little intimidated by .

And I don't really understand because when I was growing up , my mom always made a sauce that uh made called San Giovanni .

That was just olive oil , garlic tomatoes and parsley .

At the end , it had to be parsley .

If it's not parsley , it's not Vanni .

So that's why I can't call the San and you don't put cheese on sanni and I'm gonna put cheese in this because I like it .

But um I grew up making very basic tomato sauces and I saw how easy it really is .

So , you know , don't be afraid of things like this .

These are the easy peasy things .

These are very basic recipes that I think everybody should have in their arsenal .

OK .

So see how that's boiling really nice .

We're ready to add our basil .

Oops and we'll just like throw it off the scent .

So you wanna just break the basil , no need to like chop it really fine , breaking it will release the flavor , the essence of the basil .

And now we wanna reduce it to a nice little simmer and everyone who's going to be watching this is going to be like , well , your sauce is gonna be ready in like 10 minutes .

And exactly .

So let me explain that these tomatoes have actually been cooked already .

If you're using canned tomatoes , your tomatoes are fully cooked , they're not raw .

Your sauce isn't gonna be raw .

And if you're using canned tomatoes , they're actually picked at the height of freshness .

So they're very good quality tomatoes and they don't need a lot of time cooking in Italy .

Most of their sauces aren't cooked for hours and hours and hours .

You want to taste the tomato flavor .

So you're really missing the point by doing that .

So I'm just gonna cook this sauce for a few more minutes just until our pasta is perfectly al dente and it will be done .

And you're gonna taste the really beautiful fresh robust flavor of a pure tomato at the height of its freshness and that's the best thing ever .

So I'm gonna give my sauce a little bit of a taste just for salt .

Really nice .

Then we're gonna put the cheese at the end and as soon as our pasta is done , we're going to add it to the pan and finish it in the pan and then melt the cheese and it's gonna be amazing .

All right .

So let me taste one of my , to see if they cooked .

Yep , they're ready .

I like to cook pasta a step below al Dente and I actually call it paco , which means from the pack and I like that last minute or so to happen in the pan .

Just so you get a really nice perfect Al Dente taste because if it's Al Dente coming out of the water and you finish it in the pan , it's gonna be not exactly al Dente .

So I like to make sure I'm a little bit of an Al dente freak and the pasta water that's still on the pasta is actually gonna help give our sauce some beautiful body and texture .

OK ?

One more scoop .

And I'm gonna start working that pasta into the sauce beautifully .

This looks so good .

I cannot wait to taste this .

And this is my favorite when I've had like a really long day and I don't really feel like doing something totally elaborate .

Or I've actually , I've made this on Sundays and , you know , when I had roommates and I would cook for everybody this pasta and a couple of chicken cutlets was like a feast and I don't think anybody's above a beautiful tomato and basil pasta any day of the week .

Ok .

That looks gorgeous .

OK .

So I see some naked pasta .

So you just wanna make sure all your pasta is nicely coated .

So now I'm going to turn off the heat completely and I'm gonna take my micro plane and this is literally one of my favorite things in existence .

And I'm gonna grab my Pecorino , Romano you can use , I just , I love the salty Pecorino and I'm gonna grate this all over the top of the pasta .

And then I'm gonna let the residual heat of the pan melt it in for me , whole other world , whole other world .

And then you know , if you really feel like it go for it , put extra right on top when you serve it .

Can you see this right now ?

Can you see this ?

OK .

Oh Amazing .

And now I'm gonna give that a quick little stir .

Oh My God .

This looks so good .

Excellent .

OK ?

So now we're ready to eat .

I'm gonna bring this right over here .

I'm gonna get my beautiful serving bowl and I'm just gonna start scooping just gonna scoop a little bit .

So the pans are not so heavy .

I'm not that strong .

People think I'm strong .

I'm really not strong , really , really nice , gorgeous .

Wow .

That is a beautiful bowl of pasta .

I'm just gonna finish it .

If you're serving this to people , just put a nice simple couple of basil leaves in here and you are all done .

Dinner is ready .

Let's have a party .

Mm Perfect , simple , beautiful fresh everything I want in a pasta .

I am so glad you guys learned how to make a fabulous pasta .

Thank you guys for watching and I'll see you next time now .