The phone rang as I was trying to fall asleep around 10:30 one night during grad school in my late twenties and it was my best friend from college, Laura. She had called me earlier, super excited about the great ticket fares to Italy. I agreed that if she found us amazing tickets, I would go with her and she did! We lived in different states at the time and each of us used miles for a free ticket to New York. We met there and took a $500 flight to Milan, Italy!
Laura was incredible in planning this trip for us. We took the train to Cincque Terre and adventured through a couple of the towns. Then we went to Florence and stayed at Mama Rabatti’s flat. We rented a room from her and it was glorious. Right in the city where we could visit museum and cafes.
One day we went to the Tuscan countryside for an authentic pasta making and cooking class. The 100 plus year old farmhouse was out of a storybook. Wisteria grew all along one of the stone walls.
In the basement we learned to make pasta from scratch and up in the kitchen, Christina, our cook, prepared it all and showed us how. I watched her make this pasta sauce. I was bewildered by how simple and how it was the most delicious spaghetti I had ever had (I am part Italiano). I’ve made it now so many times and it dawned on me that you would LOVE this too!
Italian Pasta REcipe
Make this to your taste! Adjust the amount of ingredients for your family’s liking. Err on more olive oil in my opinion!
1-2 small clamshells of grape tomatoes washed and sliced in half
4-8 cloves of garlic peeled and minced
1/3 cup good olive oil
1 tbsp kosher salt
1 package of spaghetti cooked and drained
Optional fresh basil on top at the end
Boil pasta water. Pour olive oil in large skillet. Add garlic and then tomatoes. Cook pasta. Simmer until tomatoes look tender. Add salt then hot drained pasta. mix and serve on a plate with salad that’s been drizzled with olive oil and thick balsamic vinegar.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.