The fresh version: nothing made ahead, just cherry tomatoes, garlic, and oil cooked in the pan with the pasta. It’s also the best way I know to use up the last of the cherry tomatoes.
Picks
Bright, sweet, and garlicky, loose and oily.
- Cooking pasta in the pan: Long pasta, spaghetti or linguine
- Pasta sauces: Built fresh, in the pasta water: whole cherry tomatoes and sliced garlic cooked with the pasta in oily water, chili flakes, and a spoonful of tomato paste at the end
- Finishing pasta in the sauce: Loose
- Off the heat: Oil and herbs: torn basil, Parmesan, a drizzle of good oil
This is one of the few cases I recommend adding oil to the pasta water. The water boils off quickly, and the remaining contents fry gently in the oil.
Why these picks
- A reverse sauce. Garlic wants gentle heat and the tomatoes want high heat. It turns out that steaming the tomatoes hastens bursting them, and the garlic survives the gentle heat of the water.
- Whole tomatoes, burst. They cook until the skins split, then half get pressed, so their juice becomes the sauce and the rest stay as sweet, whole bites. Add a lid to speed this up, then remove it so the water evaporates.
- Tomato paste. Fresh tomatoes don’t get deep in 10 minutes; a spoonful of paste, darkened in the oil once the water is nearly gone, adds the cooked-tomato depth.
- Extra virgin olive oil and basil off the heat. Good oil loses its flavour over a flame, and basil goes dark.
How it fails
- Oily, separated sauce: not enough starch, or not tossed hard enough. Toss over high heat with a splash of water until it turns glossy.
- Watery: too much water left with the pasta, or the tomatoes weren’t cooked down. Keep tossing, then lean on the Parmesan.
- Bitter: the garlic browned once the water was gone. Take it off the heat as soon as the sauce turns glossy.
Variations
- Mushroom aglio e olio: no tomatoes. Dried mushrooms soaked, added with the garlic, and their soaking liquid used as part of the pasta water; olive oil drizzled in at the end to emulsify.
- Win the fridge: mushrooms, thyme, and lemon alongside the last of the small tomatoes (see Win the fridgeWin the fridgeWin the fridge is the practice of using every scrap of food before it goes to waste: the idea behind the recipes tagged with it across this cookbook.Read the full essay).