Pasta In Arrabiata Sauce

Woww! Mouth watering it is! Who doesn't like pastas. Today, I will teach you a very basic and easy recipe to prepare pasta. 

To me, pasta sauces are widely categorised into 2 varieties - arrabiata and white cream sauce (also known as Bechamel sauce in Italy). Pasta comes in a lot of different shapes - penne, macaroni, fusilli, spaghetti, etc., You can use any pasta type with any of the sauces to get different combinations. If you can find fresh basil leaves, it's good. Otherwise, dried herbs also work well. Use fresh red tomatoes for best results.

Servings - 2
Cooking Time - 15 mins
Preparation time - 10 mins

Ingredients

Pasta (any) - 1 cup
Water - 5 cups
Tomatoes - 3
Onions - 1
Garlic - 4 to 5 flakes
Capsicum - 1/2 or 1/4 cup chopped
Olives - 4 to 5 (optional)
Basil leaves - few
Mixed herbs - 1 tsp
Chilli flakes - 1 tsp or as per taste
Sugar - 1/4 tsp
Salt to taste

Steps for preparation

1. First, let's cook pasta. Boil 5 cups of water in a vessel. Add 1 cup of pasta of your choice to the boiling water, reduce the flame and cook until pasta is al-dente (cooked so that it's still firm when bitten). Drain the water from pasta and let it on the sieve.
2. Cut garlic into very small pieces and keep aside. You can crush it if you like to. But for this recipe, I prefer to cut it small than making a paste.
3. Cut onions and capsicum in dices and keep aside.
4. Blend tomatoes in a mixer using less or no water. Grind it into a smooth paste.
5. Add olive oil in a pan, add chopped garlic and saute it for 10 secs. Then add capsicum and onions. Saute until onions turn translucent.
6. Now add tomato puree, basil leaves, olives, mixed herbs, chilli flakes, sugar and salt. Mix everything and cook for about 5 minutes.
7. Add pastas, mix well and continue to cook for another 2-3 minutes. Our tasty pasta arrabiata is ready to serve. You can garnish it with coriander leaves or parsley.

Tips:

1. When you drain the water from pasta and leave it on a sieve, add a tsp of oil so that pasta doesn't stick to each other.
2. If you don't have mixed herbs, you can just use oregano also.
3. And if you don't have chilli flakes, you can use chilli powder. Though t doesn't give that texture, it will suffice for the taste.