It’s important to season the cooking water so that the pasta can absorb it as it cooks. Reserving and adding a splash of pasta cooking water to your sauce helps to loosen it, if it’s a bit thick.
The Kitchen Garden Project
By Jamie Oliver
30 mins
Super easy
serves 8
About the recipe
A great introduction to pasta for kids – loads of fun to eat, and a brilliant base for adding all kinds of other fresh ingredients.
Recipe From
Ingredients
1 bunch of fresh basil
1 medium onion
2 cloves of garlic
1kg ripe tomatoes or 2 x 400g tins of quality chopped tomatoes
olive oil
1 tablespoon red wine or balsamic vinegar
480g dried wholewheat spaghetti
15g Parmesan cheese
Top Tip
Once you’ve made this a few times you can add other simple ingredients, such as baby spinach, chopped rocket leaves, or fresh or frozen peas, to your basic tomato sauce to completely transform it.
Method
- Pick the basil leaves onto a chopping board (reserving a few baby leaves to garnish), then roughly chop the remaining leaves and finely chop the stalks.
- Peel and finely slice the onion and garlic. If using fresh, cut the tomatoes in half, then roughly chop them or carefully open the tins of tomatoes.
- Put a saucepan on a medium heat and add 1 tablespoon of olive oil and the onion, then cook for around 7 minutes, or until soft and lightly golden.
- Stir in the garlic and basil stalks for a few minutes, then add the fresh or tinned tomatoes and the vinegar.
- Season with a tiny pinch of salt and pepper, then continue cooking for around 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Stir in the chopped basil leaves, then reduce to low and leave to tick away. Meanwhile…
- Carefully fill a large pot three-quarters of the way up with boiling water, add a tiny pinch of salt and bring back to the boil.
- Add the spaghetti and cook according to packet instructions – you want to cook your pasta until it is al dente. This translates as ‘to the tooth’ and means that it should be soft enough to eat, but still have a bit of a bite and firmness to it. Use the timings on the packet instructions as a guide, but try some just before the time is up to make sure it’s perfectly cooked.
- Once the pasta is done, ladle out and reserve a cup of the cooking water and keep it to one side, then drain in a colander over the sink and tip the spaghetti back into the pot.
- Stir the spaghetti into the sauce, adding a splash of the pasta water to loosen, if needed.
- Serve with the reserved basil leaves sprinkled over the top and use a microplane to finely grate the Parmesan cheese, then sprinkle over.
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