Italian pasta and pasta sauce recipe

The Secret Behind Italian Pasta and Pasta Sauce Recipe

By Mahya 

Life is indeed a combination of magic and pasta! We do agree with you on that Mr Fellini, but truth be told, the magic is more about the authentic italian pasta sauce. 

As a writer, and an Italian pasta lover, I cannot understand how this heavenly made food found itself on earth! There are multiple occasions on a day that I keep myself wondering about the beauty, or the perfection behind a creation. With pasta, I don’t even try to wonder! I just smell, look, and taste. Love for me equals pasta. People find all kinds of scapegoats for their traumas and pains. I hug pasta and add it’s sauce, and life is bearable once again. In fact, my personal confession is that during the sad days of lockdown what kept me alive was Italian pasta and my grandma’s pasta sauce recipe!

What is all Italian Pasta fuss about?

‘Pasta’ is an Italian name used to call the dishes in which the main ingredient is bits of unleavened dough of durum wheat.  The durum wheat, which is sometimes mixed with eggs, can be shaped into various forms like thin spaghetti, broad penne, long sheet tagliatelle, and many more!

The Semolina flour used to make the distinguashable Italian pasta is richer in protein, and more importantly, it lives up to the detailed and sensitive standards of cooking well in the pot. 

One more Italian pasta fact stating it’s privilege over non-italian pastas is that it has been slow dried,which qualifies as retaining some of the nutty flavour and texture of the durum wheat.

Italian Pasta Recipe

For a pasta recipe to be original, one should make the pasta fresh by hand. Anything from a machine cannot even come close to the handmade freshly pasta threads. However, even in Italy, the best and most well-known chefs are convinced that the boxes of already made pasta in shops are of top-notch quality. Therefore, there is no excuse for missing a pasta night because you could not make the best pasta at home. Just buy a package and start. Wondering about the sauce? Well, let's see what makes the pasta sauce recipe Italian. 

Italian Pasta Sauce Recipe 

In Italy, pasta sauce is quite a big deal and has its own fascinating stories. Maybe the most famous story is about the way it is eaten.The most famous Italian way to eat pasta, “col pomodoro”, that is with tomato sauce, wasn’t introduced before the 19th century. 

Italians considered tomatoes “too exotic”, thus did not use tomato sauce in their local pasta dishes until 1844.  Even after the introduction of the sauce, Italians haven’t yielded to dishes filled with strong, dominant sauce. The Italian pasta sauce recipe, therefore, is about simplicity. 

Italian pasta recipes require a sauce that follows and respects the pasta. The culture and meaning in a sauce is richer than the ingredients and Italians prefer to keep their dishes down-to-earth and easy to prepare. 

It is an art to make a pasta that is as simple as chopped garlic and chili fried in olive oil with spaghetti tossed through but tastes like heaven!

Traditional Pasta Recipes Italy

When it comes to traditional pasta recipes in Italy, the list may differ from one source to another or pretty much be the same result for when we search classic Italian Pasta Recipes or the best pasta recipes Italian!

This is why I decided to consider some of the most famous Traditional Pasta recipes in Italy. 

1. Pasta Al Sugo

Apparently every Italian knows it and they have tasted it at least once in their life. The traditional pasta recipes for it are pasta, basil, olive oil, and chopped tomatoes. As for the classic one, you may want to replace the chopped tomatoes with tomato sauce. Capisce? 

2. Pasta In Bianco

The white pasta stays loyal to the culture of simplicity when we talk about Italian Pasta sauce recipes. What does it consist of? Well, butter or olive oil based on your preference, pasta, and parmesan! Simple and sexy, ain’t it? I can say it is the most classic Italian pasta recipe when you really aren’t in the mood for cooking but you need something rich and savvy. 

3. Pasta Al Pesto

The green Genovese plate takes advantage of it’s delicate pesto sauce. To share with you a personal story, my grandma always says if you find a can that is both fresh and smells like chopped garlic, you can add it to anything and make yourself the best dish ever! She means pesto, and I couldn’t agree more on that. 

These three are basically the most traditional pasta recipes Italy has offered. The rest are still classic, but they may be more sophisticated. 

Fresh Pasta Recipe,Italian Rules to Eat Pasta

As you may have figured out by now, Italians have both fresh pasta and dry pasta. With Fresh pasta recipes, we should first consider if it is made with eggs, with flour, or a special kind that sometimes is made with potato flour!

The Italian fresh egg pasta recipe itself can be a normal type of life fettuccine, or the stuffed one like ravioli, or a kind between the two like lasagna. 

As for the sauce that goes with the fresh pasta recipe, Italians add Bolognese to fresh egg pasta. It does not mean that you are offending Italians if you add the sauce to a fresh ravioli, however, you do not want to mix bolognese in case you have an extra ingredient in the stuffed mix, let's say ricotta. 

After all, pasta is traditionally a dish made by Italians, loved by Italians, but not solely isolated to the borders of Italy! We all have an Italian kid inside of us who shouts for that authentic taste of pasta from time to time. 

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