pasta al pomodoro — Italy

Pasta al pomodoro is a pasta dish dressed simply in a tomato sauce, built from little more than pasta, olive oil and cooked tomatoes. It is counted among the specialties of Neapolitan and, more broadly, Italian cooking, and is often treated as the base recipe from which other tomato-based pasta dishes branch off. The dish is reported from Naples and the surrounding Campania region as a point of reference, though it has since spread across Italy and well beyond as one of the most common ways of dressing pasta at home. To prepare it, tomatoes, fresh or tinned, are cooked down with olive oil and garlic or onion until they collapse into a sauce, seasoned with salt and torn basil leaves. Pasta, commonly spaghetti or a short shape, is boiled in generously salted water until al dente, then tossed directly in the sauce so it absorbs some of it, and finished with a last drizzle of olive oil and a few more basil leaves. What separates one plate from another is mostly the tomatoes and the base: cooks may use fresh San Marzano tomatoes in season or good tinned ones the rest of the year, build the sauce on garlic or on a softened onion, add a pinch of sugar to balance the acidity, and leave the sauce chunky or pass it through a food mill for a smoother finish.