My Mamma’s Pastina and Egg

This is a really good recipe when you have a tummy ache or just feel like you need something comforting to eat.

Ingredients (for one person):

-1 small egg

-2 tablespoons pastina

-lump of butter

-salt

 Directions:

Heat salted water in a small saucepan.

Break egg into a bowl and beat with a little salt.

Add pastina to water and boil until soft.

Remove about 1 tablespoon of water from pastina and save.

Drain pastina and return to pan.

Add lump of butter and egg and stir constantly over low heat until eggs are cooked.

If dry add a little of the saved water.

Check for salt and serve.

Jennie & Mamma’s Fresh Cherry Tomato Sauce with Thin Spaghetti

This recipe is light and fresh and is one of the easiest and tastiest tomato sauce recipes that I have learned from my mamma. The only hard part is finding good cherry tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes are supposed to be very sweet which is what makes this recipe so delicious. Unfortunately when they are sold in stores they are often, sour and tasteless (unless you are in Italy where all tomatoes taste heavenly). Therefore, only make this when you find good tomatoes! You can also use grape tomatoes but I find that usually they tend to be less sweet and less juicy, so if you can find cherry’s, I’d recommend those!

Ingredients:

-Cherry Tomatoes  (roughly 2lbs -or 2 normal sized baskets/bags-  for 1lb of pasta)
-Garlic (3 cloves)
-Olive Oil
-Italian Parsley – a handful
-Basil – a handful
-Salt and Pepper
-Pecorino Romano (or other hard cheese)
-Hot Red Pepper Flakes
-1 lb Thin Spaghetti (you can use any pasta but I think this works better with long pastas and particularly well with thin spaghetti or even angel hair).

Recipe:

1. Put pasta water with salt on to boil.

2. Wash the tomatoes and cut them in half, chop up the garlic into small pieces and cut the parsley.

3. Then, heat up olive oil in a pan and fry the garlic until it starts to turn golden.

4. Throw in the cherry tomatoes and stir them on medium heat for a few minutes (roughly 5-8).
*It is very easy to overcook cherry tomatoes, and when you do this they will just shrivel into nothingness, so I recommend cooking them just until they begin to change shape, the sauce starts to thicken a little and the tomatoes begin to soften.

5. A minute or so before I turn off the heat I throw in a generous handful of basil, ripped into pieces and add salt and pepper to taste.

6. Cook and strain the pasta (al dente of course), and mix with the tomatoes.

7. Add pepper flakes (if you like spicy) and a grated hard cheese of your choice (pecorino romano, grana, etc…).

Enjoy!

* In hot L.A. over the summer I tried this recipe and then tossed in some arugula in the end in the bowl with the spaghetti with some lemon over the top. This was also very tasty if you want to try a variation!

Since I haven’t had a chance to take a picture of my own, the photo above is of something that looks pretty close to how this sauce should turn out, though I think they used regular spaghetti instead of thin spaghetti and I prefer fresh and more coarsely grated cheese (this looks like pre-grated cheese to me) :D.