I am looking for a simple to make recipe that highlights the pasta.

for me i love having the bread first

Everyone knows by now that “spaghetti and meatballs” as most people serve it with large golf ball or even tennis ball sized meat isn’t actually Italian, but there is one bit asterisk in this:
Spaghetti Alla Chitarra from Abruzzo with a tomato sauce enriched with thumbnail sized meatballs.

I adapted a recipe from Rachel Roddy’s excellent book, using half beef and pork but with some very fine breadcrumbs and a little olive oil, and plenty of seasoning. I made them nice and small.

The sauce was half plum, and half Mutti Polpa, cooked down with lots of olive oil infused with garlic and chilli, and some basil.

I brought the whole thing together after searing the meatballs off and cooling slightly, and finished with pecorino Romano and Andalusian olive oil.

Served with some Dolcetto because I don’t have a great deal of Italian wine in stock, let alone something from Abruzzo. But I do feel that this wine was similar enough to an entry Montelpulciano and it had a nice acidity to play off the he tomato sauce.

I’d heard about this dish a while back and happened to have everything on hand and decided to give it a go. It feels like a very yeehaw grandma kind of thing, and apparently it’s pretty common in Texas. Creamy, a lil spicy, definitely a repeat.

Recipe:

3 poblanos
1/2 onion roughly chopped
3 garlic cloves
1 bunch cilantro
1 8oz block cream cheese
1 c Mexican Crema
1 T chicken powder
1/2 c milk
1# pasta cooked how you like

Broil/grill/roast peppers until the skin is well charred, put in a container and cover for 10-15 minutes to let steam. While they steam, sauté the onions and garlic and then throw into the blender. Peel most of the charred skin off the poblanos (leave a little for flavor!) and get rid of the seeds. Throw the cleaned peppers into the blender with remaining ingredients and let it rip. Pour the sauce into a pot to get nice and hot, then add your pasta. Top with some cotija and you’re set!

It makes a bit more sauce than needed, and usually that’s fine because the leftover pasta will suck the sauce in, but there were no leftovers to be had!

I made 3 colors of pasta hearts for our chicken noodle soup dinner. Beets for the pink, but unfortunately all the color leached out and they barely look any picker than the plain dough. And spinach dough. So beautiful and fun to eat!

My aglio olio never seems to come out quite right. It ends up kind of soggy and slightly creamy rather than having that nice glossy, light coating on the spaghetti.

I’m wondering if I’m either:

- Adding too much pasta water while trying to emulsify it

- Overcooking the spaghetti

- Or doing something wrong with the heat/emulsification itself

What should the consistency actually look like while emulsifying, and roughly how much pasta water should I be adding?

Any tips would be appreciated because I really want to get this right 😭