Spaghetti with tomato sauce is the symbolic dish of Made in Italy.
Pasta with tomato sauce, which we often simply say "pasta al sugo”, is the dish of excellence in Italian cuisine. The first written reference is more than 200 years old, and the traditional recipe has practically remained unchanged since then: as simple as it is good and healthy. At the base of the Mediterranean diet, pasta with tomato has only 380 calories: obviously it is all indicative and is based on quantities. On average, in an 80 gram plate of pasta you can use 3-4 tablespoons of tomato sauce, a drizzle of oil and that's it. Just a few ingredients are enough for the spaghetti al pomodoro recipe: tomato, garlic, extra virgin olive oil and pasta, with the addition of fresh basil, to create a tasty first course to be prepared in a short time.
A brief history of pasta with tomato sauce...
We said that pasta with tomato sauce is the most iconic combination of Italian gastronomy but it did not have an easy life at the beginning: the tomato was in fact one of the first fruits to be imported from the Americas, a pity that it was immediately treated with extreme suspicion, fear and dread. It was considered highly toxic, even endowed with magical powers. A doctor from Siena, Pietro Andrea Mattioli, tried to convince the scientific community of the goodness of the fruit and of the fact that it could be eaten without fear of repercussions.
For more than a century Mattioli found no proselytes and the tomato was used only as an ornamental plant. The peasants, in the throes of hunger, however, began to eat it, obviously without dying, and this prompted Antonio Latini, cook at the court of the Spanish Viceroy in Naples, to create a "Salsa di Pomadoro alla Spagnuola" in 1692. In 1700 Naples, today's capital of Campania was a powerful and thriving city, the second Mediterranean port after Istanbul, a privileged contact between ancient Europe and the New World, thanks to the Spanish colonies. Even today the assonance between Naples and the tomato is alive, the daughter of a history of hundreds of years old.
Despite all the work done by doctors and cooks, this sauce will not be put on pasta for another 100 years: our ancestors use it to season meat dishes, even on fruit, but no pasta. For pasta with tomato we have to wait until 1803, but it is still only a soup. For pasta as we know it instead we have to wait until 1807:
“Vermicielli co le pommadore. Quann’è lo tiempo, pigliarraje tre rotola de pommadore, le farraje cocere, e le passaraje; po piglia no terzo de nzogna, o doje mesurelle d’uoglio, lo faraje zoffriere co na capo d’aglio, e lo miette dint’a chella sauza. Doppo scauda doje rotola di vermicielli, e vierdi vierdi li levarraje, e nce li buote pe dinto: falle chini di pepe, miettence lo sale, e poi vide che magne."
Translated it means: Spaghetti with tomatoes. When the right season arrives, take tomatoes, cook them and pass them: take the oil, fry with garlic and put everything in the sauce. Then heat the Spaghetti, drain them when they are al dente and toss them in the sauce: fill them with pepper, add salt and then you will see that you will eat.
Two hundred years later the recipe is practically unchanged and it is nice to see that even some of the most talented and innovative chefs in Italy do not differ so much from the 1807 writing. Among the suggestions for the perfect tomato pasta, I agree on one point: to make good pasta, you need good pasta and sauce. The raw material is essential.
Made in Calabria will soon release our Tomato Sauce:
“Passata di pomodoro del Casale.”
Our sauce is 100% grown and produced in Calabria, Italy.
Our sauce is Organic with no preservatives or dyes and is
made in a traditional style by Calabrian farmers, creating a product that is completely natural in taste and appearance.
To further insure quality, our product is completely traceable through scientific studies that determine its authenticity of being grown and produced in Calabria, Italy. By respecting tradition, we enchant and delight our modern customers as they discover the authentic taste of history.
