My husband and I first went to Delfina restaurant about a year ago for his birthday. For those of you who don’t know, Delfina is an Italian restaurant in San Francisco that is well known for their authentic Italian food and excellent execution. We had some amazing dishes. One of the dishes we had was a simple spaghetti. We were told that we should order their spaghetti, even though it’s not a very unique dish, just because it would be one of the best spaghetti’s we’d ever had. We LOVED it!
So, when we got home, our friend looked up the spaghetti recipe online and surprisingly, someone had blogged the exact recipe!
I’ve been cooking it almost once per week ever since!
I just looked at the Delfina website and their current menu no longer has this spaghetti on it. It may be because everyone can make it at home now….not sure.
I never was a huge fan of spaghetti with red sauce…mostly because the way we “Americans” eat it is with the canned sauce…overspiced and we use WAY too much sauce with few noodles. Also we tend to overcook our pasta. Italian spaghetti is so different. The sauce is more runny. It’s simpler, so you can really taste the actual tomatoes. And the pasta is cooked “al dente.”
The secret? SAN MARZANO TOMATOES!!!!
These canned San Marzanos are available at Whole Foods, Lunardi’s, and Dreger’s supermarkets for anywhere from $3.50 to $7 per can… Whole foods are Lunardi’s being the cheaper and Dreger’s being the most expensive.
When the fresh tomatoes aren’t in season, I gladly use these canned San Marzanos.
Alternatively, you can use fresh San Marzano tomatoes, such as these. I’ve never seen them being sold in the supermarkets. So this year, I convinced my parents to grow them in their garden.
Last night I made my first Delifina spaghetti with the fresh San Marzano tomatoes.
Start with plenty of olive oil in a heated pan. Add halved or whole garlic and onions and let sweat.
You can either take out the garlic and onions before adding the tomatoes, or do like I do and leave them in until the tomatoes have cooked down quite a bit….just so ALL the flavor has been incorporated into the sauce.
Add the tomatoes.
Season with some salt.
Cook down. The longer you cook the tomatoes down, the more concentrated the sauce will be and therefore, the tastier! I like to reduce the tomatoes for at least a half hour and ideally an hour.
mmmmmm…..at this point, the house is smelling REALLY good. Taste and season more if needed.
Choose a really good quality dry pasta. This is SO important just as the San Marzano tomatoes are important. My favorite dry pasta is this Montebello brand pasta made with durum wheat semolina flour. It’s only about $3 at Whole Foods…whereas most pastas of this quality are double that price.
You can tell that this pasta is of a higher quality because of the texture and taste. The higher quality dried pastas are “gritty” in texture so they hold onto the sauce better. While lower quality pastas are very smooth.
Heavily salt the pasta water and cook the pasta for 4 minutes (half the total cooking time)
Then, add the pasta to the sauce and let finish cooking in the sauce until a perfect “al dente.”
Serve and enjoy immediately!
I recommend trying this basic spaghetti first, then adding your own twist to it. I’ve added ground lamb (for my husband who must always have MEAT with dinner), grilled chicken, or poached egg (for my sister, who doesn’t eat meat).
