Tagliarini with slow-cooked tomato sauce
Item 1 of 1
- medium
- 6
- 2 hours 20 minutes
Pasta with tomato sauce is one of those simple dishes that, when done right, is more comforting and delicious than anything more complex and involved. At The River Cafe, potential chefs are asked to cook a tomato sauce so Ruth and her head chefs Sian, Danny and Joseph can get a feel for what they're like. This recipe is the one they use in the kitchen, complete with homemade tagliarini – a delicate, silky pasta shape that's like a very thin tagliatelle. It goes without saying that using the very best tomatoes is key to its flavour.
First published in 2021
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Ingredients
Metric
Imperial
Pasta
Tomato sauce
- 3 tbsp of olive oil
- 2 red onions, very finely sliced
- 2 garlic cloves, very finely sliced
- 2kg tinned plum tomatoes, drained
- sea salt
- freshly ground black pepper
To serve
- Parmesan, freshly grated
- extra virgin olive oil, for drizzling
SAVE RECIPE
Method
1
To make the sauce, heat the olive oil in a large saucepan or frying pan, add the onions and cook over a low heat until they are very soft. This will take at least 40 minutes – the onions must eventually disappear into the tomato sauce. Some 5 minutes before the end of cooking, add the garlic
- 3 tbsp of olive oil
- 2 red onions, very finely sliced
- 2 garlic cloves, very finely sliced
2
Add the tomatoes and stir to break them up. Season with sea salt and black pepper. Cook slowly, stirring occasionally, for at least 1½ hours. When the sauce is ready, it will be dark red and extremely thick, with no juice at all, and the oil will have come to the surface
4
Lightly dust a flat surface with semolina and a little extra flour, then knead the pasta dough for about 3 minutes or until smooth. If the dough is very stiff and difficult to knead, you may have to put it back in the processor and blend in another whole egg. Cut the dough into eight equal-sized pieces and briefly knead each into a ball. Wrap each ball in cling film and allow to rest for at least 20 minutes, and up to 2 hours
5
To prepare your dough for cutting into tagliarini, put it through a pasta machine, following the manufacturer’s instructions. We put each ball through at the thickest setting ten times, folding the sheet into three each time to get a short thick strip, then turn it by a quarter and put it through the machine again. After ten such rolls and folds the pasta will feel silky. Only then do we reduce the machine setting gradually down to the thinness required. For tagliarini, the setting is 2
6
If rolling by hand, you will have to hand-knead and hand-roll the dough the equivalent of ten times through the machine. This needs to be done in a cool place so that the pasta does not dry out
7
Cut the rolled sheets of pasta dough into very thin ribbons (around 2-3mm) and dust in semolina to prevent them sticking
- semolina flour, for dusting
8
Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil. Add the tagliarini ribbons and cook for 2 minutes, or until just cooked. Drain, reserving a cup of the pasta water, then toss in the warm tomato sauce, adding a little pasta water to bring the pasta and sauce together
9
Serve with plenty of grated Parmesan and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil
- Parmesan, freshly grated
- extra virgin olive oil, for drizzling
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