Delfina's Pasta Pomodoro

The best red sauce. Ever.

There are very few complex, high-effort recipes in my repertoire. There are even fewer that are also vegetarian. In fact, there's exactly one: Delfina's Spaghetti Pomodoro. Despite its deceptively simple ingredients - tomatoes, garlic, basil, olive oil, parmesan, pasta - this recipe takes hours and multiple techniques to make. It. Is. So. Worth. It. (For the record, I do NOT make the pasta itself from scratch, this is all about the sauce!)

🎥You can watch my Instagram story of making this recipe here, and the preview via TikTok:

Note: I don't modify the original recipe in any meaningful way, but I will transpose it here with clarifying comments and a format that I think will be easier to follow as the original reads almost like a technical spec. Except, all the seasonings are to taste, I'll include my measurements.

Intro From the Original Recipe

Sixteen years after opening Delfina, the restaurant’s signature spaghetti remains on the menu, a simple dish with a cult following. The secret is partially cooking the pasta in water and finishing it in the sauce. You’ll have extra sauce; it freezes well.

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Ingredients

While the ingredient list is simple, the quality of those ingredients is absolutely key to getting the most delicious pomodoro sauce, well, ever.

• 2 (28-ounce) cans peeled whole plum tomatoes (such as Di Napoli) [I use Di Napoli Bianco]

• 3 cups water

• 5 garlic cloves, peeled

• Kosher salt [3 tsp]

• ½ cup extra virgin olive oil [use a high-quality, raw, unfiltered, first cold press like this one for extra depth to the sauce]

• Freshly ground pepper to taste [½ tsp]

• Hot red pepper flakes to taste [1 tsp]

• Leaves from ½ bunch fresh basil [about 3-4 tablespoons]

• 1 pound high-quality durum wheat spaghetti (such as Rustichella d’Abruzzo) [their Fusilli Col Buco worked out really well for me, note there was no extra sauce]

• 1½ ounces “finishing” (flavorful, high-quality) extra virgin olive oil [I use the same one as above same one as above for extra depth to the sauce]

• Freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese [Sartori Cheese Parmesan Sarvecchio Reserve is the best I've found, grating it at home is key]

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Preparation

This recipe takes me a little less than 4 hours in total to prepare.

Prepare the tomatoes

1. Remove the tomatoes from the can, one at a time

2. Break each one open and scrape out the seeds with your hand, allowing the juice and seeds to fall back into the can [also remove any tough spots or skin that you might come across]

3. Drop the seeded tomatoes into a bowl

4. When all the tomatoes are seeded, break them up with your hands

5. Strain the juice from the cans back over them

6. Pour the 3 cups of water into the cans, then pour that through the strainer into the bowl with the tomatoes

Note: Depending on the mesh size of your strainer, steps 5 and 6 might be easier or harder to do. Mine is quite fine, so this is a bit difficult, I pour the juice/puree into it and stir, smashing the bits with a spoon until as much of the tomato passes through the mesh as possible. The water in step 6 also helps dilute and get more of it to pass through, but I always have some tomato "meat" left over that I toss (along with the seeds).

Prepare the garlic

1. Place the [peeled and cleaned whole] garlic cloves on a cutting board

2. Smash each one with the side of a chef’s knife and smear it slightly with a sprinkling of kosher salt

To the stove!

1. Scrape the smashed garlic and salt into an 8-quart heavy-bottom pot [make sure it is a large pot, you will need room for the pasta!]

2. Add the olive oil, set over medium-low heat, cover and stew slowly until the garlic is soft and melted in texture but not browned, about 10 minutes [keep the temperature low or your garlic will toast rather than "melt"; if it does get a little toasty/brown, it's not the end of the world, though you do want it to be quite soft]

3. Add the [crushed] tomatoes along with their juice and the water to the pot

4. Season with some salt, pepper and a touch of hot red pepper flakes [my measurements are included above, feel free to use a smaller quantity of chili flakes, you can always add more later]

5. Turn the heat to high and bring to a boil, skimming the foam but not the oil [don't worry about burning the sauce at this point, there's too much water in it, you want a healthy boil; I usually don't have to do much foam skimming, but if I do I use a small strainer]

6. Reduce the heat to medium-high and cook, uncovered, until the oil has emulsified with the rest of the ingredients and the sauce has reduced by approximately two thirds, about 40 minutes [emulsified = doesn't separate from the rest of the sauce, it can take more or less than 40 minutes]

7. Remove from the heat and stir in 2/3 of the basil leaves [they seem to indicate to put them in whole, I slice them into thin strips so they disperse better in the sauce]

8. You should have about 5 cups of sauce

Prepare the pasta

1. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil

2. Add the pasta and cook for 5 minutes — it will not be cooked through [this is a critical step, we will finish cooking the pasta in the sauce so that it absorbs it and becomes extra delicious]

3. Drain and reserve a large coffee mug (10-12 ounces) of the pasta cooking water

Note: I remove the pasta from the water using tongs and reserve the entire pot of water (though I've never need more than several cups).

Bringing it all together

1. Ladle about 3 cups of the sauce into the pasta pot. (Save the remaining 2 cups for another use.) [when using the fusilli col buco, I did not have any extra sauce]

2. Add the partially cooked pasta to the sauce, along with about 8 ounces of the pasta cooking water and bring to a boil

3. Continue to cook rapidly for approximately 7 more minutes, tossing and stirring to prevent sticking to the bottom of the pot

4. Add more pasta water if the pasta needs to cook a little more This process allows the pasta to absorb some of the sauce. Additionally, the pasta releases starch which thickens the sauce and helps it cling to the pasta. This way it doesn’t run off of the spaghetti and sit on the bottom of the bowl. The last bite of pasta should bring the last bit of sauce with it. [YAS]

Finishing

1. Adjust the seasoning with salt, pepper and red pepper flakes to taste

2. Drizzle with the finishing extra virgin olive oil

3. Roughly tear the remaining basil leaves and toss them in [again, mine are thinly sliced]

Serving

Divide between serving plates, and top with lots of freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

Note: Grating the parmesan at home is key to that restaurant-like result, primarily because the cheese has much more moisture in it than the pre-shredded stuff (but if that's all you can get, I've found the Kraft finely shredded one to be the best of the most commonly available brands).

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Reference

The original: Delfina's Spaghetti Pomodoro