Pasta con La Sarsa Lorda

Do I have your attention? Dirty sauce??? Hmmm. A friend of mine at times makes her own tomato sauce by simply sauteing roughly chopped tomatoes. When I told my mother about this, she said “yes, that’s called pasta con la sarsa lorda”. Literally, that means pasta with dirty sauce, because the tomatoes are not skinned and seeded, only the green stem end is cut out, hence dirty. My mom went on to tell me that traditionally Pasta Con La Sarsa Lorda is served with the Perciatelli pasta or any other tubular spaghetti like bucatini, or maccheroncelli. You can also use a tubular macaroni of the penne variety, mostacciolli, pasta al ceppo, etc. This is not a reduced sauce, so to soak up the liquid of this fresh tomato sauce we use tubular pastas. So here is my mom’s recipe.

Pasta Con La Sarsa Lorda – Ingredients – Serves 4

3-5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, enough to cover the bottom of a large skillet

1/2 chopped Vidalia or other sweet onion

3 cloves minced garlic

2-3 pounds of chopped plum tomatoes (stems removed)

3-5 fresh basil leaves

sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper to taste

1 pound box of Perciatelli pasta, boiled in well salted water

Grated Parmeggiano Reggiano

Directions –

Cover the bottom of a very large skillet with extra virgin olive oil over a medium heat.

Add the 1/2 Vidalia chopped onion and saute to a caramel brown color to make the sauce sweet and flavorful.

Add the minced garlic and continue sauteing for about 4 more minutes, but don’t let the garlic get brown.

Add the chopped tomatoes to the skillet and stir it up to combine well.

Simmer the Sarsa Lorda, stirring regularly to cook down the tomatoes so they aren’t too watery. Add salt and pepper to your taste and the basil leaves, and stir.

Simmer the tomatoes on a low-medium flame.

Boil the water for the Perciatelli in the meantime.

Drain the pasta and add it to the sauce in the skillet and mix.

Serve adding fresh cracked pepper and/or cheese if you like.

Adjust the onions and garlic according to your taste. I love bringing the onions to a good brown color. I also like using yellow or orange tomatoes, and combining whatever tomatoes I have around, but the plum tomatoes are the best because they have a thinner skin. Mmmmmmmm…enjoy and have fun putting your slant on this, after all, it is just the fresh chopped tomatoes that serve as the base for this recipe.

Pasta con La Sarsa Lorda (Pasta with dirty sauce)