Hot Italian recipes [ Guest Post]

January 22th 2013 by Silvia

Gourmet

Italian hot recipes - Italian hot chili pepper filled with tuna - pasta recipes
Italy is famous worldwide for the beauty of its landscapes, artistic heritage and fashion, but Italian food is the element connecting the admirers across all categories.

Mediterranean climate makes the "Bel Paese" produce a great variety of raw foods, the basis of the excellent Italian cuisine. Especially in Southern Italy people use extra virgin olive oil, herbs and spices to give the dish markedly determined tastes.

One of the most used spices is the Calabrian chili, now cultivated in many warm regions: it does not reach very high levels of spiciness (such as Mexican ones) but it is ideal to prepare tasty delicacies.

Italian recipes - Italian hot chili pepper
In Italian cuisine the chili is found in many forms: raw, dried and milled, filled with tuna, in cream, in oil or vinegar, but also within typical goods like the “nduja” (hot spreadable pork salami), the “coppiette” (dried slices of pork fillet with chili and fennel), or the “rosa marina” (spreadable small fish babies and chili).

The most famous and popular recipes are definitely “spaghetti aglio olio e peperoncino” (with garlic, oil and chili), “Arrabbiata” pasta (with tomato, garlic, oil, chili and parsley) and “bucatini all’Amatriciana” (Amatrice’s way pasta, with bacon, pecorino cheese, tomato and chili).
Let’s have a look at how to cook the original Arrabiata pasta recipe.

Arrabbiata pasta recipe - Italian pasta recipes
INGREDIENTS (serves 4)
500 gr. italian pasta (spaghetti, penne)
600 gr. of mature red tomatoes (or tomato sauce)
3 cloves of garlic
8 tablespoons (1/2 cup) of extra virgin olive oil
2 dried chili peppers
salt
parsley

PREPARATION
Boil 2,5 litres of water for the pasta and add 40 gr. of salt when boiling
In a pan, fry the chopped garlic and the milled chili peppers in the olive oil until garlic is golden
Put the tomatoes in a mixer and, once finished, add them in the pan and cook over high heat for 3-5 minutes after the sauce is boiling.
Throw the pasta into the water and drain it “al dente” (it generally means to cook it 1 or 2 minutes less than reported on the package)
Skip the pasta into the pan with the hot tomato sauce over high heat, cover with chopped parsley and enjoy your italian pasta all’arrabbiata!

Arrabbiata pasta recipe - italian recipes - italian pasta
Do you feel like to try some “hot” Italian recipes?

This is a guest post written by Daniele Ibba:
Natural born italian. World citizen. Passionate about rallies, web, marketing and food, now looking for a new job. Last year launched his www.peperoncinipiccanti.com an italian food blog with hot recipes and some tricks to better grow hot chili peppers at home.