This is the poorest of dishes for the days when the seas are as empty as one’s belly, when even the clams have forsaken one. Fashioned from seawater—sometimes bits of seaweed—a tomato or two, some fat, firm garlic, a dried red chile, and a thread of good oil or a spoonful of sweet, rendered pork fat, hoarded from an easier day.
Recipe information
Yield
serves 6
Ingredients
Preparation
Step 1
In a large, shallow bowl, toss the tomatoes with the sea salt and permit the tomatoes to give up their juices while you proceed.
Step 2
With a mezzaluna or a very sharp knife, mince the salt pork with the garlic to a fine paste. In a small sauté pan over a medium flame, warm the olive oil and sauté the paste, taking care not to color it. Add the chile and set the mixture aside.
Step 3
Cook the pasta in abundant, boiling, sea-salted water to al dente, draining it, reserving 1/2 cup of its cooking water and placing it in the bowl with the sea-salted tomatoes. Add the garlic/chile-scented fat and the still-hot, reserved cooking water, tossing the pasta over and over to coat each strand thoroughly. Present the pasta in warmed, shallow bowls. One might wish to substitute bottled clam juice for the reserved pasta cooking water, giving the humble condiment some stronger reminiscence of the sea, of the fugitive bivalves, thus diluting, though, the romance of the dish.
