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When I was about five years old, circa Y2K, I developed my first crush. He was a handsome, smart, funny, and incredibly charming TV star. So you can imagine my disappointment when I discovered the show I’d been watching with my grandfather, M*A*S*H, was filmed decades before my birth, and the object of my affection, Alan Alda, had been happily married since the ’50s.
I’m pleased to report that I’ve recovered from the heartbreak and that, at nearly 90 years old, Alda is still cooking up classics in Hollywood and in the kitchen.
Alan Alda’s 5-Ingredient, No-Boil Pasta Bake
Alda appeared on The Rachel Ray Show in 2018 to promote his appearance in Ray Donovan and to share his favorite dinner recipe: Maccheroni all’Ultima Moda 1841 alla Napoletana.
Don’t be intimidated by the name—this no-boil, one-pan bake requires just five simple ingredients and features a smart shortcut.
It seems Alda found the recipe in the 1982 cookbook Giuliano Bugialli’s Classic Techniques of Italian Cooking. Bugialli, a food writer and historian who devoted his life to researching Italian cuisine, traced the original recipe back to 1841. He believed that this might actually be the first documented time pasta and tomato sauce (instead of whole tomatoes) were combined in the same dish.
It’s “the earliest version I have seen in print of the magical combination of pasta and tomato sauce,” he wrote. “I could not believe that this archetypal combination was that new.”
When Bugialli tried the original recipe with dried pasta, he found that the tomato flavor was “incomparably good,” but the pasta turned out “gummy” and “unacceptable to modern tastes.”
So he altered the recipe with a genius twist: Instead of boiling the pasta, he simply soaked it in olive oil for about 20 minutes before mixing it with the other ingredients and baking. The result? Perfectly cooked pasta, every time.
How to Make Alan Alda’s Pasta BakeIngredients
1 pound any short tubular pasta, preferably imported Italian (it looks like Alda used ditali, but rigatoni and penne would also work well)
Three 28-ounce cans imported Italian tomatoes, including the juice, or 5 pounds very ripe summer tomatoes, sliced 1/2-inch-thick
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
Directions
Pour the olive oil into a bowl. Add the pasta and mix very well. Let the pasta soak in the oil for about 20 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Add the canned tomatoes and all the juice to the bowl along with salt and pepper to taste. Mix very well, then transfer to a Pyrex casserole 14 inches in diameter.
Bake for about 45 minutes, mixing two or three times. Remove the casserole from the oven and sprinkle the cheese over the pasta mixture. Mix very well and then transfer to a serving dish. Serve immediately without adding extra cheese.
Tips, Tricks, and Tweaks
You can use fresh tomatoes if you want, according to Bugialli: “Cut them into 1/2-inch thick slices and alternate layers of tomatoes and pasta with tomatoes as top and bottom layers. Do not mix even while baking.”
Alda uses a little less olive oil than is called for—somewhere between 1/2 cup and 3/4 cup.
“This is not in the recipe, this is something I do: I put tin foil over the top,” Alda said. I imagine he does this to ensure even cooking and browning without drying the pasta out.
The recipe calls for a “14-inch” casserole dish, but your trusty 9×13 will get the job done just fine.
Related: Frank Sinatra Loved This Candy So Much He Was (Probably) Buried With It
Read the original article on ALLRECIPES
Dining and Cooking