Brown chana penne in a fiery garlic and dried chilli tomato sauce, reduced until it clings, with torn basil and olive oil stirred through at the end.
Ingredients
From the TrooFoodz pantry
- Sprouted Brown Channa Penne 1 pack (180 g)
Fresh
- Tinned whole tomatoes, hand-crushed 400 g
- Garlic, thinly sliced 6 cloves
- Dried red chillies, crumbled 3
- Extra virgin olive oil 5 tbsp
- Basil leaves, torn a handful
- Flat-leaf parsley, chopped 2 tbsp
- Salt to taste
- Black pepper to taste
Method
-
Infuse the oil
Warm four tablespoons of olive oil over a low flame with the garlic and crumbled chilli until the garlic is barely gold. Rushing this burns the garlic and ruins the sauce.
-
Crush and simmer
Crush the tomatoes by hand into the pan, season, and simmer 15 minutes until the sauce darkens and thickens noticeably.
-
Boil the penne
Cook the penne in well-salted boiling water for up to seven minutes. It is a legume pasta, not wheat — start tasting at five, as it goes from firm to soft quickly.
-
Save the water
Reserve a cup of the cooking water before draining. The starch in it is what will bind the sauce to the pasta.
-
Drain gently
Drain without shaking the colander hard. There is no gluten holding these tubes together, so a few will split — that is the trade for a maida-free pasta.
-
Finish in the pan
Toss the penne through the sauce with a splash of the reserved water for one minute, then stir in the remaining raw olive oil, basil and parsley off the heat.
Why this works
Legume pasta releases more starch than durum wheat, so the reserved cooking water emulsifies the sauce quickly and clings well. Finishing the pasta in the pan rather than pouring sauce over it lets the tubes absorb liquid in the final minute. The raw olive oil added off the heat keeps its peppery aroma, which would cook away in the sauce.
Make it your own
- Sprouted Brown Channa Penne → Sprouted Moth Beans Fusilli The spirals grip this sauce even better; expect a slightly earthier flavour.
- Dried red chillies → Fresh red chilli, sliced Brighter and fruitier heat, though less of the dried chilli's smoky depth.
- Tinned tomatoes → Ripe fresh tomatoes, blanched and peeled Lighter and sweeter; simmer ten minutes longer to reduce the extra water.
