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spaghetti alla trasteverina

spaghetti alla trasteverina

As Asterix used to say, ‘These Romans are crazy!’ This is a receipe that I found in one of my mother’s old cookbooks from the mid 1960s, which I was really curious to try out. Roman cooking has a few thousand years’ reputation for extravagance and ‘more is more,’ so I wasn’t that surprised to see this combination, which is named after the Roman quarter of Trastevere.


In the UK we'd call this kind of combination 'surf and turf'... in Italy it's "mare e montagne' - 'sea and the mountains!'


WHAT YOU'LL NEED TO DO
(scroll down for the full method)

  • prepare the ingredients

  • make the tomato sauce

  • cook the mushrooms

  • boil the pasta

  • combine pasta and sauce

  • add 1/3 mushrooms, combine

  • plate and garnish

spaghetti alla trasteverina

INGREDIENTS

FOR FOUR PEOPLE

  • 800g tomato polpa

  • 2 large garlic cloves

  • 600-900g chestnut mushrooms

  • fresh parsley

  • 1 tblspn butter

  • 1 tin tuna in EVO

  • 4-6 anchovy fillets


PASTA

400g dry spaghettoni

/ spaghetti / bucatini


MANTECATURA (?)

minimal

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METHOD

Cook a basic marinara sauce (polpa and garlic) and about 5 minutes before you think you’ve reduced it enough, add half of a tin of tuna in olive oil, which you’ve previously drained. Set the sauce aside. In a separate pan cook the mushrooms in garlic, some butter and at least 5 anchovy fillets. You want quite a a fishy, salty taste to remain on the mushrooms.

Cook the pasta and when it’s just past ‘al dente’ transfer and it to the tomato sauce pan, with some of the water from the pasta if it needs loosening. Sprinkle and stir in gently about 1/3rd of the mushrooms and a handful of torn parsley leaves, holding back the rest for topping as you plate. If you’re not that crazy about tuna in a tomato sauce, like me, just be sparing with it and sprinkle a little on each portion, then some of the mushrooms that weren’t added to the sauce, some flat parsley leaves, and cayenne pepper and pecorino to taste.

NUTRITION per serving

  • KCAL: 543

  • Fat (g): 11.5

  • Sat Fat (g): T3.1

  • Carb (g): 82.8

  • Sug (g): 9.5

  • Fibre(g): 4.5

  • Prot (g): 29.6

  • Salt (g): 1.44

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