Food Blog Friday: Spaghetti al Pomodoro from Cake Duchess

Today's recipe comes from Cake Duchess, a blog to which I recently started subscribing.  What  appeals to me about this blog is that it features Italian recipes that are authentic Italian recipes.  What I mean by authentic is that not only would you find these dishes in Italy, but you would find them being cooked in the homes of Italians themselves.  Many of these recipes are for dishes that I can either picture my grandmother cooking or for dishes which she does cook.  They are either the dishes with which I grew up or so similar to them in style that I feel inherently comfortable with them.  Since I generally find it difficult to find good recipes for authentic Italian home cooking, any blog that features it convincingly is bound to get my attention.  I am always looking for ways to expand beyond the dishes I ate growing up.

So, you see, while one might expect that I would go to a blog called Cake Duchess and try a dessert recipe, I decided to try a quintessential pasta dish:  Spaghetti al Pomodoro.  There is absolutely nothing like making a pasta sauce with fresh tomatoes and basil in the summer.  It might be a simple dish, but it is wonderful in its simplicity and incredibly flavorful.  Moreover, this recipe for it here is truly fantastic.

Now, I will admit to having played with the recipe a little bit.  The fact is that pasta al pomodoro is one of those dishes that every Italian will make a little differently.  The basics remain the same, but the details always differ.  So, while the recipe as written is almost exactly how my grandmother makes sauce (tomatoes, basil, onion, olive oil, and no garlic), it isn't how I generally dress a sauce, so I added a 1/4 tsp crushed red chili pepper and one clove of minced garlic.  I also used angel hair pasta instead of spaghetti because I prefer angel hair with lighter sauces like this one.  The result?  A dish that is so good that I have already made it twice.