Hi everyone! This is Nick and this is my first post on vegetarianfork! Today, I’m going to be talking about the amazingness of a checca sauce – but first a little back story!

Growing up, I always had store bought pasta sauces. For all of those who mainly use the store bought sauces so many of us had the privilege of growing up with, the real deal is so much better tasting and so much more fun to make! It wasn’t until the lovely Ruby (my wife and creator of everything you see here) that I ever made a pasta sauce from scratch before! Once I did it, I never went back because the flavors are incomparable, but … I had always used canned stewed tomatoes. And looking back, I think I was a little intimidated by using fresh tomatoes, I have since embraced them and my god, I didn’t know a sauce could be so scrum-di-bi-li-umptous.

For all the rest of you other non-Italians out there (I’m not Italian if you couldn’t already tell from the sauce anecdote) this is what the internet says checca sauce is “Checca sauce is an uncooked tomato sauce used with pasta.[1] Pasta alla checca is an Italian pasta dish using fresh, uncooked tomatoes, basil, fresh mozzarella, olive oil, garlic, salt, and pepper, typically prepared in the summer with fresh ripe tomatoes.” (If you’re really interested here is the full wiki) This is a rather traditional definition of checca, because there are actually tons of varieties, some actually are cooked, some not. From digging around and reading a bit here and there, the real goal is to use the freshest ripest tomatoes possible and not to mess with their natural beautiful flavors by over-complicating the sauce. Sorry to post this at the end of tomato season but hopefully you can get to your local market just in time, here’s the recipe!

Ruby’s backseat bloggin’: This recipe is indicative of what I love about proper Italian food. It’s unfussy yet precarious, beautifully simple, refined but loose and organic – all at the same time! I also love that I can’t ever seem to make it myself as so much of this simple recipe comes down to not only the freshness of the ingredients (please get fresh pasta, farm-fresh tomatoes and basil!) but also the finesse of the toss/water ratio at the very end (see step 6) that makes it so silky and delectable. Unlike ‘throw it in a pan and stir’ me, artful delicacies that rely on subtlety are Nick all day – and that makes me lucky wifey.

Nick's Pasta Checca

• Fresh Linguini Fini or Spaghetti (or whatever long pasta you got!)
• Fresh mozzarella
• Parmesan

The Sauce:

• A basket of the freshest ripest heirloom cherry tomatoes, cut in half.
• Three cloves of garlic, minced
• Olive Oil
• Butter
• Fresh Basil chopped
• Salt and pepper to taste

1. First heat up the butter and oil in a skillet and lightly cook the garlic being careful not to burn it
2. After the garlic is clear, crush the fresh tomatoes into the pan. I like to squeeze them in my hands to get the juice out but you can always just crush them with a spatula or fork.
3. Prepare your pasta as you would while the sauce cooks on low to medium. If you are not using fresh pasta, you might want to start this process first.
4. Once the sauces starts to thicken, I like to add the chopped fresh basil and the fresh mozzarella to get it melty. You know it’s time for this when the tomatoes just start to seem like they would stick to pan soon but don’t.
     
5. Strain the pasta and save a bit of that pasta water to loosen the sauce, then butter and season your pasta until it tastes good on its own (salt, pepper, nutmeg). This will help the sauce coat the pasta as well as ensure that the dish is well seasoned all together
6. Add the pasta to the melty checca sauce and toss adding pasta water as needed.
7. Taste and add a bit of parmesan then viola you have pasta with checca sauce!

Notes: I have tried this recipe with regular store bought cherry tomatoes and it wasn’t as successful. They pick them quite a bit earlier and let the tomatoes ripen of the vine usually which greatly diminishes that plump juicy goodness. With the ones I got from a farmers market it was way better! Also use a generous amount of butter and oil for the garlic to infuse into.