Penne Arrabbiata

My daughter loves Penne Arrabbiata ......I love creamy Penne Arrabbiata .........and my mom loves creamy cheesy Penne Arrabbiata......Glad that I was able to satisfy everyone with one dish.

Arrabbiata means 'Angry' in Italian...I am guessing it has something to do with the heat in the dish because of the chillies ....So here is some  'Angry Pasta'  for everyone.

Ingredients
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• 3 cups Penne, uncooked
• 2 tbsp Olive oil
• 10 cloves of Garlic, crushed
• 3 tsp Red chilli flakes(adjust to taste) or 2 fresh red chillies chopped
• 6 medium ripe Tomatoes 
• 3/4 cup Tomato Puree
• Pepper and salt to taste
• 1 tsp Sugar
• 2 tbsp  fresh Basil , roughly chopped
• 2 tbsp  fresh Parsley , roughly chopped
• 1/2 cup Fresh Cream
• 10 Black olives , sliced
• 1/2 Red capsicum,sliced (optional)
• 1/2 Yellow capsicum, sliced (optional)
• 200 g Mushroom, sliced (optional)

Method

1. Make tomato concasse -Boil 3 cups of water, while the water is coming to boil, make a small 'X' on the tomatoes (as shown above). Drop all the tomatoes into boiling water for few seconds(blanching). Remove from hot water as soon as the skin around the 'X' curls up or loosens. Dip the hot tomatoes into cold water to stop the tomatoes from cooking further. Peel the skin of all the tomatoes and keep aside. Cut the tomatoes and remove the pulp and seeds(keep this aside) and chop up the rest of the tomato. This is Tomato Concasse. I went a step further and passed the pulp and seeds through a sieve to get little more sauce, you can skip this step and discard the pulp and the seeds. The whole idea of tomato concasse is to avoid the seeds and the skin of the tomato.
2. Cook the penne-Bring 6 cups of water to a boil, add generous amount of salt. Drop in the penne and stir once and let it cook for 8 to 9 minutes or till al dente (firm but not hard). Drain the water
3. In a pan heat little oil and fry red capsicum, yellow capsicum and mushroom till it is almost cooked.Transfer to a plate or vessel and keep aside.You can skip this entire step. I like my pasta with some veggies.
4. To the same pan add olive oil, add crushed garlic immediately to the cold olive oil, stir for a minutes and add the tomato concasse and tomato puree and cook for few minutes , add little water or stock if the sauce is very thick(since I used the pulp my sauce was of the right consistency). Let the sauce reduce little. Now add red chilli flakes, pepper, salt and sugar(adjust according to your taste)
5. Add the fried vegetables (if you are using any).Mix well. Now add the cooked penne and mix well.Add in fresh basil and parsley and mix well.Sprinkle some sliced black olives. Now this is Penne Arrabiata.
6. I like my pasta creamy so I went ahead and added cream just before serving the pasta you can also add cheese at this point.
7. Serve with garlic bread.