The Best Kept Secret to Professional Pasta Sauce

About author / Amy Powell

World traveler; gourmet 30 minute meals; lover of exotic ingredients; winner on FoodTV's Chefs vs City; graduate French Culinary Institute. Her recipes will tantalize your taste buds.

Pasta, the simplest of meals, would seem one of the easiest dishes to make at home to rival the professionals. Yet again and again I find myself humbled in the hands of a chef who presents a plate of noodles, often simply adorned with a sauce consisting of little more than olive oil and breadcrumbs, and I am blown away. Never, I think, do I make pasta as good as this simple dish before me.

Yes, most pasta sauces are simple. But even the most visually basic can hide a secret ingredient or two giving it the extra je ne sais quoi that we often fail to find in our own kitchens. A Bolognese for instance, might appear to be just the usual combination of ground meats and tomatoes. But what you don’t see is the finely minced chicken livers that slowly melt into the sauce as the meat simmers for hours. It is a flavor hard to pick out and after long cooking impossible to see, but it might be that little thing that takes the sauce form basic to outstanding.

When it comes to pasta, my favorite secret ingredient is the fish we are taught to fear: the anchovy. Sure, by itself, even a good anchovy can be aggressive. But cooked into a sauce, the miniature fish has a way of dissolving into olive oil, mingling with garlic, and coating a noodle with an extra dimension of flavor. It is barely detectable, but like the greatest secret ingredients it can take that otherwise ordinary spaghetti with olive oil and breadcrumbs and bring out an unexpected pop of flavor.

One the classic pasta combinations, puttanesca, actually celebrates the anchovy along with briny capers and plump olives, all stewed together with tomato sauce and plenty of garlic. You might be reaching for the breath mints immediately after but there is no denying that the sauce packs a punch.

My first encounter with the magic of the dissolving anchovy was a friend’s recipe for orchiette with chickpeas. His instructions called for four fillets, an alarming number for the anchovy apprehensive. But I watched as they quickly broke up in a hot pan of olive oil, chili flakes, and garlic, melting into the simple sauce that would go on to coat the orchiette and chickpeas, a simple yet perfect plate when garnished with a scatter of chopped parsley.

I have since worked anchovies into other bean dishes, like linguine with white wine, kale, lemon, and cannellini beans. Just one fillet melted into the olive oil base is enough to give the sauce a boost without appearing fishy.

Anchovy can also add dimension and balance to dishes heavy on bitter vegetables, like broccoli, romanesco, cauliflower, or eggplant. Cooked broccoli or romanesco just needs a toss with garlic, olive oil, anchovy, and maybe a splash of heavy cream. Cauliflower, roasted in tiny florets, can do the same thing, offset with a handful of toasted breadcrumbs for crunch. As for the eggplant, Pasta alla Norma, the classic tomato and eggplant sauce, takes well to an update with the addition of one small anchovy.

For the truly bold, there is always straight anchovy sauce. Chef Jacob Kennedy in his book The Geometry of Pasta suggests melting the equivalent of five ounces of anchovy fillets in olive oil with one thinly sliced onion and some white wine. He tosses the thickened sauce with some fresh bigoli, a whole wheat pasta. Kennedy warns "the hue of the sauce is …unappetizing" but says for those who love anchovies, the sauce is "the bomb." For the rest of us, there’s always starting small, sneaking in a single fillet here and there, that even the pickiest eater many never outright detect.

Serves/Makes: 4

• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 anchovy fillet (if packed in salt, rinse)
• 1 pinch red chile flakes
• 1 can (28 ounce size) peeled tomatoes, crushed by hand
• 8 fresh basil leaves, torn
• 1 medium eggplant
• salt and black pepper
• 1 pound penne pasta
• 2 ounces mozzarella cheese