The Pasta I'll Be Making for the Rest of My Life

Aka Spaghetti all'Assassina

There have been a few times in my adult life when I can remember trying a certain recipe or ingredient, then stopping mid-bite and thinking, in the best possible way: Well, I’ve never tasted anything like that before. It happened when I first had Maida Heatter’s Mexican Chocolate Cookies and found myself delightfully shocked by a spike of black pepper and cayenne. It happened in the late 90s, when I decided to make Diane Kochilas’s Pasta with Sheep’s Milk Yogurt — the way the tang of the yogurt contrasted with sweet caramelized onions was so novel, so right, I instantly knew I’d be making it for the rest of my life. (Still going strong there!) And it happened last October, in the Adriatic port city of Bari, Italy, when I was served a beautifully restrained tangle of Spaghetti all’Assassina. The dish has become a kind of signature recipe of Bari — invented, in fact, by the restaurant chef who had prepared it for me — and translates to “murdered pasta” because it starts by frying uncooked spaghetti in olive oil over high heat, essentially burning it before proceeding with the stirring and the saucing.

I had been told that this pasta — shown above — was famous in Bari, but still, in retrospect I don’t think I was quite prepared for what I was about to eat. The restaurant, Al Sorso Preferito, was one stop on a food tour of Puglia that had been packed with destination-worthy dishes — sea-salt-crusted king red prawns, a fresh, creamy burrata made on a dairy farm before our eyes, custard-filled pasticiotto, to name just a few — and I was way more focused on the octopus we were about to be served, having witnessed a fisherman pulling one out of his net only an hour earlier. But I knew something was up with this spaghetti after one bite. The char of the pasta created not only a deep, smoky flavor but also a subtle crunch, and the tomatoes didn’t sauce the spaghetti so much as infuse the noodles with a sweet concentrated richness. It was so good and so unusual, that I almost went into panic mode. This is the only city where I can eat this dish? How was I going to remember it? Would it be possible in any way to replicate the recipe in my own New York kitchen? Later that night, armed with a little bit of info from the restaurant (they are legendarily stingy with specifics) I jotted a few notes in my journal with my best guess for how I might try Spaghetti all’Assassina at home…