Alla Carrettiera
Garlic, chili, parsley, and oil, with cherry tomatoes to distinguish it from aglio e olio. A cart-driver's sauce from Campania, designed to be made on the road.
Pasta alla carrettiera belongs to the road. Its name refers to the carrettiere, the cart driver, who needed a meal that could come together fast with ingredients carried in the cart. Oil, garlic, chili, and parsley are the constants. The cherry tomatoes are the Campanian touch, quick to break down, quick to release their juice, quick to coat the pasta. It is a sauce defined by speed.
Only a few ingredients
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Medium heat. Enough to coat the bottom generously. This sauce needs a slick base.
Garlic
Sliced thin. Let it colour gently, golden, not brown. The moment it releases its smell into the oil is the moment for the chili.
Chili Pepper
Dried, crumbled. It sizzles immediately. That is what you want. Do not let it burn.
Cherry Tomatoes
Halved or whole, crushed with the back of a spoon as they cook. Let them collapse and release their juice, two or three minutes, no more.
Parsley
Flat-leaf, chopped. Generous, the parsley is not a garnish here. It is a defining ingredient.
This is not aglio e olio with parsley.
Alla carrettiera is often described as 'aglio e olio with parsley and tomatoes,' which misses the point. Aglio e olio is built on the garlic-oil emulsion. Alla carrettiera is built on the tomatoes. The juice released by crushed cherry tomatoes is the body of the sauce. Without the tomatoes, you are making a different dish entirely.
Spaghetti
The standard. The thin round strands carry the tomato-and-oil mixture well.
Vermicelli
A Neapolitan alternative, slightly thinner, slightly more delicate.
Ready to cook?
These sources we trust. Each one makes it correctly.
Other sauces from the same region
Marinara
A Neapolitan sauce with no pretensions. Tomato, garlic, oil, basil, oregano, done in the time it takes to boil the pasta. Simplicity is not the same as easy.
Alle Vongole
The sea served on pasta. Clams, white wine, garlic, parsley, nothing added, nothing covered up.
Puttanesca
A bold, pungent sauce of Neapolitan street food. Built on tomatoes, olives, capers, and anchovies, complex, salty, assertive, and unapologetic.
La Genovese
A Neapolitan ragù built on time and onions. The beef is there, but the onions are the sauce, slow-cooked until they collapse entirely into something sweet, dark, and unlike anything else in Campania.
Colatura di Alici
Colatura from Cetara, the direct descendant of Roman garum. Added raw at the end. The anchovy does all the work.
Al Limone
Butter, lemon, and Parmigiano. From the Amalfi Coast, where the lemons are so fragrant they define the landscape. Three ingredients, and every one of them must be excellent.
Alla Nerano
Fried zucchini, aged provolone, basil, and starchy pasta water, a creamy sauce that contains no cream. From the fishing village of Nerano on the Amalfi Coast, made famous by Stanley Tucci.
Alla Natalina
Spaghetti from the Neapolitan countryside, anchovies melted into the oil, walnuts, pine nuts, sultanas, olives, and tomato. Salty, sweet, and completely surprising. The anchovies disappear. Their flavour stays.