Pasta all'ortolana is a vegetarian dish in which you can insert everything, the concept expressed in the title is precisely: season the pasta with everything (or almost) can be found at the moment in the garden.
How to use our preparation for pasta all'ortolana
In a pan with pasta sauce, pour two tablespoons of preparation and fry for a few minutes. Skip the pasta just drained in the sauce, keeping a minimum of cooking water, to prevent it from drying too much, serve hot. Maybe with a light sprinkling of ground pepper.
The recipe for pasta all'ortolana
Given the above it is clear that there is no rule on the ingredients, usually in the vegetable garden you will find aubergines and / or peppers, there are those who insert the zucchini and someone olives, it is a dish in which tomatoes go but usually not the puree, in other words it is not usually a tomato sauce with vegetables but there are those who instead abound with tomatoes and transform it into a sauce. The constant (we do not doubt that if you search long enough you will find a recipe that says something else) is that the vegetables must be cooked together separately and then added to the pasta, so it is not a cold pasta and the dish is served hot. The garlic must be fried and then removed, someone also adds the chilli pepper.
History of pasta all'ortolana
There are no historical anecdotes, after all, as we said, pasta all'ortolana is a label to be filled enough as desired. So much so that in most sources an interregional origin is indicated, but some people claim the origin of the vegetable garden is claimed in Campania. In fact, the mixed vegetables are typical of southern cuisine, just think of the Sicilian caponata and ciambotta (cianfotta in Neapolitan) which is essentially a vegetable stew sometimes with the addition of meat widespread in various versions in Puglia, Basilicata, Irpina, Beneventano , but also Abruzzo and Ventotene. One of the Campania sources that claims the vegetable garden as its regional dish recalls that at home they used to say: let's make cianfotta but without potatoes and season the pasta. There is no doubt that pasta all'ortolana is a classic dish born as a poor dish in the home of farmers who share pasta with what they had in the garden and also for this reason a recipe with codified ingredients has not been established, it was born as a dish that changes with seasonality.