Charred Red Sauce Spaghetti (Spaghetti all’Assassina)

This is our method for making spaghetti all’assassina—or killer’s spaghetti—a unique dish from Bari, Italy, in which the pasta is cooked start to finish in a skillet. A warm tomato broth is added to the noodles a little at a time, much like the classic technique for risotto. We cook pasta, undisturbed, in an even layer so it chars and crisps, adding texture and flavor. The finished dish is dryish, but pleasantly so, and deliciously intense in flavor, with tasty, crunchy-chewy bits akin to the edges of a baked lasagna. A few things of note: Basic brands of spaghetti, such as Barilla, work best for this, not high-end pastas with a rough, floury appearance, as they tend to release a large amount of starch during cooking. Second, for controlled charring, make sure to use a heavyweight nonstick 12-inch skillet that conducts heat evenly. Lastly, the spaghetti strands must all be parallel when they go into the pan and they remain that way, more or less, throughout cooking.