Jamie Oliver Would Pick This Italian Dish As His Last Meal

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Chefs' professional lives are all about food and cooking, so it shouldn't be surprising that when they talk, they'll sometimes quiz each other about what they'd want for their final meal. Photographer Melanie Dunea wrote two books based on the concept in which she photographed some famous chefs and asked them to share their desired last meals. British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver was one of her subjects in 2007's "My Last Supper: 50 Great Chefs and their Final Meals," who looked outside the U.K. to Italy for his answer, saying it would be a spicy pasta called spaghetti all'arrabbiata.

The dish's tomato sauce is called "arrabbiata," which means "angry" in Italian, for its heat. Oliver specified that he wanted it to be made with three types of chiles (although he didn't name them), and called the pasta "soft, sweet, and silky — my perfect comfort food." It's often made with dried chiles or red pepper flakes, but options like fresh chiles or Calabrian chili paste, a flavor booster Giada De Laurentiis loves adding to dishes, can also be used. A simple arrabbiata sauce is made by lightly sauteing the chiles or flakes in olive oil with garlic (and sometimes onion) before adding canned San Marzano tomatoes or puree and letting it cook. Oliver's accompanying recipe in the book follows the same basic formula, finishing the pasta with crispy homemade breadcrumbs.

He rounded out his imagined final meal with a dessert of creamy rice pudding topped with caramelized roasted peaches. To drink, he chose a bottle of Hoegaarden beer, a Belgian wheat beer created by 15th-century monks in the village it was named after.

Jamie Oliver has also shared other versions of his favorite pasta that have different twists. Spaghetti all'arrabiatta is labeled as a similar "desert-island dish" in his "Food Tube" series, in which he uses lemon zest for the sauce instead of onion, and adds vodka and umami-rich anchovies (via YouTube). He has another, more complicated version that includes fennel seeds, and homemade garlic and chili confit and chili oil in his 2014 cookbook, "Jamie's Comfort Food."

Arrabbiata sauce can incorporate more flavor from other ingredients as well, such as capers, black olives, red wine, and herbs like basil and parsley. The dish was first created in Rome, where it often includes pancetta, the Italian cousin of bacon, which could also be used in its place. There are also alternatives to cooking it yourself, with jarred brands of arrabbiata like Rao's available.

Although Oliver makes the sauce with spaghetti, it's a good match for short pasta like penne or rigatoni, too. You can also do a spicy swap for marinara in dishes like chicken or eggplant parmigiana, lasagna, and baked ziti, or as a dip for mozzarella sticks or fried calamari. Add some heat to seafood pastas by making clam or shrimp arrabbiata sauces, or even use it as the fiery tomato base for a pizza.