There have been a handful of cult-followed Alison Roman recipes on the NYT Cooking site, and this pasta was one of them a few months ago.

Historically, I have not loved pasta with red sauce, but this is certainly a step up. The sauce is richer and less watery. Somehow both the shallots and anchovies dissolve in the sauce like magic. I will not pressure you with anchovies per se, butttt I do pinky promise that they dissolve into nothing once they’re in the pot. They leave behind a depth of flavor and NO fishy remnants. Promise!

Her original recipe tells you to save half of the tomato situation to spread on toast, but I tinkered with some yields and say just use the whole deal. We find that 12 oz. of pasta feeds our family (2 adults, 2 kids) along with a salad. If you like leftovers? Just make the whole pound.

Because vegetarian pasta can be a little flat, and I looovvee texture, we added a garlicky breadcrumb topping. I’ll include the notes here, but you can also skip it to save time.