Pasta Puttanesca

         

"A Series of Unfortunate Events"
= best books of my childhood

   According to Klaus Baudelaire, “puttanesca” is Italian for "very few ingredients". Moosewood’s sauce recipe has four basic ingredients with a few toppings added on. The end result is a very thick and tomato-y with some spicy treats from the garlic and seasonings. One part of the dish I was not excited about was the Kalamata olives. I am not an olive person; they're way to salty. I haven’t even tried a martini because the olives scare me. Thankfully, the olives don’t overtake the sauce here and were pretty tolerable.

            I’m not sure if the sauce was supposed to be less thick than mine came out. You’re meant to use a 6oz can of tomato paste, but I used up what was left from my 12oz can I bought for the chili. I think it was probably a bit more than 6oz, because the puttanesca was really thick.

            Moosewood also gives a brief summary of “traditional” puttanesca, which includes anchovies, encouraging you to add them in. It is clarified that if you are a hardcore vegetarian, the sauce is fine without them, which is good for me because I am a no exceptions vegetarian. Although, I did have a dream last night in which I ate a cheeseburger. But, still in dreamland, I forgave myself because I had just given birth to 5 children. The main conclusion: I need to stop watching “Call the Midwife”. And even if I weren’t a hardcore vegetarian, anchovies would still be disgusting and have no place in my puttanesca.

            Slightly below the sauce recipe is a simple addition to make “Pasta Mediterranée”: feta cheese. After trying a bowl of the plain puttanesca, I got a second helping and stirred in some feta cheese. I actually liked it a lot better! It minimized the intensity of the tomato flavor and improved the texture.

            2014 has started off pretty nicely for me!