Puttanesca

I cook pasta at least once a week, actually that sentence should probably read I cook Pasta Puttanesca about once a week.  I cook pasta more often but serve it with different sauces on the other days.  Puttanesca, or prostitutes pasta if you want to be accurate about where the name derives, is the house (I’m not sure what this says about the house but still…)  favourite sauce – as voted for by me and the kids.  My partner doesn’t like  olives so I do a different sauce for him…

Is it all 2 year olds that prefer hands to cutlery or just mine?

Although it does use a few store cupboard ingredients it is very much a kitchen garden sauce, especially the way I make it, with a decent amount of both tomato and parsley.  Intriguingly I did a quick search for puttanesca recipes on the net as I was writing this and although I’ve always made it with lots of parsley, many of the recipes substitute basil instead.  Depends on the palate of the prostitute perhaps?

Puttanesca Sauce (this is enough sauce for about 350g of dry pasta – I usually use spaghetti).  Incidently I usually use more parsley than shown in the pic below – my plants are looking a bit overharvested so I thought I’d give them a bit of a rest this week.

• 3 tbpns olive oil
• 6 large tomatoes or 1 pint of passata or 1 can tomatoes
• 1 onion – finely chopped
• 1 clove garlic – crushed
• 1 tblspn capers
• 4 anchovy fillets
• 1 hot chilli or 1 tsp chilli paste
• 20 black olives (I use Kalamata)
• 1 large bunch flat leaf parsley – chopped

Heat the oil and fry the onion until soft, add the garlic and stir.  Add the anchovies and chilli and fry until the anchovies disintegrate.  Add the tomatoes.  Cook until the tomatoes dissolve and take on a sauce consistency.  Add the olives, capers and half the parsley.  Cook for another couple of minutes.

Combine with cooked pasta of choice – I particularly enjoy this sauce with spaghetti.  Transfer to serving plates and top with the remainder of the parsley.  Top with parmesan.  Serve.  Delicious and highly addictive.

To take a look at what others are cooking this week travel over to the Gardener of Eden.