I keep not posting another recipe, and I promised to put up another one yonks ago, so let me go get a drink and I'll come back and tell you how to make puttanesca. It's delicious, it's easy, it looks and tastes impressive, and it can be made with all shelf-stable ingredients.
On the one hand, puttanesca is just a simple pasta-with-red-sauce dish. It's a bowl of spaghetti, nothing more. Not even any protein to speak of. At the same time, though, it's incredibly rich and strong and resonant—a meal with positively Lovecraftian depths.
Here's what you're gonna need: A can of anchovies. Some garlic. Some oil. A big can of tomatoes. Some capers. Some black olives. Some red pepper flakes. And some pasta. That's it. Here we go.
Start by dumping some oil in a pan—a couple of tablespoons is probably enough, but I like to use more. Vegetable oil is fine if that's what you have, olive oil is better. Get it hot over a flame as high as you prefer.
Open the can of anchovies. A recipe will typically tell you to use two or three of the fillets, and I did that for a long time, but it usually meant tossing most of the can. So use more. It's fine.
I generally use about half the can these days, and snack on the rest with white wine while I'm cooking. But however many or few you use, you're going to want to chop them up fine—just go end-to-end on the fillets, chopping every few millimeters.
When the anchovies are cut up fine and the oil is hot, lower the flame a bit, dump them in the pan, and stir. They'll basically dissolve, and anyone else in the apartment will immediately be thrilled at your abilities—anchovies evaporating in oil smells like a whole meal.
When the anchovies are on their way—within a minute or two of putting them in is fine—dump in a mess of diced or minced or sliced garlic. However you like to prep garlic for dumping it in oil, do it that way, and do as much as you like.
When the garlic starts to turn golden and give up its smell, add a big can of tomatoes. I usually use diced, but I recently discovered that I was out of those and put a can of whole in the blender instead and it worked great—smooth and solid and delicious.
Turn the heat back up to get the tomatoes cooking, and let them work their magic with the oil and garlic and anchovy goo for a while. Not like half an hour or anything—ten minutes, maybe? Less if you like the tomatoes to still have a bit of brightness to them when you serve.
When the tomatoes are bubbling and absorbing delicious flavors, taste them with—ah, damn it. Hold on.
So one of the glories of making puttanesca is that you get to taste the sauce over and over again as you're cooking with a hunk of baguette. But of course we don't have baguettes now. So I don't know, blow on a spoonful or something. Sigh. Okay. Back to it.
When the tomatoes are ready, add the black olives. Not canned, you bastard—good kalamatas, or something similar. I'd always bought in bulk, but jarred black olives are surprisingly serviceable. I've got like four jars stashed away right now.
I like to rip the olives in half with my fingers, one at a time, before putting them in the sauce. It leaves them a good size, and I like to think that tearing rather than cutting lets them infuse the sauce a bit more. (Also, if you tear them, you find any stray pits.)
When the olives are in, add a jar of capers, drained. If you've made it this far, you know how much you like capers, so that many is how big of a jar you want. I like capers a lot, so maybe two jars.
(If you don't actually know how much you like capers, we're talking like three to six ounces dry weight here. Something like that. Read the label.)
Oops—I knew I forgot something. I was gonna tag @CallieKhouri on this, since she nudged me a while ago. Hi!
And it's at this point that you add the red pepper flakes. Puttanesca holds up well against a fair amount of heat—it's robust as all get-out. If you like that, go for it. But you can make it without any, frankly, and even if you're not a heat person, a little gives it an edge.
Traditionally, puttanesca is a long-pasta dish. I'd say a fettuccine, for oomph, though a lot of recipes seem to choose linguini. But you know what I like it with? Campanelle. Because the capers and olive shards get lodged in it.
Make puttanesca with campanelle, and you can just eat it with a goddamn big-ass spoon.
And that's it. That's the whole meal. It's great with fresh bread, as noted, if you have it, sigh, and with a sharpish white wine. But even just on its own, like I say, it's just such a complete and satisfying meal.
And honestly, I'm 100% serious about you not having to care about proportions here. Just mark down how much of everything you use the first time, and if it feels imbalanced, tweak it the next time out. But my approach is a jar of this and a can of that, and it works great.
The sauce as I described it will do well with a pound box of pasta, btw, so adjust the tomatoes up or down depending on how many you're trying to serve. But beyond that, just just trust it, and it'll work great.
