March 19
Mom's Puttanesca
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- Pasta Puttanesca [View Recipe]
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Ingredients
- .33 pound pasta
- 2 cloves garlic
- 10 medium olives
- .5 tablespoon oil
- 4 large anchovies (drained)
- 1 tablespoon capers (drained)
- 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 1 28 ounce can tomatoes
- black pepper
- 2 tablespoons parsley (cleaned and chopped)
- cheese (freshly grated)
Instructions
We start by putting a large pot of water on the stove, covering it, and heating it to cook the pasta.
Meanwhile, we smash the garlic cloves with the side of our knife (carefully), discard the peels, add a pinch of salt, and mince. In the same way, we pit the olives by carefully smashing them with the side of our chef knife and discarding the pits. The olives are chopped; yielding ¼ cup.
In a large sauté pan, we heat the oil over medium-low heat with the garlic and anchovies. When the garlic starts to sizzle and is fragrant and the anchovies are melting into the oil, we add the olives, capers, and red pepper flakes. We stir for a minute and add the liquid from the can of tomatoes. The tomatoes themselves are left in the can and puréed with our immersion blender before adding them to the sauce.
The heat on the sauce is raised as the water for cooking the pasta comes to a boil. We add a pinch of salt and the linguine to the water, stir, and cook according to the package directions.
The sauce is gently simmered and, right before the pasta is drained, we taste the sauce for seasoning. We add some freshly ground black pepper and parsley. The drained pasta is put back in the large pasta pot and some of the sauce is ladled in.
We toss the pasta to coat it with the sauce and serve it topped with additional sauce and some parmesan.
- Peas
- Mesclun Salad topped with Bacon-wrapped Barbecue Scallops (leftover Henry's Bistro)
Our son had himself a day of extremes yesterday. In the morning, he and Chris went with his preschool class to the B&O Rail Museum. In the afternoon he got quite sick to his stomach. He has been running a fever ever since.
Our daughter had her second lacrosse practice before dinner. She was much stronger today than last time around. She even won 4 out of 5 challenges against other girls. But she was most proud of her monkey bar ability afterwards.
We watched alot of Tom & Jerry (unintended by-product of MythTV). At least it kept our son entertained and relatively inactive. Something that we were grateful for when his fever returned in the evening.
The baby learned how to climb up onto the sofa today. As if we didn't have enough to worry about.
Dinner was almost entirely inspired by Robin's Mom's group. There had been some discussion about puttanesca during Mom's night out (this past Thursday). That was enough for Robin, so a simple Saturday pasta turns into something a little more special, which we certainly needed.
Not only did Mom's night out provide inspiration, but it also provided salad—by way of leftovers. With meals like this, it is too bad Mom's night out is only once a month!
The (healthy) kids ate pasta without the sauce. We fully expect their eating habits to become more adventuresome someday. But for now, we always make sure that we reserve some plain sauce for them.