Simplified puttanesca

A few weeks ago, while I was alone at home, I cooked a spaghetti alla puttanesca, the first in a long time. I keep it simple: I don't add anchovies but sardines and I only put olives because I did not have capers. It was still delicious. I showed it to Wolfie via Facetime. As you may know, Wolfie loves olives just as much as I do. So he asked me to cook some for when he got back. So I made another batch of puttanesca, but without the sardines, so my vegetarian wife could eat it. And also because my son is not too keen on sardines. It was not as flavoursome, but he loved it anyway. Veggie Carrie, who is less fond of olives, less so. But all the same, it's a new family classic. Or father and son classic: simplified puttanesca. Although from what I read, this is pretty close to the original Neapolitan version, which is itself very simple.

Chercher la puttanesca

J'y ai pensé aujourd'hui: ça fait un bail que je n'ai pas blogué sur la puttanesca, ça fait aussi longtemps (mais quand même moins longtemps) que je n'ai pas mangé de puttanesca. Cette photo date de la dernière fois où j'en ai fait une. Je la fait plutôt à la philistine: je mets d'habitude des sardines plutôt que des anchois. Et les pâtes qui accompagnent la sauce sont rarement des spaghetti (oui, je ne mets pas de s à spaghetti, c'est déjà un pluriel, bon). Je songe donc à en manger dans un futur proche. Mais comme je suis un peu vegge, je songe, au lieu d'en faire une philistine, d'aller m'en commander une dans le meilleur restaurant italien que je puisse trouver. Je vais me lancer en quête de la meilleure puttanesca au monde. Rien que ça.Je pars parfois dans des quêtes gastronomiques comme ça: le meilleur hamburger, les meilleurs fish and chips, le meilleur pouding chômeur, etc. Cette fois, ce sera la puttanesca. J'irai dans les bordels napolitains, s'il le faut (non c'est pas vrai). Ou en tout cas, je pourrais saisir l'occasion pour enfin revoir l'Italie.

Improvised pasta alla puttanesca

A week ago, I was alone here while my wife was away, so had to cook for myself. I don't really like being alone much, not only because I miss her but because I lost habit of cooking for one, but on the bright side it allows me to cook things she would not eat. So that's what I decided to do that night.

It might not be very original to say, but I love Italian cuisine, maybe more than any other. There is one particular type of pasta dish I like, it is alla puttanesca. I discovered it at Misto in Montreal, last August. There is everything in that sauce I like: capers, olives, a bit of chilli for the taste and a bit of fish for the protein intakes. I am usually not a big fan of tomato sauce, especially with pasta, but I love the mix of tomatoes and fish (a surprisingly successful marriage of flavours), and it works wonders in the recipe. It is usually a spaghetti dish, but we don't have spaghetti so I had it with fusilli instead.

This was not the only change I had to make to cook it. We don't have anchovies, so instead I put in a tin of sardines. It was a great idea as I didn't know what to do with it. I also put harissa instead of chilli. And I am not sure if proper puttanesca has onions, but I put fried some anyway. But the rest was following the recipe with orthodoxy: loads of capers and as much as I could of olives (in other words what was left in the jar). You can see the result on the picture. I know, the bowl on the left looks messy, with the sauce on the side.

I mention following the recipe "with orthodoxy" in the previous paragraph, but I think the nature of the dish, and its appeal to me, is its improvised, messy, completely unorthodox recipe. I don't know if this is a urban legend or not, but it was supposed to have been invented by prostitutes. The Wikipedia entry also mentions another origin, much less romantic than the other one. The first theory is just seedy enough to remain mysterious without being tasteless (bad pun I know) and fits the dish's exotism.

Un peu de nostalgie culinaire

Comme je n'ai plus de beurre d'arachide, je dois calmer mon mal du pays autrement. J'ai donc acheté hier deux boîtes de biscuits Ritz (deux pour un chez Sainsbury's). C'est d'un quétaine absolu, mais les biscuits Ritz ont une valeur nostalgique: avant d'avoir des goûts plus évolués (et dispendieux), on faisait des Ritz (Ritzs?) nos canapés: Ritz avec Cheez Whiz et cornichon, ou Ritz avec Cheez Whiz et olive. Maintenant je préfère la mousse de saumon (je suis devenu un peu plus snob malgré moi), mais il m'arrive d'avoir envie de ces horreurs culinaires qui goûtaient le jaune orange salé: les canapés mentionnés plus haut, les croque-monsieurs made in Québec (du pain carré blanc grillé, avec Velveeta fondu et morceau de bacon, non mais on ne peut pas battre ça), omelette au Velveeta, macaroni au "fromage" Velveeta, craquelins avec sardine et mayonnaise ou ketchup. Notez que Kraft a fait un tort immense à la culture fromagère, mais qu'on ne peut rien leur reprocher en ce qui concerne le beurre d'arachide.