How to Make Pasta Puttanesca

Cook on Sunday, eat ‘til Thursday I'm Allie and you're watching Economy Bites. Today
we’re going to be making pasta Puttanesca. It’s a Mediterranean pasta with anchovies,
capers and olives, cheap ingredients, delicious meal. Good for the summer, good for your
soul. We’re going to start by turning on our oven to 325 degrees. The first thing we’re
going to do is slice eight plum tomatoes and we are going to dry them in the oven okay so
we have eight tomatoes sliced in half there we’re going to take a little bit of olive oil and
drizzle it over them and now we’re just going to use a little bit of salt and a little bit of
pepper and I'm going to put these in the oven and let them stay for about 45 minutes then
we’ll check back.

Now we’re going to get some of the other stuff ready. First thing I need six cloves of
garlic, now we’re just going to smash this and then we’ll put it in the bowl small kitchen
is like a puzzle, they are constantly moving themselves around fillet of anchovies and
olive oil. Now I know people are afraid of anchovies we’re going to batter up they're
actually pretty good not scary even though they look a little bit scary and we’re not going
to use that many of those so don’t be afraid of them I'm just going to add a little salty
texture to our sauce. What we’re going to do is chop these off really fine. And then we’re
going to kind of mash them into a paste.

If you can buy anchovy paste at your grocery store you could do that too, mash them here
and make them pasty see how it’s getting this pasty texture here looks like something that
would come out of a tube all the best foods come from tubes. So we just need about two
teaspoons I think we measured that out pretty well. That was like four or five anchovies.
Now these are pitted manzanilla spinach olives you can also use kalamata olives, plus
you can use black olives too. That’s a trick to get this opened, we’re going to chop these
in half not just for bars and cocktails also for cooking real food.

Perfect half cup of olives, we've got garlic, anchovy paste and olives ready to go for
when we start to make our sauce. All prepared. Okay, so let’s look at these tomatoes.
Now you could leave them in even longer if you wanted to but I'm going to take them out
now. I think they're nice and shriveled. They smell delicious and when they cook like this
they get really, really sweet a nice pot here. I'm going to turn it on to high, let it get hot
and then we’re going to add a 28 ounce can, save one dollar now of whole peeled
tomatoes.

These are real tomatoes also because we’re using two kinds of tomatoes. If you wanted to
skip the first step and you used two cans of tomatoes you could do that. I just want to use
the same so it doesn’t have the economy bite stamp approval. Add them to the hot spot,
potato masher which we have used in the past. Smash these guys, if you don’t have a
potato masher you could use your hands or -- get down. See how hygienic I'm in right
now? Always wash your hands after touching the cat.

Now we’re going to let that cook for a couple of minutes, while we do that let’s put our
baked tomatoes in here with our other -- just mash these a little bit. Now we’re going to
add our tomato, olive, anchovy garlic mixture to our crushed tomatoes half a cup of white
wine. We’re going to add three fourths teaspoon of crushed red pepper, two teaspoons of
sugar. Now we've got this on high, we’re going to bring it to a boil and then we’re going
to let it simmer for about 40 minutes.

If it starts to get too thick we’re going to add a little bit more white wine to thin it out. I
like this to be a chunky sauce, there's bits of garlic and olive in here but if you wanted it
to be a little smoother before you put everything in the pot you can pure it in the blender.
Now it’s boiling so we’re just going to turn it down, we’re going to let it simmer for
about 40 minutes. About 20 minutes in I'm going to start my water for the pasta. So our
water is boiling.

We have here a pound of medium shells now you can see that our sauce has gotten pretty
thick. I'm just going to add a little splash of white wine just to thin it out a little bit. Let’s
ready the last bits of ingredients that we’re going to add to our sauce because we’re
adding a lot of Mediterranean salty ingredients in this sauce, I'm also adding some you
know sugary basic kind of ingredient just to even it out so it doesn’t get like too tart. So
I'm going to add at the very end here just a tablespoon of cream which is really not that
much.

If you want to omit it you totally can, I'm also going to take a handful of basil like we've
done before, take them off the stack there and we’re going to roll it like we roll a blanket.
This is called a chiffonade I'm also going to use lastly but not the leastly, three
tablespoons of capers. Okay, so let’s check our timer. About 30 seconds left we can just
call it 40 minutes now. Nice, basil and capers, a little of that cream, tiny, tiny bit, we’re
just going to let that cook for about five more minutes until the pasta is done and then
we’re going to pour our pasta in and then we’re going to show you how it looks like.

Pasta is all done, and now we’re just going to pour into the sauce -- how good that looks.
This is such a good summery pasta because it has got those Mediterranean Spanish
summery flavors and it’s kind of light. Yes we made a mess. You can use any kind of
pasta you like here I used shells I think that they would scoop up the bits so you have to
pick chunky bites. They're pretty hot. Felicima, pasta Puttanesca impress your friends and
neighbors, the pasta is about 25 bucks to put together, it will last you from Sunday to
Thursday. Cook on Sunday, eat ‘til Thursday I'm Allie. I’ll see you next time.