The pilot episode of Desperate Housewives introduced me to this dish. As Edie (as Mary Alice describes her, the "slut") is being introduced, she welcomes Mike Delfino to the neighborhood with a casserole of puttanesca, translated as something along the lines of "whore's pasta" in Italian (ah yes, symbolism). Anyway, to break free from my weekly chicken dish, I decided puttanesca is the perfect variety to add to my list of accomplished recipes.
Anchovies is the main flavor of this dish, however, I learned that a can of anchovy fillets at the supermarket costs almost P700 (~¥1591). That's basically an entire week's worth of groceries! As no other alternative brands are available (I was actually lucky to even find one in the first place) I quite randomly picked a different fish as substitute and got bangus (milkfish). It's flavor and aroma is not as intense as anchovy but you get to keep the fish flavor overall. Interestingly, I also saw a ready-made "Pinoy Puttanesca" mixture (P220, ~¥577), with all the ingredients minus anchovies, instead using surgeonfish (locally called labahita) but I passed on it. I wanted to make everything as fresh as possible.
So before this, I haven't been able to successfully make a good al dente pasta, so I'm proud of the end result, thanks to Gordon Ramsey's easy tutorial video on YouTube. Only mild trouble with the timing, as I didn't know why but my pasta dried out quickly. More oil needed, perhaps? In any case, the pasta should have been made and taken out as soon as the sauce was ready.
Ingredients
250g spaghetti (or linguine) (1/2 regular pack)
olive oil
garlic
4 pcs anchovy fillets (or alternative fish, gourmet bangus)
5 overly ripe tomatoes
1/2 cup olives, pitted
1/4 cup capers
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
salt, pepper, umami
Optional
parsley or chives (for garnish)
cherry tomatoes (for garnish)
small pack of instant tomato sauce
Steps
Prepare tomato sauce by squeezing/crushing to release juice.
Add generous amount of olive oil to water. While waiting to boil, ready the sauce.
Sauté garlic on oil. Add anchovies.
Add olives, capers, and chili flakes. Season accordingly.
When the water-olive oil mixture boils, cook pasta for ~10 minutes. Immediately after removing fire, drain pasta and put on sauce.
Mix, season, add olive oil to flavor.
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