Skip to main content

Pasta sauce from jars

I had to cook tonight, but I didn't really feel like it. I had wanted to do some kind of fun experiments this weekend until I got to the weekend, and my energy and motivation just immediately evaporated. As such, I decided it was time to make a lazy dinner.
I'm a fan of pasta puttanesca and would have loved to have made that, but I didn't have all of the ingredients, so I just made something vaguely similar and pretended like it was a good idea. I scooped out a few black, green, and kalamata olives, plus a handful of capers, a couple cloves of garlic, a tomato, and a can of sardines. I figured that would work.
I skinned and diced the tomato, minced up the olives and capers together, minced the garlic cloves, and chopped up the sardines. Quick and easy, just like I had hoped.
Once I had my pasta boiling, I started off my sauce by sautéing the sardines and garlic in olive oil. The sardines were pre-cooked, so I didn't have to let that run for too long. I just wanted to sweat the garlic a little and get the flavors blended before I added in everything else. I dumped the tomato in, mixed it all together, and let it sit for a little while until most of the liquid had evaporated from the pan.
Next up, I dumped in the olives and capers and did the same as I did with the tomato: mix and wait until the liquid was about gone. Since the green and kalamata olives and capers were brined, I didn't add much seasoning at all, just a bit of black pepper.
Once the pasta was finished, I poured a bit of the pasta water into my sauce and mixed that in to turn my crusty paste into something a bit more mixable. I drained the pasta, then tossed it into the pan. Voila.
From start to finish, this took about 20 minutes. I used my vegetable peeler to shave a slice of Romano cheese on top, and it was off to the races. Not quite as bold of a flavor as puttanesca, but I felt like it captured the basic concept while still offering something unique. Definitely worth trying again, but I'll probably double the garlic. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I don't understand food

Part 1 the morning after, while eating a sausage, egg, and cheese everything bagel from Bergen Bagels Last night, I had the pleasure, privilege, and audacity to eat at a Brooklyn restaurant named Aska . I know it's cliche to refer to a fancy restaurant meal as a life-changing experience, but this was straight up paradigm-shattering. I've written before about food being a medium of communication, about how I strive to reduce food waste as much as I can, about sharing our cultures and stories with each other through the meals we create, but seeing how Chef Fredrik Berselius is able to do this at such an intricate, elegant, and elevated level is both humbling and inspiring. The experience started before the first bite. I walked into the 10 table restaurant, and they knew me by name. I was shown to my table (right in the middle of the place, looking directly into the open kitchen), and they even pulled my chair out for me and pushed it up under me. I was a little uncomfortable with...
Post a Comment
Read more

The hibiscus flower has bloomed, day 3

Now y'all know I love to experiment, and I generally go into my experiments with a plan, an experimental design, if you will. But after playing for a few days with squid and not royally fucking anything up, I was feeling a little restless, so I decided to just say "yes" to whatever popped into my head. Dry fried ginger, pattypan squash, and red onion? Sure, that sounds like a good combo. Purple sweet potato, shishitos, and sweet onion dry fried? Why not? What if I dump some some butter into that ginger/squash/red onion pan? I bet that will taste good. How about I dust some chopped squid with salt and oat flour and squirt it with some fresh lemon juice? I'm sure that will be fine. And I bet what will be even better will be tossing that squid into the ginger pan. That's when I remembered how much I loved that squid that was cooked low and slow. Unfortunately, I was out of white wine, so I looked in my fridge and saw some high pulp Simply Orange orange juice. I poure...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why not give a shit?

About a month ago, I cooked up a big pot of a miso vegan stew. It was a Sunday evening, so I knew I needed to cook enough for Sunday night dinner and Monday's lunch. A vendor was taking us out for dinner on Monday, so I needed enough to cover Tuesday's lunch, too. I had plans with a friend on Tuesday night, so I wouldn't have time to cook, so I needed enough for Tuesday dinner and Wednesday lunch, too, so I said, and I quote, "Fuck it. I'll just cook enough for the week." Unfortunately, as I packed away my leftovers that night, I realized that I cooked enough for a week and a half. Normally, that wouldn't be a huge issue, except that I was leaving town Friday morning and wouldn't be back until Monday evening and did not have room in my freezer to store more than a bowl. Luckily, I was able to pawn a few bowls off on coworkers, so it all worked out alright. However, when I told this story to someone close to me, they said I should think about donating t...
1 comment
Read more