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Budget cooking: pasta futtanesca

If this is your first visit, check out this post to see why posts like these exist. Otherwise, carry on.

I love pasta puttanesca. It's lovely, has a...strong aromatic presence, a tremendous flavor, and a glorious origin legend. Unfortunately, this is not that, but it's an interesting analog ($3 word for "copy"). For this meal, I used 1 pot, 1 colander, and 1 mixing spoon. Ingredient-wise, I only used half a can of cannellini beans ($0.50), a can of crushed tomatoes ($1.00), a quarter box of pasta ($0.50), a couple tablespoons of jarred garlic ($0.22), a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar ($0.04), a can of tuna ($1.17), and a teaspoon and a half of capers ($0.21) for a total of $3.64. This made two servings in about 15 minutes at $1.82 per bowl.

You don't need a blow-by-blow for boiling noodles. I just used water and a pinch of salt this time instead of the veggie broth mix from last time. When they were done, I poured them into the colander, but managed to save a little bit of the water in the bottom of the pot, added a tablespoon of olive oil, and dumped in my tuna on a medium-low heat.

After the tuna heated up some, I added in the beans, garlic, and capers, mixed it all up, and let it heat a bit more. You've gotta be careful with the jarred garlic, by the way: let it heat too much or too long and that shit gets brown, hard, and bitter. 

Once it was sizzling a bit, I dumped in the can of tomatoes, mixed it all up, and let it heat until the tomatoes just started to bubble. That means the sauce is hot and almost ready. Drop in your apple cider vinegar, get that shit mixed in, and you're good to go.

When the sauce is done, dump in the pasta and you've got yourself some faux puttanesca, or "futtanesca" if you will. Sure, the tuna gives quite a different aroma and flavor from the anchovies of a real puttanesca, but it's still pretty baller. I added some black pepper to mine, but there are plenty of options, including just eating it straight as prepared. All up to you. Bone apple tea, cheese bags.

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