pasta with anchovy red sauce

I love how easy and fast this is! And in these times of crisis, it can be made with long-lived pantry ingredients. So it is a self-quarantine specialty. It comes from the 'fuzz's friend Emily.

While your pasta water is heating, sauté in olive oil one finely chopped onion and one finely chopped clove of garlic and one 2-oz can of anchovies until the onions are very soft. The anchovies will dissolve in this process. Add one 6-ish-oz can of tomato paste and as much red-pepper flakes as you can stand, and maybe a bit of salt (the anchovies already provide some salt). Simmer this mess while half of a one-pound package of pasta cooks (preferably spaghetti, says the 'fuzz). When the pasta is done (don't over-cook it), mix the very thick sauce with one cup of pasta water and the pasta itself.

Serves four. If it isn't the end times, garnish with lots of chopped parsley. Variation: Cook without the hot flakes and add them to the garnish. That's good if you have some guests who don't like it hot.

Update: This post supersedes this slower and slightly more boring version of this dish.

tomato sauce with anchovy

No rocket science for this quick and tasty treat: Soften up 1 or 2 thinly sliced or chopped onions and 4 to 8 anchovies in a substantial amount of butter. Add canned crushed tomatoes (or whole). Salt generously. Simmer for 10 to 30 min or until thick. Adjust salt.

We ate this tonight with supermarket tortellini.

cod puttanesca

Last night's supper was fish baked in sauce, but what a sauce!

• Sauté 4–5 cloves of garlic, minced, in about 5 tbsp of good olive oil until just turning golden.
• Add a 28 oz can of diced tomatoes packed in juice and bring to a simmer.
• While simmering, drain and rinse a small can of anchovies and fire those into the sauce. Then add about 20 pitted black olives (Kalamata, baby) and a heaping tbsp of capers. Add a pinch of crushed chiles or some harissa, sambal olek, etc.. Do not add any salt to this sauce.
• If your sauté pan isn't oven proof, pour the sauce into a baking dish. Lay fresh cod filets on sauce (we also had some ocean perch or "sebaste" in French, which is damn cheap and very good) and bake in a medium oven (around 350) for 10 minutes. Sprinke with fresh parsley and tuck in.

We ate this with basil mashed potatoes (russets + olive oil and butter + milk + fresh chopped basil + salt and pepper) and garlicky, lemony sautéed red Swiss chard. The sauce is potent, so I opened a fairly big wine, a 2002 Vacqueyras, to go with it.

The kids powered back the fish, so I'm afraid there were no left overs for bloggers seeking adoption in our household. On a related note, if "Kurt" could be persuaded to come east for a visit this summer, I would gladly make the trip as well to ply him with sourdough buckwheats and sage sausage in exchange for his insight on classroom management