Last night, dinner was a tasty homemade pasta puttanesca. A few people, after seeing my photo on instagram, asked for the recipe. So here goes.

What you’ll need:

  • 10-12 moderately sized, ripe Roma tomatoes (my Dad grew mine)
  • 1 Tbsp minced garlic
  • 2 Tbsp diced (haphazardly) shallots
  • 1 small yellow onion, coursely chopped
  • 2 Tbsp basil leaves (I grew mine, and like if cut as a chiffonade)
  • 1 Tbsp oregano leaves coursely chopped
  • 1/2 cup Kalamata olives, pitted and roughly chopped
  • 1/4 cup green olives, pitted and roughly chopped
  • 8 oz dried porchini mushrooms, rehydrated in Sauvignon Blanc, and coursely chopped
  • 500 ml Sauvignon Blanc
  • 250 ml Nero D’avola (or other dry red wine)

How to make this:

  • Skin, and coursely chop the tomatoes. With a sharp knife score the bottoms of the tomatoes. Boil some water. Put the tomatoes in the boiling water until their skins start pealing off. Remove the tomatoes, and immerse in cold water. Peel off the skins. Chop the tomatoes, and save the juice.
  • Sauté the garlic, shallots, oregano, basil in a bit of olive oil until the onion is tender, but don’t carmelize anything, and don’t let the garlic burn.
  • Add the chopped tomatoes, and turn the heat up to high. Sauté for a couple minutes.
  • Add about half the Sauvignon Blanc, and some water to the pan. Doesn’t really matter how much water - the important thing is to vigorously boil and macerate the tomatoes. I added about a pint.
  • While boiling the water & tomatoes mixture, use a spatula and mash the tomato pieces a bit
  • After the liquid reduced and almost gone, add the olives and mushrooms.
  • Add the rest of the wine, and some more water.
  • Reduce the liquid until it’s mostly gone, and dragging a spatula across the pan reveals the bottom of the pan for a few seconds, before the liquid moves back in.
  • Lower heat to warm until ready to eat.

The goal here is to have a little bit of liquid, but not so much that the sauce is runny. It’s better if there is no liquid than if there is too much.

Boil your favourite pasta and enjoy.

Hints:

  • if you want to let this cook for a while, or if you misjudge how long the rest of your meal takes, just keep adding water to the pan, as the pan gets close to dry. As long as you’re boliing the liquid off, this shouldn’t affect your results. I can make this in as little as about 30 minutes, or as long as 4 hours.
  • You can skin the tomatoes well in advance.
  • A pinch of salt in your pasta water is useless. Put in a big handful. You’ll taste the difference, and thank me for telling you that.
  • Make sure to give the dried mushrooms ample rehydration time. They require at least an hour, but are better if they are given 4-5 hours.