It's been awhile since I cooked purely for pleasure, longer still since I made dinner for myself. Cooking for one is, rather ironically, a treat in the Khoo household. You see, making your own dinner takes some forethought, as there is always food of some sort on the dining table, but I was in the rare mood to spend some time pottering about the kitchen doing something unrelated to work.
Eschewing cookbooks and food websites, I flicked through my mental archive of toss-it-together recipes instead and almost immediately decided on pasta Puttanesca. Why, I have no idea. I'd barely skimmed through an article on it weeks, possibly even months ago, and all I remembered were these key words – tomatoes, anchovies and whore's pasta. (Culinary lore believes that Puttanesca was named after ladies of the night, who lured men into brothels with the sauce's intense aroma.)
I vaguely remember olives and fresh herbs in the equation, but I was too lazy to trek out to the grocer's, and really, isn't the absence of a recipe the best bit about non-work cooking? Somewhere along raiding my pantry and mentally rocking up a recipe, I decided to corrupt it all with a topping of garlicky breadcrumbs, just because there was panko in my kitchen drawer. This is bastardised Puttanesca at its worst, comforting home-cooked supper at its best.
Leigh's pantry Puttanesca
Serves 2
1 small box cherry tomatoes
4 tbsp olive oil
3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
¼ cup panko or stale breadcrumbs
Handful pasta (I used wholewheat spaghetti)
1 tin anchovies
handful of baby spinach
handful of feta, crumbled (optional)
handful of basil, torn (optional)
- Preheat oven to 200C. Toss the cherry tomatoes in 1 tbsp olive oil and ⅓ of the garlic. Pop these into the oven and roast at 180C until the tomatoes start to blister and shrivel. I didn't time, but it probably took me about 30 mins. Remove from oven and set aside.
- Toast the panko in a small frying pan with 1 tbsp olive oil and ⅓ of the garlic, tossing or stirring occasionally until the crumbs are golden.
- Cook the pasta until al dente in a pot of salted water. Drain and reserve ¼ cup of pasta water.
- Heat the remaining oil in a pan and saute the remaining garlic until fragrant. Add in the anchovies and cook, stirring continuously, until they melt. Tip in the roasted tomatoes, give it a good stir and then add in the spinach. Cook, covered, for a min, and then add in the cooked pasta. Add a few tbsp of the reserved pasta water and toss to coat the pasta.
- Crumble in some feta to taste, and stir through the basil, if using. Eat immediately, preferably in front of the telly! :)
