The first recipe I learned

Spaghetti Puttanesca Recipe

This is the first recipe I ever learned and I’m thankful for it being an old friend and accompaniment for almost 30 years now. I think it is a good first recipe, and I’ll write it out here, and explain along the way why I think that.

Also - about 5 years ago, I was talking to a colleague from MakerBot who did not cook... and I said I'd send him a copy of this recipe becuase it is a good one to start one. Here it is!

Ingredients

• Garlic - 8 cloves. That’s a lot!
• Kalatmata Olives - about 8, maybe 12. You can get ones with the pits in, but be careful to tell everyone when you are eating that they have pits. I typically get “pitted”, so no pits.
• 4 to 8 anchovies from a glass jar. The good ones… If you only use 4 you might need to add some salt. If you don't eat anchovies, substitue a tablespoon of capers.
• Olive Oil
• Canned, whole Tomatoes. 28 oz. can.
• Fresh Ground Black Pepper
• Parmesan cheese. Nice to have a hunk of it if you have a grater. Or you could use pre-grated. I’m not a purist here, but a lot of people are.
• Pasta - spaghetti is good - but it is fun to get thicker, hollow pasta called Percatelli.
• I didn’t learn to make it with capers, but a lot of puttanesca recipes have capers too.

Personal Preparation

• Apron. I like cooking in an apron. I particular like this one - great heft, pockets, size (big…).
• Lolipop. Sucking on a lollipop while cooking prevents me from eating too much of the ingredients - if not for the lollipop, I’d likely eat many of the anchovies and olives. Not necessarily a bad thing, but that is what I do. I learned this from an interview with the actress from Square Pegs that I read a long time ago.

Equipment

• Cutting board. And when you put a folded kitchen towel under the cutting board, it doesn't slide around.
• Sharp knife. Ideally a chef’s knife as opposed to a pairing knife, which is smaller. If you have access to a knife sharpener, use it before you do this recipe.
• 8 quart pot or so to boil the water in.
• 4 quart or so pot to make the sauce in. We’ll call this the “sauce pan”.
• Parmesan grater.

Preparation Stage So, here is the first point to make. This is a recipe where you need to prepare ingredients before you start cooking. Especially the garlic. So, I’m going to go through each ingredient and say what preparation you need to do.

• Garlic
  • You need to take the skin off each garlic clove
  • You need to chop each garlic clove very finely- smaller than a grain of rice. It takes some patience, but you’ll develop knife skills over time, and chopping up garlic really small becomes one of the real joys of cooking, in my book.
  • The way I chop it is to hold it in my left hand between my thumb and index finger down against the cutting board. Then I slice it as thin as I’m capable of. I move it in very, very, very small increments toward the knife blade, which I keep raising and lowering in the same spot on the cutting board.
  • So then you’ve got a bunch of thin slices of garlic - now just put them in a pile and rock the knife over the pile until you’ve got really small pieces. Each smaller than a grain of rice.
  • Here is a tip - you’ve got all this garlic and you’ve got to move it around it at times - either remaking your pile for additional cutting, or pushing off the cutting board into a container or pan at some point. 

DON’T USE THE BLADE SIDE OF YOUR KNIFE TO PUSH THE GARLIC. Flip the knife over and push it with the back side instead. If you do it this way - your knife will stay sharp longer. I’ve now cooked with a lot of really great cooks - it is interesting how few people do this. I can remember learning it from Joachim Martin at Farm & Wilderness, where we were both camp counsellors in the summer of 1989.
• Other ingredients
  • Open the can of tomatoes.
  • Grate the cheese if it isn’t already grated
  • That is about it.


Cooking Stage

1. Put the saucepan on very, very low heat
2. Add a tablespoon or two of olive oil. Enough so that it just about coats the bottom of the pan if you swirl it around.
3. Wait a couple of minute. Let the oil warm up a bit
4. Big step… add the garlic. It it starts sizzling, your flame is way too hot. You might even have to start again with new garlic! It should never get brown or black, or burn. It tastes totally different when it crisps up. You want to cook it really, really slowly on low, low heat. You might see occasional small bubbles in the oil - but that is about it…
5. Push the garlic around the pan every so often to make sure It is cooking relatively evenly.
6. The garlic needs to get warm for about 5 or 10 minutes. It really softens up and gets the olive oil nice and garlicy.
7. Add the anchovies and mash them a bit with the end of a wooden spoon. Let this go for a couple of minutes.
8. Add the olives.
9. Add the tomatoes.
10. Turn up the heat to medium, and wait until it all boils a bit. Takes maybe 8-10 minutes.
11. Lower the temperature so that it is “simmering” - very low boil. Like a bubble every few seconds at most.
12. Let this go with an occasional stir for 30-40 minutes. Might take longer. The whole tomatoes will soften and once they feel really soft, start pushing that wooden spoon against them and breaking them up.
13. Start boiling the water for the pasta - you can just follow the instructions on the box.
14. Let the sauce cook for another 10 minutes or so. Add the pepper - about a teaspoon if you like it peppery. Taste the sauce. The anchovies should give it saltiness - but does it need a little salt? Add some if so.

Serving Stage

1. Drain the pasta and add it back to the pasta pot. Add a glug of olive oil to it, and stir it.
2. Serve!