Puttanesca moment!

It must have been the article I read over my lunch break about Berlusconi busy buying yet another villa for himself and his many ‘hostesses’. Or maybe it was just the warm sunny day out there, awaking my senses. Whatever, the result was dinner tonight would be fusilli alla puttanesca.

Not the right time of the year to find juicy tasty fresh tomatoes (to be fair, are there such things at any time in Greater London…?), so I had to use as a base a can of chopped tomatoes (yeah, I know.. but we can live with it, com’n), and I added a handful of cherry tomatoes, duly and religiously cut (they tend to explode otherwise – those little bastards… – which is never good when it is Thurs, your cleaning lady comes on Weds and you have to clean your kitchen yourself on Sat to prevent wife from complaining on Sun).

Saucepan on the cook, full with water – a generous handful of salt only when boiling.

Meanwhile, lots of good olive oil in my frying pan (I use a 'Tefal' one, my favorite – let's call it “Teffy” - , that looks more like a wok), together with 4 or 5 salted anchovies and vinegar capers (someone says that both the anchovies and the vinegar capers should be ‘washed’ before using them, but I am pretty sure they are in bad faith…), many slices of pitted black olives, a broken clove of garlic and flakes of red hot chilly peppers from Calabria (Calabrifornication....? weird....). When I say lots of olive oil, I do not mean a glass: just enough to properly cover the bottom of my pan. I order my olive oil directly from Italy, 20 to 30 liters each time, but I find that decent Italian ones at Waitrose or Sainsbury or even Tesco, as well.

Then, my tomatoes mix (shameless chopped plus non-explosive cherry ones) down into my happy Teffy for some 10 to 15 minutes, on a low flame. Water was boiling and I added salt and a good 300g (you never know… I might wake up hungry tomorrow morning!) of fusilli De Cecco ones in this case, but other brands may work nicely as well. Mr De Cecco said cooking time was 15 minutes, but I overruled and was ok with 13 minutes, considering that I had to risaltare (which I like to translate as “re-jumping”) them in my Teffy for one or two minutes on a high flame, for a wonderful final merger and acquisition of taste!

Although I generally prefer red wine, the fusilli alla puttanesca don’t run away if you open a French white, which I did. Not rosé, please! which in my humble opinion should just be abolished, forbidden and ultimately – hopefully – forgot!

Have to say, puttanesca would translate into something along the lines of... ‘whore-ish’?, though the real etymology seems uncertain. The name clearly reminds of simple people, simple food, and places like bettole and osterie of the past (see pic below, just to have an idea - unfortunately, it is not me the one portrayed there though). Anyway, the fusilli smelled wonderfully and made my day!



Another working day tomorrow (Greek markets down 5% again, maybe…?!? May be tempted to shortsell…), but the great news is that we are almost there and BBC says this w/e is going to be sunny!!! EVVIVA!!!