S6 E27: Spaghetti Puttanesca

This week's Three Kitchens episode features Spaghetti Puttanesca, an easy Italian dish using pantry staples. 

The sauce come together quickly with canned cherry tomatoes, capers, olives, anchovies (or sundried tomatoes if you prefer), chili, garlic and olive oil. You'll whip that up while you boil your spaghetti and then mix it all together with some fresh chopped parsley. 

Quick, easy, inexpensive -- what more could we ask? This was a delicious lunch with a small side salad.  

We followed it up with a simple Affogato for dessert. Affogato is just espresso over vanilla ice cream, and it really hits the spot. Yum! 

Get the recipes: 

Spaghetti Puttanesca 

 

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Transcript

Heather D (00:13)
Alright, we're going to learn to make a quick and spaghetti puttanesca and a bonus affogato for dessert.

Heather D (00:22)
Well, welcome to Three Kitchens podcast, everybody. I am your host, Heather, and here is my co-host, Erin.

Erin W (00:26)
Yeah!

Very excited to be here, very excited, thank you.

Heather D (00:34)
Very excited today. Very excited. Thank you very much. I feel like you can tell we haven't recorded in a little while because today we're like just so like into it. Yeah, we're like excited to talk about some new recipes. Okay, so for today.

Erin W (00:42)
We're gung-ho for it.

Heather D (00:49)
Interesting that we just recorded part one of an Italian recipe that you're doing because I'm also doing something Italian and different though so it's okay we're not overlapping too terribly much. This is spaghetti puttanesca.

Erin W (00:57)
boy.

Mmm.

Heather D (01:09)
So this is like one of those, apparently I've not made it, but super simple, quick throw together with pantry item meals. So this appeals to, I think everybody right now, because you don't have to go out and source any special ingredients typically. I mean, there might, you might not have anchovies on hand. I don't, but ⁓ I don't mind buying them.

Erin W (01:20)
Love it.

I don't either, but that's...

Heather D (01:36)
That's a small thing, right? It's pretty basic ingredients and simple to prepare, but full of things that I know that you and I both quite like these flavors. So I looked up on serious eats. I often when I, when we're doing a recipe that I haven't done before, I don't know a lot about, I go and just looked at what they have to say in their write-up.

People out there who like to complain about recipe blogs with the blur, big long blur, but the front, kind of do too sometimes, but Serious Eats is one that I always read because their research is good and they're entertaining and informative.

Erin W (02:08)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And it seems

relevant. Like it's not just like a big long story. It seems like relevant.

Heather D (02:26)
Like a roundabout.

Yeah. Yeah. So what I, I'm going to read you what it says here. Puttanesca on the serious eats.com because I found it entertaining. Puttanesca literally translates to in the style of prostitutes.

Erin W (02:33)
Okay.

Okay, that was not what I was expecting at all. Okie dokie.

Heather D (02:46)
I- when I read that, right?

Yes, supposedly because the pungent aromas of garlic anchovies capers and olives tossed with pasta were how Neapolitan sex workers would lead customers to their doors. I don't know about you but I mean if you're out looking for a good time is that what's going to draw you in is the smell of

Food? I don't know, this seems a little like... And did they feed them or did they just pump the smells out to bring them in?

Erin W (03:22)
I

was gonna say, like, is this how you got around, like, taking a girl out for dinner before you go up to her room? She's like, here, we'll feed you and then we can go do our other thing.

Heather D (03:37)
I'm just wondering if they ate it all or if it's just the smell of it drew them in and then anyway.

Erin W (03:45)
Well, that seems like a waste

of food.

Heather D (03:47)
Well, maybe the ladies were eating it for dinner.

Erin W (03:50)
Maybe.

Did you eat some

olives and anchovies?

Heather D (03:58)
That's sexy.

It goes on to say, this is one of those stories that seems apocryphal or at least wildly inaccurate. Probably yes. Sounds a little far-fetched, I think is what we can say. so now that we've said, I've said the basic ingredients ⁓ in here.

Erin W (04:16)
Yeah, I was gonna say I don't actually

know what's in this dish. So as you spoke the ingredients there, I was pretty excited.

Heather D (04:26)
Yeah, garlic anchovies, capers, olives, tomatoes.

Erin W (04:30)
Have you ever cooked with anchovies before, Heather?

Heather D (04:33)
I have attempted to put anchovies into like Caesar dressing. I think that's it.

Erin W (04:38)
See, I've only had

anchovy never opened up a, yeah. Like have you ever opened up a can of fish in your house? I have never either. This is really exciting. Not anchovies, right? Sardines? I don't.

Heather D (04:41)
Well, yes, it was paced, to be honest.

not not anchovies. What's the other one? We used to call it schmelz. Is that sardines? We used

to call it schmelz. My son loved to eat them when he was a baby and I'd just take the little tails off and he would just eat them by hand.

Erin W (05:05)
my gosh. Nope, never done that before.

Heather D (05:07)
⁓

smelt didn't smell appealing to me so i was like i'm not eating them but if you like them he was a baby who like little guy in a high chair he would eat them that's so funny because i'd kind of he liked it i don't think i've ever bought or cooked with anchovies

Erin W (05:17)
The things you can feed to your kids, right?

No, me neither. This is exciting to me.

Heather D (05:27)
So

yeah, so this will be interesting. okay, so here's another source where I'm gonna follow the recipe from this. What is this? What format is this? TikTok, TikTok video. A really cute Italian chef I like to watch on TikTok. This is what I, I get sucked down lots of rabbit holes on TikTok, but this one is worth

going down the rabbit hole, mean. Francesco Metana, his name is. He's adorable.

Erin W (05:55)
You're just

kind of running over your heart a little bit here. You're just getting a little bit...

Heather D (05:58)
I know I'm just having

look at him though if you're watching the video is he not adorable he's so cute so he and he has really good descriptions of how to make something and he shows so this is a very easy recipe yeah I'm that person

Erin W (06:07)
Adorable.

Heather's tuning in for the articles. Yes.

Okay,

Heather D (06:25)
And I did notice that someone in the comments asked him for a vegan or I guess vegetarian, it would be alternative to the anchovies. And he suggested you could use a sun-dried tomato.

Erin W (06:25)
You

Heather D (06:41)
which would give you a similar umami kind of flavor, not quite the same, but if you didn't want the fish. you know, just if you're turned off by the fish or you can't eat fish or whatever, there's an option. I'm going to do my best with the anchovies despite being a little unsure about it. And we're going to see what we think. We're going to try to make it authentic like Francesco says to do it.

Erin W (06:45)
Okay.

Okay.

Heather D (07:07)
Don't leave me astray, Francesco. Like, it better be as good as you make it look, dude.

Erin W (07:13)
Do remember that song from the late 90s, early 2000s called Milkshake? And it was like, my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard. Yeah. So can we write a new song about your puttanesca bringing all the boys to the yard?

Heather D (07:24)
Yes. Yeah.

Might bring all the cats because of the fish.

Erin W (07:38)
Okay, sorry. I'm having too fun.

Heather D (07:38)
listen, I don't think I'm attracting any boys

at this point. I don't think there's any boys running to my yard for anything at this point. But maybe you'll come over for lunch and eat my Puttanesca. My spaghetti Puttanesca. And I was thinking, possibly I might do some sort of simple Italian dessert to go with. I have a couple of ideas. One's like super duper simple and then the other

Erin W (07:47)
Well... There you-

Okay.

Heather D (08:05)
bit more work. So it's going to come down to how I feel on the day that I decide to cook and what I feel like making. Yeah. Yeah. So stay tuned to that for that too. Gosh, I hope people stick through the episode despite it's like, I have too much espresso this morning? That's very possible.

Erin W (08:09)
Love it.

love it.

Heather D (08:44)
Alright, we're going to learn to make a quick and easy spaghetti puttanesca and a bonus affogato for dessert.

Did you forget already? We had a simple little dessert afterwards, which I think hit the spot.

Erin W (08:55)
Wait.

No.

Everything

about this was simple and so tasty. You know how we often hear that the simplest ingredients in the simplest way just brings out the natural flavors and so much so. This one was really good. Yeah.

Heather D (09:17)
and

Yeah, keep it simple and

mainly pantry ingredients, which is so handy when maybe you haven't been to the store for a few days and you don't have a lot of fresh stuff.

Erin W (09:29)
Mm-hmm.

Heather D (09:37)
to start by finely chopping garlic, a small red chili pepper, and some fresh parsley. Set the parsley aside. It's not going in the pan just yet, but you want to get it ready to go for later. Then you have your black olives. The recipe calls for olives that are called gaita.

I think that's how you'd say it. G-A-E-T-A. Don't know what that is. Didn't find them. So I used Kalamata. So if they have...

Erin W (10:00)
and help you.

I would say like, pick

the all of you like.

Heather D (10:05)
Yeah, any olive could be good in here, right? Yeah, or a mix. Usually when I go to the deli, I like to get the mix of olives, the big green ones, the small green ones, the black ones, because I love them all.

Erin W (10:11)
⁓

Mm, yeah.

Heather D (10:22)
and make sure they're pitted okay so then in a large saucepan you're going to add a good couple of glugs of olive oil add in your anchovies we'll come to that in a second olives capers chopped garlic and the chili now i did not find anchovies i looked everywhere in the store i looked in the

Erin W (10:43)
I know.

Heather D (10:46)
International aisle, the Mediterranean section, the fish section, the salad section, everywhere that I thought maybe there'd be a nice little jar or can of anchovies. No, I didn't even find the paste. I don't know what the deal was.

Erin W (10:47)
Sad face.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's strange.

That's very strange.

Heather D (11:04)
Mm-hmm.

So as I mentioned earlier in the episode, thankfully someone had asked how to make this vegetarian because he had suggested to use sun-dried tomatoes if you don't have anchovies or can't eat them. So I had some in the jar in oil and I just removed them from the oil and that's what I used instead, which I think is good.

Erin W (11:15)
Ugh.

Mmm. Okay.

Yes.

Perfect.

Heather D (11:33)
but I would like to try it with the anchovies if I can find them next time.

Erin W (11:37)
I know,

because we didn't have it with anchovies, I have now been like hot on the trail and I am yet to find them as well. But when I do, I will put them into my rotation and make this and not tell anybody what's in there.

Heather D (11:46)
Yeah, weird,

Yeah, don't tell them, but I want to just give it a try. Cause I don't, I wonder what the difference would be.

Erin W (11:57)
No, I really would too. And I do have anchovy paste

in my fridge. You could have borrowed it, I guess. I never even thought I could have.

Heather D (12:08)
How much would you use for five anchovies? I don't know. Maybe on the tube it says an equivalent?

Erin W (12:14)
the tube

says ⁓ on the box that the tube came in i cut it out because it had stuff written on it that i was like this might be important and i stuck it in my binder of recipes so maybe i can look on that and figure that out i would say probably not a lot because that anchovy paste is quite salty so like five anchovies i'm thinking like

Heather D (12:36)
Yes.

Erin W (12:41)
half a teaspoon of anchovy paste maybe a teaspoon like

they would just be diced up really tiny right they're just essentially little salty flavor chunks

Heather D (12:49)
Yeah.

I guess? Yeah. Doesn't seem like it would be, because they're really small, I think.

Erin W (12:59)
Five's not that much. I'm thinking. Yeah. But again, I've

never seen an anchovy come from a tin before or one in the wild. So I know nothing that I know of.

Heather D (13:10)
that you know of, that you know of.

Okay. So we have with our olive oil, we have anchovies, olives, capers, chopped garlic and chili. We're going to cook that for about two minutes until it's fragrant. Then we're going to lower the heat to medium low. We're going to pour in canned cherry tomatoes, which I did find.

Erin W (13:31)
I didn't know you could buy that.

Heather D (13:31)
because normally I buy

whole or crushed or sauce. Like, I don't know, but you can find cans. I think they were the Mutti, what's that brand? Yeah, so that was handy. And then you're gonna simmer with the tomatoes for 10 to 12 minutes, stirred occasionally. And then you want the tomatoes to start to break down, but.

but retain their shape for the most part.

Erin W (14:01)
Gotcha.

Heather D (14:03)
Now you're going to cook some spaghetti. We had gluten-free spaghetti because we had a friend join us for lunch and she is celiac, so we had gluten-free spaghetti. It was very good. Cook until al dente and then before you drain it, keep a little bit of the water out in case you need to thin your sauce. ⁓

Erin W (14:10)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm

Heather D (14:26)
And that's all you're gonna do. So you're gonna put your cooked pasta into your olives, capers, tomato sauce and kind of toss it. And if you need to thin it with a little bit of pasta water, do that and put your chopped parsley in there now, stir it all in. And that's it. That's it. Then plate it. Voila. I don't know what the voila is in Italian. Buongiorno.

Erin W (14:40)
yes.

Voila!

Heather D (14:50)
No, not my journal. Yeah, it's just a kiss. I have no idea.

Erin W (14:53)
Just the kiss. I don't

know.

Heather D (15:00)
No idea, but anyways, that's all you do. is so simple.

You kind of can't go wrong if you just adjust the flavors. Like I love olives and capers both and they're both those little salty bombs of deliciousness. would, I probably wouldn't even measure them. I'm probably just like, that looks like enough olives. throw in the whole thing of capers. Like, delicious.

Erin W (15:12)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. The more the merrier

is really the way I feel about those. Yes. And you had that little dish of olives on the table and I was just like, I'm just going to have another one. I'm just going to have another one. They were really good. I love this. I love this for the flavors in it. I didn't know you could get the whole cherry tomatoes like that. That's really cool.

Heather D (15:37)
Mm-hmm.

Because you can't have enough.

See, I would have probably, if I'd just been making it not for the podcast, I probably would have looked at this recipe and been like, I've got like a basket of cherry tomatoes. I'll just like toss those in there and maybe even just cut them in half and toss them. That's probably what I would have done. And I think that would be good too, if you just happen to have fresh cherry tomatoes and you don't mind the skin, because I don't mind the skin and nobody's complains about it here. So, but the good thing with the canned,

Erin W (16:05)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah. ⁓ nice.

Heather D (16:24)
cherry tomatoes is they're kind of, there's a bit of a sauce. It's not just tomato, it's like saucy. So then you're getting the liquid and it does make more of a sauce for your spaghetti.

Erin W (16:28)
⁓ yes.

rates.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So good. And I would say I always add in a little bit of my cooking water for my pasta when I put a sauce with my pasta, because they say it helps for the to like take the sauce and the oil. It the starch in your cooking water helps create an emulsion that marries or sticks that sauce to your pasta.

Heather D (16:40)
Mm-hmm.

.

Erin W (17:05)
So it's not just for thinning purposes. And they say stir for like a good minute or two to really like froth it up. Kind of like when you think when you make like when you whip cream or if you're crazy in making mayo by hand, creating that emulsion with your pasta sauce with your starch and your oily sauce is the magic. I'm crazy about it.

Heather D (17:27)
Okay, okay, so maybe, you

Erin W (17:32)
You

Heather D (17:33)
are crazy, one crazy lady. Maybe you add the water in, get the sauce mixed up before you add your noodles into it. ⁓ okay. Okay, okay.

Erin W (17:40)
No, altogether. Altogether. I'm, I'm, I'm the,

my family knows I'm always like, save the pasta water. Like anytime we're making anything, the pasta water, everyone is well trained. Don't forget the pasta water.

Heather D (17:56)
See, in our house, we often put the noodles on the plate and the sauce on top. We don't always like pre-mix, because then you get how many, like the ratio you want. I don't know if this was something we started when the kids were little and they might maybe wanted less sauce or I don't know.

Erin W (18:00)
Mmm, I... Yeah, I would say this is...

Yeah, like this is

Right. Yeah,

yeah, yeah. There's certain spaghettis, like a meat spaghetti, I'm not doing that, but like I make a spaghetti that's got a very basic

Garlic, tomatoes, oregano, and a little bit of wine. Like it's a really simple pasta sauce. And with that one, you have to have the starchy cooking water.

Heather D (18:33)
Is that like Pomodoro? Is that what Pomodoro is?

Erin W (18:36)
I don't know. I love the freshness of making my own pasta sauce. Cause we all know how I feel about the jars of pasta now that we've talked about it a few times. And yeah, I just, I love that fresh tomato sauce.

Heather D (18:52)
Yeah.

Erin W (18:52)
And when

I make my homemade mac and cheese, that starchy cooking water's gotta be in there to get that cheesy, oily sauce to mix in with my pasta. So, yep.

Heather D (19:09)
Yes, such a good tip. Now, the other thing we made, I made. Oh, it's such a recipe. This reminds me of like, this was some running joke with some old friends of mine who this one friend would be like, oh yeah, and I was sharing a recipe and it was something, one of those things that was like almost not a recipe, right? Because it's so basic and I go, well,

Erin W (19:18)
The other thing I ate.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Heather D (19:34)
I mean, it's hardly a recipe and she like, for years, she will tell this story in front of me, of course, in front of people. ⁓ and then Heather says, it's hardly a recipe. Okay, I wasn't quite like.

Erin W (19:41)
Of course, of course.

I didn't mean to come across like that, geez.

Heather D (19:51)
Yeah,

sorry. I'm just trying to say it's like really simple. But anyways, affogato is hardly a recipe. Okay. So you scoop vanilla ice cream with espresso poured over and that's your dessert. I do have a tip though for this non-recipe recipe.

Scoop your ice cream ahead of time into your bowls and put it in back into the freezer Because you don't want it sitting because then you know sometimes just to scoop it you've got to let it sit at room temperature a little bit just you can scoop it out and Then it's if it's sitting while you're making espresso It's getting softer. You don't want it to turn to soup. You want the ice cream to still be super cold When you put your espresso on top

Erin W (20:16)
⁓ okay.

Yes. Yeah.

rate.

Gotcha.

Heather D (20:44)
So what I did was scooped it out earlier in the morning, put it back in the freezer and then made my coffee and then pulled out the bowls and poured the coffee onto the ice cream.

Erin W (20:55)
Okay, and did what kind of ice cream did we have?

Heather D (20:59)
We had vanilla, lactose free vanilla Chapman size.

Erin W (21:02)
Okay, I was gonna say,

did you get a dairy alternative but you got the lactose free? Okay, I was curious.

Heather D (21:06)
Yeah.

You knew there was something different about it, probably.

Erin W (21:11)
I was

like, we're not eating like 100 % ice cream here or Heather's making some really bad choices.

Heather D (21:18)
I could have given it to you guys. I could have.

Erin W (21:20)
Yeah, I wasn't sure, like, is this

regular ice cream and she's eating something different? I was kind of spying you out, but I didn't want to say anything because I wanted to save it for our discussion. Oh, okay.

Heather D (21:29)
Just lactose free Chapman's

vanilla ice cream. But you could do any flavor of ice cream you want. If you want to switch it up.

Erin W (21:38)
Well, you could,

but vanilla and coffee... Ugh. Yeah, you're... you're... you're killing it with that coffee machine.

Heather D (21:50)
Well, why have I not eaten this before? It was so good. I don't think I've ever eaten espresso, just espresso on vanilla ice cream. Now I want to eat it every day. It's like, it's a problem.

Erin W (21:56)
Yeah.

Heather D (22:06)
I'm gonna have to have ice cream for breakfast, because that's when I usually have my coffee. Okay, thanks for your sign off on that. Check.

Erin W (22:06)
or it's not.

100

% approved. This is so good, so simple and so good. I had no idea that that's what... I've seen affogato on many, many menus and been like, hmm, I have no idea what that is.

Heather D (22:33)
Now you know. I looked up what affogato translates to and apparently it means drowned because you are drowning your ice cream in coffee.

Erin W (22:43)
Right, so we shouldn't name our cats Afogato.

Heather D (22:46)
Right.

Maybe in Spanish it means something different like for gato.

Erin W (22:51)
Great.

Heather D (22:54)
No, anyway.

Erin W (22:54)
maybe if you had a really

fluffy cat, could call it Afro Gato.

Heather D (22:58)
⁓ that's awesome.

I love that. Yes. Afro Gato. That's so cute. Now I want a cat... You do.

Erin W (23:03)
you

really want a cat. I really...

Heather D (23:12)
Well,

here you go, everybody, a super easy pantry staple lunch. Add a little tossed salad or something with it and you've got a meal. Super easy. Love it. Go make it.

Erin W (23:21)
⁓ yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Thank you. This is going into rotation. Very good.

Heather D (23:30)
Mm-hmm.

Erin W (23:55)
continue.

Heather D (23:56)
I can admit

I don't read the articles. It's fine. I can own that.