Sardine Pasta Puttanesca

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Sardine Pasta Puttanesca

Pasta puttanesca packs a punch, loaded with flavorful pantry staples like capers, olives, garlic, anchovies and red-pepper flakes. This version adds sardines and swaps the canned tomatoes for plump cherry tomatoes, which both bring meaty bites to this simple dish. It’s best in the summer, when the tomatoes are especially ripe and juicy. Keep the pasta quite undercooked, so it can become tender while simmering in the burst tomato sauce. The sauce will look thin at first, but just keep vigorously stirring and it will get glossy and emulsified.

Rating

Ingredients

  • Salt
  • 1pound long pasta, like spaghetti, bucatini or linguine
  • 3tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
  • 2(4- to 4.5-ounce) cans sardines packed in olive oil (see Tip), not drained
  • 4anchovy fillets
  • 6garlic cloves, smashed with the side of a chef’s knife then chopped
  • Red-pepper flakes, to taste
  • 2pints/about 4 cups cherry tomatoes
  • 3/4cup pitted black olives, very roughly chopped
  • 1/4cup drained capers
  • 1small handful parsley sprigs, finely chopped
Set base servings to enable scaling:

Directions

Bring a high-sided skillet or medium pot of water to a boil and season with salt. Add pasta and cook, stirring occasionally, until floppy but still quite raw in the center (about 4 minutes shy of the cook time suggested on the package). Drain pasta, reserving 4 cups of the cooking liquid.

When the pasta is nearly cooked, heat a medium Dutch oven over medium-low. Add the olive oil, the oil from the sardines, the anchovies and garlic. Cook, stirring frequently, until the garlic is just beginning to turn golden and the anchovies have broken down, about 3 minutes. Add red-pepper flakes and cook, stirring frequently, until aromatic, about 30 seconds.

Add the tomatoes and 2 cups of the reserved pasta cooking liquid and increase heat to medium. Bring to a simmer and cook until the tomatoes are warmed through and slightly softened, 4 to 6 minutes. Use a wooden spoon or potato masher to roughly smash them. Continue simmering until the tomato juices have slightly thickened into a sauce, about 5 minutes.

Add the drained pasta and cook, stirring vigorously, until the sauce coats the noodles and the pasta has cooked to your desired final texture, adding more pasta cooking liquid as needed, about 2 minutes. Add the sardines, olives, capers and parsley, stirring to evenly distribute and break up the sardines. Divide among plates and serve right away.

Notes

The size of sardine cans typically ranges from 4 to 4.5 ounces. You don’t have to be precise in this recipe, so buy any can that falls somewhere within that size range. This recipe works with both whole sardines and boneless, skinless fillets.

Italian

Source: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1024285-sardine-pasta-puttanesca