Burnin’ Down The House

I’m not normally a fan of tomato-based pasta sauces, but I really like this one because it has a lot of other flavours besides tomato. Also, don’t worry if you don’t like anchovies, as you can’t actually taste them in the finished sauce. (Note: I realised when I was in the US recently and tried to cook this that you use Imperial measurements, so apologies if listing the ingredients in metric amounts causes problems. The Measurement Conversion Calculator is helpful, though.)

Serves 3-4 (you’d probably want to increase the amounts if cooking for 4 hungry people)
Ingredients:
100g spaghetti per person
450g tin of chopped tomatoes
100g small black olives, roughly chopped
6 anchovies, chopped
1tbsp salted capers, rinsed to remove excess salt (or just normal pickled ones if you can’t get salted)
1tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped (or 1tsp dried)
1tbsp fresh sage, chopped (or 1tsp dried)
1tbsp fresh oregano, chopped (or 1tsp dried)
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
a handful of fresh parsley, chopped
5tbsp olive oil
A pinch of chilli flakes
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Preparation:
1. Cook the spaghetti in salted boiling water according to the packet instructions (and once it’s cooked, drizzle some olive oil over the spaghetti to prevent it all sticking together).
2. Gently heat the olive oil, garlic, and rosemary in a frying pan for a couple of minutes, being careful not to burn the garlic.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients except the parsley, and simmer for 5-6 minutes, until the sauce has reduced a bit.
4. Stir in the parsley and serve with the spaghetti and freshly-grated Parmesan.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 18th, 2004 at 6:26 pm and is filed under Pasta. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.