Midnight Pasta With Anchovies, Garlic and Tomato

For this kind of recipe I have stopped draining the pasta into the sink, a messy business anyway. I simply scoop pasta from the boiling-water pan (turned off, so I can see) into the pan where I’ve built the sauce, using a spider, tongs, whatever. Some water comes along, and that's just fine. And I don’t need to worry about saving some pasta water; it's still right there, to add as I need it. Bonus: when it's time to empty the water, it's no longer a boiling cauldron.

Skip the lemon. Add capers and olives and you got puttanesca.

This is a great quick dish! My Sicilian grandmother made this on occasion. The main difference was that she would also brown some breadcrumbs (from stale Italian bread) in a skillet. The browned breadcrumbs would be sprinkled over the top of a serving as you might sprinkle cheese. It suits this dish admirably. Always linguine with this dish. My grandmother never touched butter or cheese and lived to over 100. My grandfather was a Swiss chef and of course dearly loved cheese!

Studying cooking in Italy taught me many things. The easiest one is: add salt at the end when making most sauces. You end up with a lighter, more interesting plate of food.

onion. A go-to pantry recipe for decades is from Jeff Smith's Frugal Gourmet series. It is similar to this but adds a critical ingredient for both flavor and texture: caramelized onions. The onion, with anchovy and any form of tomato, paste or whatever sauce or purée is on hand, is all you need. A bit of red pepper to finish. The anchovies dissolve when added to the onion. Even the anchovy-haters love this. No one knows what the secret ingredient is unless you tell them.

Instead of cheese you should add toasted bread crums

“Spaghetti a mezzanotte,” also called “spaghettata,” can be any quick spaghetti dish without a sauce. The name comes from the Italian belief that eating a thick tomato sauce just before bed will keep you awake. At any hour, it’s a regular weeknight meal in Italian households. The original version is the now-classic spaghetti with oil and garlic. Variants (“recipes” if you must use the word) are based entirely on whatever ingredients you have on hand.

Lordy, Lordy. This was perfect exactly as proposed.

My favorite pasta as of late is spaghetti with garlic, fish sauce, and chili. For one portion, grate two cloves of garlic into a bowl, add a tbsp or two of fish sauce, some chili flakes (Korean ones work magnificently), and a few tbsp of olive oil. Mix that up and then just put the hot spaghetti on and mix. Fish sauce is essentially the same flavor as anchovy, which is why it works in Italian dishes, too!!

For this kind of recipe I've stopped draining the pasta water into the sink. Using a spider I simply remove pasta from the stock pot and deposit it into the container where I’ve built the sauce. Some water comes along which thins the sauce just fine. And, more water is then available for use as needed. As an alternative, skip the lemon. Add capers and olives and you got puttanesca.

This was so good. I made it exactly as described, no substitutes. I used 8 anchovies. I also used a recent discovery for making pasta...pasta in a skillet. I eschewed the big pot and boiled the spaghetti in a large saucepan, which left me with more than enough rich water to add to the sauce at the end. So good. I will now add it to our rotation of regular meals.

Can never have enough anchovies. A little white wine after the sautéed garlic and fish add a nice layer of flavor.

How can anchovies be "optional" when they are the star and title of the dish? Sure, you can leave them out if you don't like them and the pasta might taste great but it won't be this recipe.

Instead of bread crumbs, add double the cheese!

Yep it's a derivation of puttanesca... No lemon add olives and capers.