Pasta Puttanesca with tuna for a goat in love

served with fresh buffalo mozzarella on linguine pasta   

My goat is a vegg head and he loves anything to do with pasta, cream and habanero scotch bonnet peppers. It is not hard to cook for him, but it can be a little insensitive on his part when I have slaved over a good meal to watch him destroy my perfect seasoning with a fiery of hot peppers. I think what's the point. I could just be one of those microwave ladies and throw a dish in the microwave slather it with hot peppers and hot sauce and I am sure he wouldn't even notice the difference. He would just say "it was ok". Well, it was a rare change the other day when I whipped up a batch of my amazing pasta Puttanesca for him, and he didn't add a thing. Just ate, and ate and ate until he had the happy mans glow on his face.

serves 4

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

3 garlic cloves

6 anchovy fillets

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes 

3 cups of my homemade butter onion sauce (or a 450 g jar of good quality pasta sauce)

pinch of sugar

2 fresh basil sprigs

1/4 cup kalmata olives( I used green regular pimento olives) Kalmata olives can be a little over baring

1 heaping tablespoon of capers

salt and pepper to taste 

1 can of best quality tuna in water you can afford drained.

Directions:

Heat oil in a large sauce pan. Add the garlic, anchovies and crushed red pepper flakes. ( I use Dilip's red pepper flakes from Mill and Mortar  winter LARDER (see links on main page for store and web address)

and cook over moderate heat, stirring for 1 minute. Add the sauce and stir in the sugar, basil olives and capers. Season with salt and pepper and bring to a boil. Simmer sauce over low heat, stirring occasionally until it thickens.(About 20 minutes)  Season to taste, and discard basil sprig add the drained can of tuna and let simmer while you prepare the pasta. Serve scooped atop a lush amount of pasta and garnish with the soft dollops of buffalo mozzarella. Enjoy!

Tomato, Onion Butter pasta sauce for a true foodie.

It's friday. I have the next three days off , my house is clean, laundry done, so that leaves me to just cook, blog, and spend time with the little man.I am a serious food blog reader and I have a lot of favorites, but I sometimes come across a few recipes that have been making the blog rounds and I as a newbie have to also try out. I live in the forest so tying to get my hands on a can or two of San  Marzano plum tomatoes is impossible, so it was off to my local corner store to get me a few cans of their best plum tomatoes. 

As I  love to cook in large quantities I always double or triple a recipe for the freezer or  for the up and coming week. I  was inspired to make this sauce with the idea as using it as my base for eggplant and spinach vegetarian lasagna with home made ricotta cheese. Still might in fact.

I am off to Stockholm next week with lilla A for a visit, and a little cooking at J&K in Djursholm.I wanted to cook something for them that they could easily make for themselves when they had friends over. I started doing some reading on the web and thanks to http://www.smittenkitchen.com  and Lucia  at http://www.thewednesdaychef.com I think I found the start of something beautiful. Tomato,butter and onion pasta sauce. Sounds pretty basic doesn't it? 

These three little ingredients has created the base of a fantastic sauce. I find tin tomatoes tinny' and bitter so I had to tweak the original recipe to incorporate a little sugar and the left over chopped garlic from my croutons and a little bit of finely ground black pepper as well.   I so wanted to cook this sauce as clearly intended, but the goat is such a cream freak that trying to get a tomato sauce in him other than on a pizza is a battle in itself. 

it is really that easy!

I can say I will never make a tomato base sauce different ever again. My house smells fantastic! The best part of this recipe is that 95% of us have the ingredients already in our house. Please try and tweak and add as your taste desires. enjoy, I know I will.

4-6persons

6- 400g cans of plum tomatoes

220 g unsalted butter( I used salted)

6-smallish-medium yellow onions

1 teaspoon salt (go by taste) 

I also added 1/4 cup sugar,1 teaspoon garlic powder and 1 teaspoon of finely ground black pepper

Use a large 2 liter pot and add all the cans of tomatoes and peel and halve the onions. Plop in the butter and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to a simmer and stir occasionally. Remember to smooth out the plum tomatoes on the side of the pot as they cook. The smell that will fill your kitchen is amazing. I promise. I let my big pot slowly simmer, and mush the tomatoes for a good hour and half. When the tomatoes are lovely and the sauce is shinny and the onions have done their job. I strained the sauce and pushed it through a strainer and got all those lovely onion and tomato juices out. Discard  the left over  pulp and let your sauce sit with lid on while you fix the pasta. Remember to taste, taste and taste! Add, more salt or what ever you wish and have fun.