Pasta Puttanesca
Ingredients
1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup finely chopped onion
6 cloves minced garlic
2 (28-ounce) cans Roma plum tomatoes, broken into pieces, with juice
1 cup tightly packed, pitted, and halved Kalamata olives
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 tablespoons drained capers
1/4 cup goat or sheep cheese, crumbled
1/2 teaspoon dried crushed basil
1/2 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper flakes
Salt
1 pound penne pasta, cooked to al dente
Directions
In a large pot heat the olive oil over medium high heat. Add the onion and saute until soft and lightly caramelized, about 6 minutes. Add the garlic and cook an additional 2 minutes. Add the tomatoes and the remaining ingredients and simmer until the sauce is thickened and slightly reduced, about 40 minutes. Adjust seasoning, to taste, cover and set aside. Add penne pasta to the pan and toss for 1 minute.
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To Cook The Pasta
Fill a pot with one quart (1 liter) of water per serving of pasta (1/4 pound, 100 g) you plan to make, and set it to boil.
When the water comes to a boil, add 1 tablespoon of coarse salt (a little less if it's fine-grained) per quart of water. In terms of saltiness, it should resemble sea water.
Check the pasta package for pasta cooking time. No time? See below.
When the water comes back to a rolling boil, add the pasta and give it a good stir to separate the pieces.
Stir occasionally to keep the pasta pieces from sticking to each other or the pot.
A minute before the pasta cooking time is up, fish out a piece of pasta and check for doneness.
Fresh pasta, especially egg pasta (fettuccine, tagliatelle, lasagna) cooks quickly, 3-5 minutes.
Thin dry durum wheat (no egg) pasta (spaghettini, shells, rotini) cooks in 6-9 minutes.
Thick-walled durum wheat (no egg) pasta (penne, ziti, spaghetti, tortiglioni, etc.) cooks in 12-15 minutes.
You want an al dente, or chewy texture -- not flab. Taste, or break open a piece of pasta to test for doneness.
If you see a thin white line or white dot(s) in the middle of the broken piece, it's not done yet.
Test again, and as soon as the broken piece is a uniform translucent yellow, drain the pasta.
Tips:
To better wed the pasta to the sauce, put the sauce in a broad skillet and heat it while the pasta cooks.
Drain the pasta when it's just shy of done and stir it into the skillet before the colander stops dripping completely.
Toss the pasta and sauce over high heat for a minute or two, until The pasta is done. This technique is called pasta strascicata, and will work especially well with creamy meat or vegetable sauces, sugo alla bolognese, and marinara sauce. Do not use it with sauces that are raw, for example pesto, or oil based, for example aglio e olio.