![]() ![]() Feel free to squeeze in a little lemon juice if you disagree. Both supply acidity, but the tomatoes have quite enough of that as it is, and adding extra cuts through the richness of the other flavours in a way I don’t particularly like. Sforza adds white wine to the sauce and the River Cafe finishes the dish with a drizzle of lemon juice. ExtrasĬontaldo finishes his dish with parmesan and Bastianich pecorino, but, whatever the rules about cheese and fish, I think the sauce should have enough savoury oomph to make any such additions completely unnecessary. If fresh parsley doesn’t tend to lurk in your salad drawer, or on your windowsill, then by all means substitute a tiny pinch of dried oregano at the same time as the chilli, or indeed leave this a herb-free zone. I don’t think it needs either though the sweetness of the basil makes an interesting change, I find the oregano too strong, and neither marry as well with the other flavours as the peppery parsley. The River Cafe and Sforza add dried oregano to their sauces, while almost everyone else relies on fresh flat-leaf parsley alone – Contaldo suggests basil instead. I prefer the fiercer heat of the dried variety, which, in any case, seem more appropriate to the store-cupboard theme. Most versions of this dish also include chilli, usually dried – whether that is crumbled whole peppers, as in the River Cafe and Sforza versions, or the chilli flakes used by Hartnett, Bastianich and The Geometry of Pasta – but sometimes fresh, as in Contaldo and Anna Del Conte’s recipes. The milder onion, however, just gets lost, so I’m going to tell it to do just that. Garlic has a fiery quality of its own which works well with the chilli, so I’m going to err on the generous side. ![]() Although it shouldn’t be overpowering, it’s got some strong competition in the flavour department, and I can’t detect it at all in Sforza’s dish. Hartnett puts onion in her sauce, while most other people use just garlic, in varying quantities – Sforza only infuses the oil with it before whipping it out, while Bastianich sticks in a clove a person, and most recipes go for roughly half that. So, for both flavour and texture, passata and puree win the day. ![]() Roddy suggests an alternative of tinned tomatoes and puree, but I prefer the smoother consistency of passata – plus even the best tinned tomatoes can be watery unless they’re cooked down, and this seems to be less of a problem with the passata. Angela Hartnett and Italian-American celebrity chef Lidia Bastianich use tinned tomatoes Valentina Sforza, the author of 500 Pasta Dishes, goes for passata The Geometry of Pasta makes a light tomato sauce and combines it with cherry tomatoes Rachel Roddy of the Roman food blog Rachel Eats mixes ripe tomatoes and puree while The River Cafe Classic Italian goes down the fresh-only route with plum tomatoes, as does Gennaro Contaldo with cherry tomatoes.įresh tomatoes seem contrary to the spirit of this dish, especially when transplanted to an autumnal Britain unless you simmer them long and slow, as the River Cafe suggests, they’ll never pack enough flavour. ![]() These prove to be the backbone of the dish, to my slight surprise – I’d never really thought of a puttanesca as a tomato-based sauce, more of a loose amalgamation of ingredients of roughly equal importance. ![]()
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