Cooking from the Pantry

Melissa Clark has a great series in the New York Times about cooking from the pantry, and luckily her pantry is very similar to mine. One of her suggestions is to make a basic Pasta Puttanesca and add canned tuna to it. This seemed like a great idea to me, so I made it last night and it was good.

Pasta Puttanesca can be made without a trip to the store if you have the following: pasta, canned tomatoes, garlic, anchovies, olives, capers, and parsley (or other fresh herbs). I keep large quantities of all of the above, so I can always make this dish, and while I don’t always have tuna, I do now due to limiting my shopping trips. 

For two people, this meant about 5-6 ounces of pasta, a small can of tomatoes, as many anchovies as you like—I used three—several cloves of garlic, a tablespoon of capers and ¼ to ½ cups of olives--mine were Kalamata, chopped. Melinda makes hers with a bottled pasta sauce, which would mean even less cooking. I cooked the sauce for about 15 minutes, adding the tuna towards then end. Then I added the cooked pasta to it (and pasta water could be added here if needed), and sprinkled chopped parsley and basil on top. Served it with parmesan, and had enough for someone’s lunch today.