Pasta alla Puttanesca
This is a traditional Italian dish since the early 1950-s. The story behind it is that a restaurant owner had a bunch of hungry friends over, but the fridge was empty so he constructed this dish with what was left in the pantry, and the rest is history.
It’s a good dish for outdoor cooking since none of the ingredients will spoil quickly on your hike, and besides salt for the pasta you will not need to bring any seasoning.
It’s also a somewhat healthy dish except for those that need to keep a diet low on sodium/salt.
A full trangia burner was enough for cooking the food and coffee with fuel to spare.
1 liter of water was enough for cooking pasta, coffee and washing up.
Ingredients for 2 servings:
100 g Pasta of your choice (I used Cappelini)
1/2 red onion
1 -2 garlic cloves
1/2 - 1 red chilli
150 g kalamata olives, deseeded
200 g cherry tomatos, fresh or canned
1/2 tbsp olive oil
3 anchovies in oil
1 tbsp capers
1 msk parsley
1- 2 tsp zest of a Lemon (Optional but recommended)
Freshly grated Parmesan (Optional)
Cut the onion, garlic and chilli in small dices. Cut the anchovies in stripes.
Cut rough pieces from the olives, thirds is a good size.
If you have fresh cherry tomatos, cut them in halves.
Heat up a pot with 1 tbsp of oil. Fry the onion, garlic, chilli and anchovies for 2 minutes.
Add the tomatos, olives and the capers. Turn down the heat to medium and simmer for 20 minutes with a lid on. Stir every 5 minutes. If the sauce looks “watery” halfway through remove the lid to reduce it to a thicker sauce.
Boil the pasta according to the instructions.
Strain most, but not all of the water from the pasta while you heat the sauce up again.
Add the lemon zest and cut parsley to the sauce and mix in the pasta to the sauce.
Plate up and serve immediately, with some freshly grated parmesan.