Spaghetti With Puttanesca Sauce

Ingredients:
400 g (14 oz) Spaghetti (cooked "al dente" - see How to cook perfect spaghetti)
75 ml (3 fl oz) Extra virgin Olive Oil
2 Cloves of garlic (crushed)
5 or 6 Anchovy fillets
40 g (2 ½ oz) Capers (buy the ones preserved in salt)
110 g (4 oz) Pitted black olives (buy the ones preserved in brine)
350 g (12 oz) Chopped tomatoes
1 Whole dried or fresh red chilli (alternatively use ½ tsp of chilli flakes)
Salt for seasoning
A small handful of flat leaf parsley (roughly chopped)
Note: about the olives, you can also use 50% black olives and 50% green olives.

Directions:
Start rinsing the anchovy fillets under running water, then pat them dry with kitchen paper.
Repeat the above procedure with the capers. Capers comes in different sizes; if yours are big then you can roughly chop them (in this recipe I used tiny capers so I did not chop them).
Take the olives and cut them into rounds. Last, chop the parsley and set it aside; you will use it only at the end to garnish. Now, that the Ingredients are ready, we start with the sauce preparation.
Put the Olive Oil into the pan and heat the oil on medium/low heat. Crush the garlic with the blade of your knife and add it into the pan.
Sweat the garlic off for few minutes until it is golden in colour, then remove it from the pan and discard it. Try to tilt the pan on one side and move the garlic around with a wooden spoon; it helps flavouring the oil.
Now, move your pan away from the heat and wait for about a minute to slightly cool the oil down. Then, add the anchovy fillets.
Using a wooden spoon stir and break the fillets down until they have dissolved.
Bring the pan back onto the heat, add the capers and the black olives.
Give a good stir for few seconds until the oil is hot again.
Next, add the tomatoes.
Stir.
Add the chilli and stir for few seconds.
Now, cook on low heat for 15 minutes.
After 10 minutes, check for salt and season according to taste.
When the sauce is ready, sprinkle with parsley.
Stir for few seconds.
Meanwhile, you were cooking your spaghetti. Once the spaghetti is ready, drain it and add it to the sauce pan.
Stir so that all the sauce is evenly distributed.

Mussels and Potatoes

This is another example of how to match seafood with potatoes. It is a simple and delicious dish and also very cheap to make; fortunately mussels are not expensive - not yet! and potatoes are probably the cheapest Ingredients you can buy in a veg shop. This recipe is from the South East of Italy and has been passed to me by my uncle Vittorio (he is from Puglia region of Italy), an excellent cook who I regard as my mentor. When I was a little boy I spent lots of time with him in the kitchen and many of the recipes you can see in this website come from his day to day home cooking repertoire.

Ingredients:
1 Kg (2.2 lb) Fresh mussels
1 Kg (2.2 lb) Potatoes
4 Eggs
60 g (2 ½ oz) Parmesan or Pecorino cheese (grated)
A small bunch on flat leaf parsley (finely chopped)
1 Fish stock cube
2 Cloves of garlic
Extra virgin Olive Oil
Salt and black pepper for seasoning

Directions:
Take a deep pan that is suitable for use in the oven and spread some Olive Oil in the bottom. Alternatively you can use a roasting tin, but it is important the tin has a lid (later, you will see why having a lid is important).
Slice all the potatoes, making slices 2- 3 mm thick.
Form the first layer in the bottom of the pan, by laying the potato slices.
Once the first layer is completed, drizzle with some Olive Oil.
Then, sprinkle with black pepper. Now, make a second layer and repeat the oil and black pepper stages. If you have enough potato slices, make a third layer, as I did for this recipe. If you are using a larger roasting tin you may get a couple of layers only, which is fine anyway.
Prepare some fish stock. Dissolve one fish stock cube in 450 ml (¾ pt) of boiling water.
Now, put the pan on low heat and add a couple of ladles of fish stock.
Next, cover with a lid and steam the potatoes for about 15-20. Here, we want the potatoes “nearly” cooked because after, at a later stage, they will complete the cooking in the oven.
If you think that after 15 minutes the inside of the pan is to watery, you can remove part of the liquid with a spoon or you can complete the 20 minutes taking away the lid, to dry it a bit.
Meanwhile, chop the parsley.
Break the eggs into a small bowl and stir with a fork.
Add the parsley.
Stir.
Add the Parmesan cheese, while you are stirring.
Check that the batter is not too runny but at the same time not too firm.
Season the batter with black pepper.
Season the batter with salt, but not too much because the Parmesan cheese is already salty. Set the batter aside.
Put some Olive Oil into a large pan that can contain all the mussels. Heat the oil on high heat and then add the garlic (sliced).
After a minute or two add the mussels into the pan.
Give a quick stir using a big metal spoon, so that all the mussels are coated with the garlic flavoured oil.
Cover with a lid and leave it for 3-4 minutes. Here, we don’t want to overcook the mussels because later they have to go in the oven, we just need to open them using the heat.
Fish preparation or the recipe Gratin of mussels because it is paramount that you know how to deal with mussels.
For each mussel, get rid of the empty half-shell and lay the other half with the good stuff attached onto a large tray.
Meanwhile, the potatoes are ready, they are now steamed and have also absorbed most of the stock. We can now proceed with the next stage.
Using a spoon, tip some of the batter inside the half-shell containing the mollusc.
Cover the surface of the top potato layer with the half-shells as shown in the picture. When you are doing this job, pre-heat the oven to 200°C (gas mark 6).
For this recipe I have used only half of the mussels available because I have used a small diameter pan, however if you are going to use a large rectangular roasting tin, I am quite sure that you will need all the mussels available (1 kg). Next, put the pan into the oven and cook for 15-20 minutes, uncovered.