Spaghetti alla puttanesca

As the sibling of a picky eater, I want to acknowledge something.  I know that there are people in this world who screw up their faces at the sight of a garlic clove, whose eyes well up with just a whiff of pepper.  There are people who quake in their boots at the mere mention of olives, for whom anchovies are the height of terror.  There are people who demand that food be mild-mannered, lightly seasoned, inoffensive.  I know and love a number of these people.  I pass absolutely no judgment on their eating habits.

If you are one of these people, this is not the recipe for you.  Turn back now.  Here be dragons.

Now that that's out of the way: spaghetti alla puttanesca.  This is a classic Italian sauce, rumored to have been developed in the brothels of southern Italy.  (Wikipedia tells me the literal translation is "whore's spaghetti.")  It's possibly my favorite tomato-based sauce ever--aggressive and entirely unapologetic, with a bracing balance of salt, heat, and vinegar-tang.  There are surely thousands upon thousands of puttanesca recipes in existence; this is mine.

This is really a straightforward red sauce, with a few unusual ingredients added: olives, capers, crushed red pepper, and anchovies.  (If you're vegetarian, or simply can't abide anchovies, you could very easily omit them.  I, however, adore them.)  Because it's approaching winter, I wrote this recipe using canned tomatoes and dried herbs; during the summer, you could very easily substitute fresh tomatoes and herbs, although I'd still recommend adding a small can of crushed tomatoes.

And, because it's me, and I can never resist gilding the lily a little, I threw in a simple twist: oven-roasting the tomatoes and garlic.  This is by no means a necessary step; you could just as easily crush or puree the tomatoes straight from the can, and saute the garlic with the other aromatics as you normally would.  But by roasting them at fairly high heat, concentrating and caramelizing the tomatoes' natural sugars, you can add extra depth and sweetness to the sauce, which helps balance the bite of the other ingredients.  It also makes the whole dish more wintry and substantial, which is nice now that we're sliding into the depths of November.

All right, all right.  To the recipe, already.

Spaghetti alla Roasted-Tomato Puttanesca (serves 4-6)
1 pound spaghetti
2 (28-oz) cans whole peeled tomatoes
5-6 large garlic cloves, whole and unpeeled
Olive oil (for drizzling and sauteing)
1 onion, diced
4-5 anchovy fillets, minced very fine
Large pinch of crushed red pepper flakes (more if you like spicy)
About 20 green or black olives, pitted and halved
1/4 cup capers, drained
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried oregano
Salt and black pepper to taste
Grated or shaved Parmesan, for topping

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.  Line a cookie sheet (or two) with aluminum foil, and drizzle the foil with olive oil.  Drain the canned tomatoes over a bowl, reserving the juice.  Take each tomato and pull it open to reveal the insides; pull out as much of the seeds and tough innards as possible, and lay the flattened tomatoes on the foil-lined sheet(s).  Add the whole garlic cloves, placing them here and there next to the tomatoes.  Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt.  Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the tomatoes have shriveled and started to brown around the edges.

Remove tomatoes and garlic from the oven and let cool.  Pull everything off the foil, removing the skins from the garlic in the process, and add back into the reserved tomato juice.  If, like me, you like a smooth tomato sauce, puree the tomato mixture in a blender or food processor; if you like a chunkier sauce, mash everything together with a potato masher or fork.  At this point, you can also put the water up for the pasta.

While the pasta's cooking, heat olive oil over medium heat in a deep-sided frying pan or skillet.  Add onion, anchovies, and crushed red pepper, and sweat 5-10 minutes, or until the onion is translucent and the anchovies have dissolved.  Add tomato mixture, olives, capers, basil, and oregano.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer 10-15 minutes, or until everything has coalesced and become, well, saucy.  Drain pasta and toss with sauce, then serve with parmesan on top.