Ok. For starters, I realized as I pulled out my cookbook today, I've been spelling Ms. Ray's name wrong. Her proper name is Rachael Ray. Sorry.
Alright. So my pasta puttanesca was, I dunno, kinda blah. Forgive me if I maybe expect too much. They are, afterall, meals you can make in only 30 minutes, but I want something tasty! I thought as I was consuming my meal that the blandness may possibly be due to the fact that I usually (when making pasta) boil my chosen pasta in butter and a little Tony Chachere's. (Side note, Tony's is a great allspice mixture from Louisiana pronounced shash-er-ees.) So I think, even though Rachael's recipe doesn't call for it, in the pasta I make from here on out I'm gonna go ahead and use butter at least.
So aside from all that, it was much more flavorful than last night's Aglio Olio. Also I ran into some snags while shopping for ingredients. The recipe called for an 8 oz. can of crushed tomatoes. I could only find the big 28 oz. cans and of course my measuring cup was nowhere to be found. I ended up eyeballing it with a paper cup I had that looked to be about the size of an 8 oz. can. My second shopping issue was that the recipe called for capers. I am not a super chef. I have heard the word used on the Food Network shows, but I really had no clue what it was. The only capers I could find were with the pickles. Meaning they were, of course, pickled. I didn't really notice that they gave the dish much of a bad flavor so I don't think it really mattered. Of course the best part of the dish was one of the smallest. It called for a palmful of pitted olives cured in oil. I decided to grab some of those mediterranean olives and it turned out great.
I think that going forward with this cookbook I will be using my brain. As in modifying as I go. Well, I say that now but in a few days the recipes go from easy pastas to restaurant pasta dishes. So I guess we'll see!
LQM
