Today's post features my wonderful Italian mother, Toni. From now on, she will be blogging on here about once a month, sharing recipes from her childhood. One thing I always reminisce about is the great Italian food I got to enjoy growing up. So I urge you all to one of her simple and delicious recipes.
"Whenever my mother wanted to make a pasta with little fuss, she would make putan, or “whore” sauce. The Italian story goes like this: A woman in Italy who wanted to “whore around” with someone outside of her marriage would make putan sauce in the morning. When she arrived home, she would boil some water for pasta, and toss the cooked pasta in the putan sauce. Her husband would think she was slaving over the stove all day. I can’t promise that the story is true, but I can promise that you will love this no-cook tomato sauce. 
Pasta with Putan Sauce
Ingredients:
8-12 very ripe tomatoes, Roma’s or vine-ripened tomatoes work best
Extra virgin olive oil
Fresh basil
6-8 cloves of garlic
Parmesan cheese (grated)
Salt
1 pound of imported pasta, Farfale, rotelli, or penne works great, DiCecco is my favorite
Directions
Chop tomatoes in small ¼” dice. Put tomatoes with seeds and juices in a large bowl. Peel and crush garlic with garlic press into bowl, with juices. Tear off small pieces of basil into bowl. Use quite a bit.
Cover all with olive oil. Make sure to use enough, about ¾ cup.
Add a couple of pinches of salt and cover with parmesan cheese. Mix all together.
Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Leave to sit all day.
When ready to serve, cook pasta and toss in putan sauce. Serve with grated parmesano reggiano. 
I spent a part of the 1980s running a magazine and talent booking agency above the Whisky-a-go-go on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood. I ate many dinners down there and I must say that the Rainbow Bar and Grill (aside from being LA’s biggest pick-up joint) had some pretty great food. Mario Maglieri, co-owner of the Rainbow, the Whisky, and the Roxy, brought his Italian family recipe for escarole salad to his restaurant. It is now a staple in my Italian family’s diet. I could eat this salad every day.
Escarole Salad
Ingredients:
2 heads of escarole
1 container of traditional Feta cheese
1 container of kalamata olives, with olive juice
Parmesan cheese
6 cloves of garlic
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Directions:
Wash escarole and cut off ends. Roughly chop the escarole- about 2” pieces. Shake off excess water and put in large bowl.
Peel garlic and crush into salad with garlic press.
Dump container of Feta cheese in salad.
Dump container of Kalamata olives, with a little of the juice- about ¼ cup, into the salad. Drizzle a good amount of olive oil over salad.
Add salt and pepper to taste. Add some grated parmesan cheese.
Toss and serve."
Monday, May 12, 2008
pasta with "putan" sauce & escarole salad : my mom's guest blog.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
Actually, there is not a "puton pasta" in italian food. However we have a "pasta alla puttanesca" which sounds similar about the meaning, but the recipe is really different from this one (and so the known origin of the name).
Listen to me. No matter what someone told you... You'll hardly find a true italian recipe for pasta featuring raw tomatoes. They are too humid to be used without a short but strong "spadellata".
When we use them "fresh", we boil them for few minutes in hot water, peel them, then pass the sliced tomatoes on a pan with oil and garlic, or sliced onions...
That's about 5/6 minutes of work.
Enough to be considered fast-food, but even enough to make tasteful and soft your tomatoes...
There's just an exception, as far as I known: Spaghetti with bottarga. But bottarga has a so strong flavor that you have to compensate with some fresh taste...
The salad seems a lot a variation of a classical greek salad. We don't use Feta and Kalamata but fresh roman pecorino and gaetan olives.
GOSH!
I've read just now...
6-8 cloves of garlic!!!
That's really weird!
1 sliced clove is enough for the most part of the recipes...
Matteo, who died and made you the king of Italian cooking?
I have a huge Italian family that hails from a city called Benevento, about 50 miles outside of Naples. My family came to New York many years ago and we have many family recipes. While you are correct that most Italian sauce, or gravy as we call it, is cooked, there is a putan pasta and it exists in my family.
If I want to make my nonie's all-day sauce with cooked tomatoes, sausage, meatballs, pepperoni and braciola, I pick a day when I have some time on my hands. This is a no-cook recipe that has been in my family for years, it is delicious, it's fast, and since it's our recipe, it's authentic Italian. We don't follow rules, we go on taste.
As for the escarole salad, it is for garlic lovers. It is meant to be very garlicky. Try it, but only if you have the cogliones.
one sliced garlic clove. haaaa-haaaa-haaaa (smell the garlic?) what kind of italian are you? oh, one lacking of any taste or cogliones.
Haha! One clove of garlic! If that's "authentic Italian," count me out.
Having eaten this recipe just the other day (when I shot these photos, haha) I can attest to its deliciousness and 'authentic' flavor. In my opinion, it's just like a simple pommodoro, but with more kick from the raw garlic. The hot noodles immediately cook the tomatoes lightly, so they aren't "raw" necessarily, they have a softness to them that I like. I'm definitely looking forward to making it this summer when it's hot and I'm feeling lazy.
Well, first of all, let me say that I never meant to be rude to you or your recipe. Nobody left me the crown of the italian cooking kingdom, indeed.
Maybe my english is weak and I explained myself in a bad way.
Toni, I believe you when you say that this is a family recipe and even when you say that you don't follow the rules. That's a good point to find new tastes and original meals.
I just pointed out about the fact that the "common way" to cook fresh tomatoes for a pasta is to roughly cook them for about 2-3 minutes and almost never put them in the bowl completely raw. This is a no-brainer, for us. I also explained the reason... too water (and too acid) in the tomatoes. It has to be reduced a bit.
Nothing else...
Now, please, let me write a few lines about garlic and italian authenticity. ;)
Italian cooking doesn't mean garlic.
We, of course, use garlic. But not always (actually we don't use it in a lot of recipes, thanks god, the french use it a lot more...) and never, I repeat never, in that quantity. It's not about having our "coglioni" (cogliones is coglioni with a mexican attitude?) or not. It's just about good sense. And, again, I'll tell you the reason. Italian food, and especially the southern one, is made of fresh, smelly ingredients.
Garlic is just one of them and we prefer to balance between flavors (and last but not least we'd like to have human conversation after lunch...). If you put a lot of garlic cloves in your recipe, you'd loose a lot of blendings taste (I don't know if this makes any sense in english language...)
So, please, don't be sarcastic with me if I tell you that one clove of garlic is enough. It's simply true.
I realize now that there is a very large hyatus between the actual italian cooking and the american-italian cooking. Probably they are two distinct way to consider ingredients and quantities, and taste.
I think so...
So... I'm sorry if you were offended by my previous comment. Just wanted to explain some things...
Sorry to bother you.
I have to correct myself. There is actually one very garlicky recipe in italian cooking. It's a northern recipe known as "Bagna Cauda". It's a traditional north western recipe (my area).
Another one is Bruschetta (southern).
But you'll count them on your fingers...
i am annoyed by this matteo person. like, a whole lot. i too come from a huge italian family and my grandma, great grandma, and great great grandma have a recipe almost exactly like this! so fuck, i guess all these italian people just have no idea what they are doing using some raw tomatoes to create some delicious food. maybe matteo should make his own food blog and show everyone else how this shit is done. since he is apparently the master of italian food and has every right in the world to correct everyone.
...sorry this is bitchy and sounds like a 15 year old wrote it. its 324 in the morning and i drank too much coffee. love the blog!
Matteo, you are being pretty rude. Let's blame the language barrier and call it good. You don't need to over-explain yourself anymore, we get the idea. Have a good one!
Post a Comment