puttanesca
Rachel SimpsonI called my husband and asked him to bring me home a chunk of mozzarella cheese because I was going to make this sauce with the tomatoes I got from our farm share.

But then I changed my mind and decided to make Raw Tomato Puttanesca instead.

I did not care that it has one ingredient my husband professes to hate (capers) and another my daughter won't eat (black olives). If I told them there were anchovies in something they wouldn't eat that, either. Those you can mash up well enough to hide -- they add so much flavor I wasn't going to leave them out. Plus, after a lot of resistance, I'm learning to like Mark Bittman and figured this recipe had to be good.

I decided not to mention the previous recipe to my husband since he was still bringing the mozzarella home. I figured I'd just slice it up and they could have it on the side. As if I had always planned it that way.

My whole kitchen smelled divinely like garlic after I smashed two big cloves and mashed them up with the remaining ingredients, to which I also added about two teaspoons of crushed red pepper. I didn't mash the capers, partly because it was too hard to chase them around... and even a fork wouldn't do the job very well. I did mash the olives after chopping them up-sort of. My daughter pulled only one out of the dish and ate the rest without realizing. Ha! And my husband didn't object to the capers at all.

He is a very bad Sicilian who says he doesn't like raw tomatoes, only sauce. So I lied and told him these tomatoes were cooked. You know what he said when he was eating his first helping? "You can taste the fresh tomato." I think he meant it in a positive way. Maybe you really can change men long after their formative years.

Michaela loved this -- despite the olives. "It's so good, it's really flavorful, really garlicky," she said. When I asked here what else she liked she told me "that it has pasta in it." (I've gone gluten free-sigh-and hadn't cooked any pasta for a long time... but I found this quinoa pasta and tried it for the meal – figuring the flavor of the sauce would overcome any of the noodles' deficiencies. I think the pasta wasn't actually that bad – and Chris and Michaela didn't even notice.)

The one thing they did notice – the meatlessness of the meal. "This would be really good with some crumbled ground beef or sausage," Chris said. I objected, saying I liked it with the fresh tomatoes and garlic and basil from the farm-that that was the point-it was supposed to be a "fresh garden" meal. Lovely Michaela responded, "Get some farm-fresh sausage then."