Recipe: Puttanesca Bianca

This is a repost of a blog post from 2010. Enjoy!

I bought a bag of dried pasta a few weeks ago, and there was a recipe on the back of the bag. Now, generally, these recipes are ridiculously simple and not always that good. They are, after all, on the back of a bag of pasta.

But, this pasta was Italian (!), with actual Italian writing on it. So, naturally, I thought, “well this recipe must be good.”

And you know what. It was!

The recipe itself is rather simple, although I jazzed it up a bit. And with the addition of the olives and the capers it turns into a Puttanesca sauce, only without the tomatoes. Hence, Puttanesca Bianca.

The puttanesca sauce is a rather recent Italian invention, in the Neapolitan style, dating from either the 1950’s or 1960’s. And “alla puttanesca” can be literally translated to “whoreish sauce.” The earliest written reference of this pasta sauce is from a 1961 novel Ferito a morte (The Mortal Wound) by Raffaele La Capria. However, the actual dish is said to have been the brainchild of Sandro Petti, a co-owner of an Ischian (Ischia is a volcanic island in the Gulf of Naples) restaurant. As the story goes, Petti was asked to make dinner for his friends one night, but found he had no food. So, he used what he had; “four tomatoes, a couple of capers, and some olives.”

The result: the pasta puttanesca! (source Do Bianchi)

So here is, with some Madstone additions the new and improved recipe for Puttanesca Bianca (c/o my bag of pasta).

Puttanesca Bianca

Olive Oil

1 small to medium onion- diced

6 cloves of garlic (or however much you like)

3-4 anchovy fillets- chopped up

½ Chili Pepper (or 1 tsp Chili flakes)

¼ cup pitted black olives

2 tbsp Capers

½ cup white wine

Spices to taste: Pepper*, oregano, basil, parsley

Pasta of choice

Parmesan Cheese

*You don’t need to add much salt to this recipe; the olives make it plenty salty.

1) Throw you olive oil into a pan. Toss a few pieces of onion in as well, when they start to sizzle slightly then you know you oil is hot enough. Through the rest of the onion in. Now, at this point I part ways from the traditional puttanesca; you see, I caramelize my onions. If you don’t have the extra 20minutes to ½ hour it will take to do this, just continue on. If, however, you do, then I would recommend caramelizing the onions. It really adds an amazing level of sweetness to the dish, which works really well with the spiciness of the chili and the saltiness of the olives and capers.

1a) To caramelize the onions: thrown them in your pan, with your olive oil, at a constant, low- medium heat. Toss some salt in on top. The salt with act as a moisture absorber, which should caramelize the onions faster. Then, wait. Toss the pan every once in a while – we don’t want the onions to burn, but if some of the pieces start to crisp up don’t worry. About 15minutes in (depending on how they are tasting) I toss some sugar into the pan as well. This will speed up the process.

2) Once your onions have been caramelized add in your garlic, chili and anchovies. If you are adding in any spices feel free to add half of them in at this point. Cook until the anchovy pieces have turned translucent and almost disappeared.

3) Once the anchovies have cooked out add in your olives and capers (I will sometimes thrown in another vegetable of choice here- add it in now. Broccoli, Rapini, Spinach, Zucchini, feel free to mix it up! But stick to one ingredient- this is a simple dish). Cook for about 5 minutes longer.

4) Add in your ½ cup of white wine (I like to eyeball this part), and your other herbs and pepper. I love adding fresh basil to my pasta. But dried oregano will work. As will fresh or dried parsley. Cook for another 20ish minutes, or until the white wine has cooked out.

5) Mix in your cooked pasta (anything will work with this sauce, as it isn’t really very ‘saucy.’ Rather, this will make a drier kind of pasta sauce). Grate in some Parmesan cheese and enjoy!

If you wanted to make this a more traditional sauce, I would not caramelize the onions, add in a can of whole Italian tomatoes (dice the whole tomatoes before you throw them in), and some red wine, instead of white, for a different variation on this dish.

Kitchen Adventures: Pizza!

So, last week I decided to make pizza for dinner. And not just any kind of pizza. The Real™ Homemade kind. The true Italian kind.
It was going to be an adventure.

I had already bought my 00 flour in preparation. 00 flour refers to how finely milled the flour is. In Italy there are three types of flour 1, 0 and 00, referring to how finely ground it is.
For a good pizza dough you want the finest you can find, this will make the dough easier to work with. (There are different types of Italian 00 flour, specialty pizza flour and regular 00 flour - either will work for a pizza dough).
If you don't have any Italian stores nearby a combination of general purpose flour and high-quality bread flour will work.

Under the recommendation of my awesome friend, who is also an amazing cook, I was going to use Mark Bittman's pizza dough recipe, from How to Cook Anything - it's very simple and only has 5 ingredients in it.

Of, course, as I was about to start making the dough I realized I had no idea what kind of yeast to use - the recipe calls for instant yeast, but the two I had in the cupboard has extra words on them! What to do!
So, I called my aforementioned awesome friend and left a frantic message, which went something like this: "Oh my gawd! You HAVE to be home! I have a yeast-related baking questions and I don't know who else to call! CALLLLLL me!"

Luckily, she returned my call in record time and explained the difference between the various yeasts and which one I needed to use.
Turns out I did have instant yeast, only it was called "quick-rise," which is how the confusion arose.
Apparently you can also tell the difference between yeasts by looking at the size of the yeast granules. The smaller granules are instant yeast, and the larger granules are regular yeast (the kind you need to add sugar to and allow to feed and rise).

Well, I tossed all the ingredients in the food processor- and voila! Dough! And it worked! Woo!
Step one complete.

Pizza dough, awaiting rising.

After waiting about an hour for the dough to rise it was time to roll it out. Now, I am the kind of person that loves to bake, but tends to have problems with doughs and rolling pins. Not so with this! It was s'wonderful, s'marvellous dough!
Whether this ease of rolling was due to the type of flour I used, the perfection of the recipe, or a combination of both I don't know - but suffice it to say - this was the easiest dough I've ever worked with.

A mostly round rolled out pizza dough.

The dough recipe I made was enough for 3 good sized pizzas (either large quarters, or 6 slices).
We made three different ones and had an entire pizza leftover!
Pizza one was a classic margarita with tomato sauce, slices of mozzarella, Parmesan, fresh basil, and more mozzarella.

The basil and mozzarella pizza.

Pizza two was an organic, free-range spicy pepperoni pizza, and pizza three was made with artichoke hearts, olives and capers.
They were all delicious.

Verdict: Not as hard to make as you would think, but definitely messy. Also, fun. A great dinner!

The mess my kitchen counter was in while making this!

Product Profile: Sugar Scrubs!

Sugar scrubs are fabulous. They allow you to get rid of all the dead skin cells and other gunk that can build up on your skin over time. They will help your skin revitalize, grow new cells, soften and add a healthy glow. A scrub utilizes an exfoliant of some kind (sugar, salt, pumice, jojoba beads, apricot kernel or almond shells, loofa...) to scrape off old skin, and to soften, smooth and regenerate your skin.
Try not to purchase or use scrubs with plastic beads as the exfoliant. Plastic does not degrade on its way down your drain and will end up in the world's river and ocean systems, where it will bio-magnify, meaning it will continue its way back up the food chain, and back to you.

Why use a scrub?
Your skin sheds millions of skin cells on a daily basis, and if these are not routinely cleansed off they can buildup and create a barrier to other forms of moisturization and lead to wrinkly and older looking skin. Skin with this type of barrier tends to be "thirstier," as well, even though the benefits of moisturizing don't help it as much.
Exfoliation will also help with ingrown hairs, it helps to stimulate circulation and gets rid of dirt and build-up without the use of soap.

Scrubs can be used on the face and the body, but there is generally a difference between the two. Mainly, facial scrubs will be less abrasive and utilize different oils and exfoliants. This is not to say that you can't use a regular body scrub on your face, only be careful when you rub, and don't overdo it.

Why sugar?
Sugar is usually the exfoliant of choice for many people as it is less abrasive and doesn't sting, like a salt scrub would. It also has some fantastic chemical properties going for it as well. Not only will sugar act as an exfoliant in a manual sense, but because it contains natural glycolic acids it also exfoliates on a chemical level, by dissolving dead skin and clarifying your skin.


Here is a really basic sugar scrub recipe that you can make at home:

Lemon Sugar Scrub

1 Cup Sugar

1/2 Cup Olive oil

1 tblsp Lemon Zest

Mix well, and use!

What is an emulsified sugar scrub? And what makes them better?
An emulsified scrub is one that will become creamy and 'lotion-like' in the shower when water is applied to it. Emulsified scrubs use water soluble ingredients in it (butters, oils and an emulsifier) to create the creamy lotion-like texture.

The sugar scrubs I make are emulsified sugar scrubs, which means they have a few extra ingredients in them which adds to the texture of the scrub in the shower, as well as the moisturization properties of it. These scrubs will wash off without a greasy feel and utilize butter and oils to create a moisturizing feast for your skin.

My scrubs:
I use cocoa and mango butters, as well as castor, cherry kernel, jojoba, rice bran and soya bean oils in my sugar scrubs for their amazing skin properties.

Why do I use those specific ingredients? Well, cocoa butter has a long shelf life, has both phytoesterols and polyphenols, as well as palmitic, stearic, oleic and linoleic fatty acids in it. Also, it happens to be my favorite butter! It smells amazing and is always the butter in my favorite lotions, I find it amazingly moisturizing and smooth on my skin.

Mango butter also has palmitic, stearic, oleic and linoleic fatty acids in it, but has more polyphenols than the cocoa butter. Mango butter also has ingredients in it that act as anti-oxidants and anti-inflammatories. It also a drier feel to it than other butters, which works well in a scrub by not making it too greasy.

Castor oil is a great oil, although a bit on the heavier side. I use it here because it tends to penetrate skin easily and acts as a fabulous humectant (a substance that will preserve the moisture content of skin). I like using Jojoba oil in many things because it is generally considered to be non-allergenic, and has anti-oxidant properties. Jojoba will penetrate the skin and not block pores, and contains octacosanol, a fatty acid that can soothe dry skin. Cherry kernel oil has natural antioxidants, vitamins A and E and is a light moisturizing oil.

Rice bran oil contains Ferulic acid, an anti-oxidant that is more effective than vitamin E, and also has anti-inflammation properties. Rice bran oil also contains Vitamin B, Vitamin E and squalene (a natural moisturizer). Soyabean oil is a lighter carrier oil and has oodles of linoleic acid in it, as well as Vitamin E, omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids and the highest concentration of phytoesterols in any of the carrier oils I use. Phytoesterols help soothe damaged skin, inflamed skin or red skin, and can also act as anti-inflammatories.

All in all, these are all oils that have fabulous skin properties, and combining them together in an emulsifying sugar scrub means that once those dead skin cells are gone these fabulous oils can start moisturizing your skin!

I now have 5 scents of sugar scrubs available: Luscious Lime, Decadent Neroli, Radiant Yuzu, Midnight Pomegranate and Morning Orange!

All of them smell fabulous and will cleanse and soften your skin.
Both the orange and the pomegranate scents are new for this season, and will be available on my store soon.

Sources: Organic Body Care by Stephanie Tourles, Point of Interest, Tipnut and Wikipedia.

Recipe: Happy Apple Cake Time!

With thanks to Allrecipes.com and all the wonderful comments over there, I made this apple cake recently and it was considered a winner!
Tasty, moist, super-chock full of apples and delicious. Aside from chopping and coring all the apples it isn't a hard cake to make either. And, it looked lovely when it was done. This would be a lovely cake to take with you to someone's house for dessert.

German Apple Cake

Ingredients
2 eggs
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup white sugar
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 tsp Nutmeg
1/4 tsp Allspice
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
4-5 cups apples - peeled, cored and diced


Directions
1) Preheat oven to 350 F.
2) Grease and flour baking dish. I used a bundt pan- but a square cake dish will work too.
For a great tasting cake, instead of flouring the pan, create a small dish of cinnamon and sugar and sprinkle that around the edges of the pan. It works like the flour, and the cake won't stick, but it gives a nice touch of cinnamon and caramelized sugar on the outside of the cake.

3) Cream the eggs and oil together until well mixed and creamy. Add the sugar and vanilla and continue to beat well.

4) Combine the dry ingredients and sift. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the egg and sugar mixture until well combined. This will be a VERY thick batter. Fold in the apple until well mixed.

5) Spoon the batter into your prepared pan and bake at 350F for 50-55 minutes, or until the cake is done.

6) Once the cake is cool you can serve as is, make a salty caramel sauce for it, use a cream cheese frosting or, use a light dusting of icing sugar.
This cake recipe isn't all that sweet, which means you can go all out for the toppings and not worry about sweetness!

Enjoy! :)