SPAGHETTINI CON PANE, ACCIUGHE E OLIVE
Thin spaghetti with bread crumbs, anchovies, and black olives
Serves 4 to 6
No ingredient is such an inexpensive source of concentrated flavor
as are anchovies. When judiciously utilized, they bring to life a broad
variety
of dishes from appetizers, to pasta to roasts, to sauces for scaloppine.
Many of the most satisfying preparations using anchovies come from
poor country kitchens, particularly the ones of the south, where cooks had
nothing in abundance save for the genius of making things tasty. This pasta
sauce is an example. In it, anchovies do it all, yet not many are required.
Thin Spaghetti with Bread Crumbs, Anchovies, and Black Olives
scarcely more than 1 fillet per portion. Bread crumbs take the place of
more
expensive and, in this context, less appropriate cheese. Little heat is
expended
because the cooking is held to a minimum, not much longer than is required
to brown the garlic and dissolve the anchovies. The olives, chopped to a
pulp,
are put in at the end, off the heat: usually a good idea, I have found,
whenever
any recipe calls for olives.
To obtain from this sauce the full measure of rich flavor of which it is
capable, prepare your own fillets from whole anchovies packed in salt.
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
3 garlic cloves, peeled
6 flat anchovy fillets, chopped very fine to a
pulp
1/4 cup fine, dry, unflavored bread crumbs,
toasted in a pan
2 to 2 l/2 dozen black Greek-style olives
(not the purple Kalamata), pitted and
processed or chopped by hand very fine
to a pulp
1 pound spaghettini
1. Put the oil and garlic in a small saucepan and turn on the heat to medium high. Cook
the garlic, turning it from time to time, until it
becomes colored a very light brown. Remove it
from the pan and turn the heat down to low.
2. In about 20 to 30 seconds, when the heat
of the oil has partly subsided, add the chopped
anchovies. Cook, mixing steadily with a wooden
spoon, until the anchovies dissolve.
3. Turn up the heat to medium, add the
toasted bread crumbs, and cook for 4 to 5 minutes,
stirring frequently.
4. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in
the olives.
5. Drop the pasta into a pot of abundant
boiling salted water. The moment it is barely
tender but firm to the bite, drain it and toss it
immediately with the sauce. Some like at this
point to add a thin trickle of raw olive oil, which
adds a fresh fragrance. Serve at once.
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