Pasta with olives and capers aka vegetarian puttanesca

This is a really simple dish. It is the vegetarian's equivalent of the puttanesca (the prostitute's sauce). It is without the anchovies and with some good old fashioned booze thrown in. I'm  sure the Italian prostitutes of old would have partaken in a small glass of wine!?

What you will need
Pasta (enough for 4)
1 tin of tomatoes
3-4 cloves garlic
1 dried chilli
Balsamic vinegar
125ml red wine
2 teaspoons chopped capers
Green or black olives
Parmesan cheese

So, start with the pasta sauce. Chop the onion and garlic and saute until soft and brown for about 10 minutes. Add the glass of wine and cook the alcohol off for a minute before adding the chopped tomatoes and half the same amount of water. Add a splash of balsamic vinegar for sweetness, flake the dried chilli in; add two large tea spoons of chopped capers and really as many sliced olives as you fancy. I add about 3-4 tablespoons as this is a key ingredient of the sauce. Taste and season, remember the capers and olives are already salty.

Reduce the sauce for 15-20 minutes. I have a friend who insists on sieving his arrabiata/tomato sauces because he doesn't like the texture of the chopped tomatoes. If you feel the same, just use passata instead of chopped tomatoes. I personally like a variety of textures in my food.

When you're ready for dinner, cook the pasta. I had fresh fusilli pasta in the fridge, so this is what we had. A photo of my plate is below.

I served this with fresh parmesan and fresh greek basil. Gipsy Spread of course had his with a wonderful Waitrose' chorizo whorl sausage skewer. Photos of his are below.

Mixing the Italian with the Spanish, we had dinner on the Mediterranean tonight.