Pasta WHAT?

Tonight is ✨ugly unhinged recipes✨ with yours truly feat. a dish I learned how to make because of a children’s book!

Okay follow me.

In book one of A Series of Unfortunate Events the kids (ranging in age from semi-capable tweenager to actual baby) prepare pasta puttanesca for a troupe of psychotic weirdos masquerading as a theater troupe (actually just your average theater troupe now that I think about it) and the evil villain attempting to steal their inheritance (actually ya know what Count Olaf was kinda right because what would a buncha kids do with all that money anyway…?)

Anywho, on a reread of this series years ago when the Netflix series dropped, I learned that pasta puttanesca was a type of thrown together tomato sauce invented by… prostitutes, to lure in their ‘customers’.

Ya know.

The pasta sauce in the children’s book.

ANYWHO I took a look at the ingredients and said HEY I have most of that just chillin in my house, I wanna make that! And I did! Sans the anchovies because anchovies are of the Devil…

WHAT YOU NEED to make your own risqué children’s book pasta:

• Tomato paste

• Onions

• Bell pepper (I like using jarred sundried red peppers)

• Capers (if you don’t own a jar of capers what are you even doing with your life?)

• Olives

• Onion powder

• Garlic powder

• Italian seasoning

• Paprika

• Feta cheese

• Parmesan cheese

• Noodles

I chop up and freeze onions when I get em and honestly you should too cuz it works GREAT for stuff like this. Throw those frozen onions in a little cast iron (or a regular pan I GUESS). Get your noodles to boil in as soon as those onions thaw out and start to cook cuz from there GEEZE does this sauce cook up quick.

When your onions start getting kinda brown and pretty add in your capers, olives, peppers, and a tablespoon or so of tomato paste. I use the tube kind because I’m ✨fancy✨. Notice I’m not giving you actual measurements for anything because you can make as much or as little as you want. Let all that get kinda…. Dry… looking? You wanna brown it just a little LITTLE bit. Then add some water until it’s SAUCE consistency. I usually just do like a half a cup but once again, I don’t know how much of this you’re making so it depends. You might be making puttanesca for the whole block for all I know, I don’t wanna hold ya back. Now once you’ve got all your sauce all… saucy take it off the burner OFF! THE BURNER! And throw in the feta cheese. You want it melty but not like… gone, ya hear? You wanna run into lil chunks of feta while you’re eating this dish, it’s like a little ✨surprise✨ yannow? Are your noodles boiled? They should be! Drain em, and plate em. Pour your sauce on top. Smother with the parm (or just… lightly sprinkle them if you’re one of those weirdos that doesn’t smother all your food in an inch of shredded cheese).

And there ya go! A fancy pasta dish that’s not nearly as fancy as 10 year old me thought it was when she first came across it, but delicious all the same. Enjoy your pasta, and also… maybe read books with your children. Just in case. I’d hate for them to head to the internet with their spicy pasta questions… this kinda stuff needs parental guidance.

#recipes