Nick's Creamy Puttanesca

A basic Puttanesca is a very sharp, tomato based sauce with garlic, anchovies and olives. Some people also add some kind of cream cheese to make a milder, more creamy sauce. After we had an amazing Puttanesca in a restaurant last year, I decided that I needed to recreate the recipe and make it low calorie enough that it could go into our regular rotation.

Many Puttanescas/refinements/experiments later, I think that I've actually improved on the dish that this was modelled after, and with this being a complete meal when stirred into any kind of pasta, it is great for a tasty, spicy, low calorie dinner.

I make this recipe and spoon it into ice cube trays to make easy to use (and easy to calorie count) "Puttanesca Cubes". In my trays this makes 35 cubes, at 35 calories each (the whole recipe is very low for a creamy sauce - 1250 calories).

Recommended portion is 3 cubes per person with 80g (dry weight) of pasta per person, for a 330 calorie meal. Great for those days where you fancy something starchy, but don't have many calories left.

Headline Statistics:

• Makes approx. 35 cubes in a standard ice cube tray
• 35 Calories per cube
• If you're not measuring/storing this way, the recipe is 1250 calories and serves 10-12 when used as a sauce to lightly coat pasta
• 10 mins prep time, 20 mins cooking time  

Ingredients:

• 3 Cloves Garlic, minced
• 4 anchovy fillets in olive oil, finely chopped (about 25g)
• 2 x 440g cans of Chopped Tomatoes
• 320g black olives, chopped (drained weight)
• Two large red chilli peppers, chopped including seeds (about 25g)
• 30g Strong Tomato Puree (I use double concentrated)
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 300g Half Fat Creme Fraiche (with the one I use this is 507 calories)
• As little oil as possible to fry the onion (if poss. use 1 cal oil spray)

Method

• Soften the finely chopped onion in as little oil as possible for a couple of minutes
• Add the anchovies and garlic, and stir continuously for a minute. The anchovies should start to break down and dissolve a bit.
• Add both cans of chopped tomato, the tomato puree and chopped olives, and stir
• Add the creme fraiche and stir in fully.
• Taste and add salt as necessary (a bit of balsamic vinegar is also really nice)
• Leave on a very low heat for 20 minutes
• Stir into pasta, either as a light or heavy coating, both taste great.

Notes

• Feel free to go much bigger on the anchovies. My wife isn't so keen on them, so I've dialled it back quite a bit. A true puttanesca would have lots more than I use here.
• Feel free to go much lighter or even remove the chillies. I like the sauce to be spicy, but the chillies here don't form a big part of the taste of the sauce, so if you don't like hot food, you can reduce or remove (and maybe add some ground black pepper in its place for a bit of a kick)
• One of the nice things about this sauce is that you can taste most of the ingredients quite distinctly in the finished sauce, so you can quite easily identify the elements that you like and use more of them.