Simple Anchovy Pasta

Speaking of anchovies, as you were a couple of posts ago, I made an anchovy pasta from Kathleen Sloan's Rustic Italian Cooking yesterday.

Cook pasta for two. Meanwhile (such a loaded word in a recipe--"meanwhile", kill and dress a chicken and harvest and grind some wheat), heat 3 tablespoons olive oil and saute 3 cloves sliced garlic for 2 minutes. Stir in 6 canned anchovy fillets or rolls, 1/4 cup chopped parsley, and 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes and cook a couple of minutes more. Mash with spoon. Add to drained pasta, toss, and season to taste with salt and pepper. I topped it with Parmesan cheese.

We also had Brussels sprouts with mustard cream, and a tomato salad.

Anchovies

I love them. I didn't mean to buy rolled ones, since they're for cooking and will just end up melting away anyway, but I thought these were beautiful. I put some in a pasta dish the other night, but I've been eating the rest on crackers.

With Anchovies

This was a good spontaneous pizza: whole wheat crust; pesto from the freezer; a mix of jack and parmesan cheeses; then anchovies, Kalamata olives, cherry tomatoes, roasted red peppers from a jar, and fresh jalapenos from the garden.

To cook pizza, I preheat a pizza stone in the oven for about half and hour at 450 degrees. Then I build the pizza on a perforated pan sprayed with olive oil. I put the pan on the stone to bake for 8 minutes or until it firms up, then I slide it off onto the stone to finish baking for about 8 more minutes. This seems a lot less risky than using a peel to slide the raw pizza into the oven. The crust still rest directly on the stone for the last half of the baking time, so it gets nice and brown and thoroughly cooked.

We have had a cherry tomato orgy lately. We use them on pizza, in soup, and eat them for breakfast and lunch. It's only a miniature version of your tomato crop in the summer, but what a pleasant phenomenon in November and December.