So today in the foodie shop I convinced myself that I’d finished up my last jar of anchovy fillets in olive oil and I needed to buy some more.
This was partially true. I did finish up a jar a few weeks ago. Unfortunately I forgot the episode inbetween then and now where I already bought a replacement jar.
Good job they’ll keep. But still, if anyone has any favourite recipes for the little buggers…
Early Modern Notes 
Pasta puttanesca is what I’d make with them, I love it — with hot peppers, black olives, capers, tomatoes, garlic and parsley. Very simple and also very spicy, I guess why they call it harlot’s pasta in Italian.
In Real Fast Food Nigel Slater has a really good potato salad with anchovies that is just electric:
12 medium waxy potatoes, 5 anchovy fillets, 2 teaspoons red wine vinegar, 2 tablespoons olive oil, 2 tablespoons roughly-chopped parsley, ground black pepper
Basically, mash the anchovies with a knife, then bung it all together with the other stuff to make a dressing. Slice the potatoes, mix it up with the dressing. De-licious.
This is just cruelty to us Ph.D. students who can barely afford sauce to put on their pasta, let alone meat :(
I heard that it was puttanesca because it was made of all kinds of stuff they could keep at the ready in the brothel kitchen.
Rob, I have that book (it’s a bit of a grease-spattered, bent-up fave in fact), so I’ll look it up. And I have to give puttanesca a try.
(Sorry, Ed.)
That’s OK. Last night I was sustained on whatever packets of nuts and crisps I could forage from the student bar (where I was working so that I can afford further pasta)
Neapolitans make a pasta sauce with brocoli – boiled first – and anchovies fried with garlic and chili, which is good.
It sounds as though it should be. I do have one favourite recipe with purple sprouting broccoli (which I like better than standard broccoli) and (long) pasta, some mashed up anchovies and a few squeezes of lemon juice. Trouble is that purple sprouting broccoli has a very short season…
Apart from the Puttanesca, anchovies are a staple of Caesar salad and Napoletana pizza. Get thee to a search engine!
As my mates can tell you, I lurrrrve pizza but I’m just way too lazy to make my own (and bought pizza bases are never the same)…