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Wafuttanesca?*
Depending on the kind of shopping you do, you can often probably pull together a perfectly serviceable puttanesca from stuff you already have — canned tomatoes, garlic, anchovies, olives, chile flakes and dry pasta are the gist of it. Such brininess and acidity lends itself well to seafood, so adding tuna here is a harmonious slam-dunk of protein and flavor.
It’s smart to keep a pantry stocked with various ocean stuff like tinned sardines and mussels, instant dashi, and a few different dried seaweeds and tiny fishes. These are all easy to turn into a fast meal, and having a variety of ways to steer the boat, flavor-wise, can lead you into the smooth seas of wafu, or “Japanese style” cooking — giving foreign dishes a touch of Japanese-flavored ethnochaos. Just add pretty much any Japanese pantry staple to dishes from anywhere outside Japan.
Mentaiko is pollock (or cod) roe that’s been salted and seasoned with chile powder, and here it’s usually sold either frozen or in packets of SB Foods’ spaghetti sauce. I usually have a few packs kicking around the cupboard for easy meals — even the spicy version is mild and inoffensive. Mentaiko is salty and intense, more of a condiment than a seafood. It’s basically an uncured version of bottarga, or salt-cured grey mullet roe that Italians have used since Antiquity (the Japanese version of this firm, cured mullet roe is karasumi).
This is all to say that, both historically and flavor-wise, it’s not that wild to add mentaiko and tuna to a puttanesca sauce — it basically existed before Japan encountered European wheat or Italians ever met a New World nightshade (and incidentally, mentaiko came to Japan from Korea). Recipes, like borders, are just ideas. Serves 4-6.
Note: Italy Magazine recommends linguine or thin spaghetti (vermicelli) but says that spaghetti and penne are also both commonly used. You can also use a different type of cured dark olive here if you don’t have Kalamatas. If you have olives with pits, gently smash the olive with the side of a chef’s knife — the pit should slide out easily.
*I definitely buried the lede here, but “puttanesca” means “in the style of prostitutes.” If we apply Japanese terminology, maybe this version could be called “shofuttanesca.”
Ingredients
A few generous pinches of kosher salt
1 pound linguine, spaghetti or other long pasta
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
4 or 5 large anchovy filets
4 large garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons tomato paste
¾ cup Kalamata olives, pitted and halved
3 tablespoons capers, drained (or more olives)
1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
A few pinches of crushed chile flakes, plus more for serving (optional)
A few pinches of black pepper
8 ounces canned or jarred tuna, drained
3 tablespoons mentaiko (or 1 packet spicy salted cod roe spaghetti mix)
¼ cup chopped fresh parsley, plus more for serving
Instructions
- Bring a pot of salted water to a boil, then cook the pasta to al dente. Drain, reserving a cup of the pasta cooking water.
- While you’re cooking the pasta, heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Stir in the anchovies, crushing them with the back of your spoon, and the garlic. Saute for a minute or so to release the garlic aroma and then add the tomato paste. Stir-fry the tomato paste until fragrant (a minute or two) then add the olives and capers.
- Stir in the tomatoes, chile flake and black pepper, then taste and add salt as needed. Simmer the sauce for a few minutes, then add the cooked pasta when it’s ready and a splash of the pasta cooking water. Simmer, stirring with tongs or chopsticks and adding more cooking water as needed, until the pasta has finished cooking.
- Stir in the tuna, mentaiko and parsley and toss to combine. Serve with more chopped parsley and more chile flakes as desired.