Sicilian casarecce with caper and anchovy tomato sauce

This Sicilian casarecce with caper and anchovy tomato sauce is from my father's journals of recipes he collected on his travels in the 1960s and 1970s. It's a recipe that has few ingredients and one I remember fondly, one of those recipes he taught me as a kid.

Dad on the run

This Sicilian casarecce with caper and anchovy tomato sauce is one from my father's journals of the recipes he collected on his travels in the 1960s and 1970s. It's clear that it's from Palermo, but the year is a bit more difficult to ascertain because it's not dated and appears in a section of a journal where Denton, my Da', was writing up things he talks about having "overlooked"; did not write up in a timely manner. But, I suspect it dates from about 1966.

It's interesting in more than one way. Firstly, I remember it very well as a recipe he would cook often and get me to "assist" while I was still very young, once cooking it "together" at a house of Italian friends on holiday—it's a dish burned into my childhood memory.

Secondly, this whole section of this particular (non-diaristic) journal—as in others—is where he is catching up with getting down recipes he should have written down closer to the time but did not. It's is typical of him. And, if there is any pattern I've spotted (the neurotard son is always about pattern recognition) it's that the recipes he often did not transcribe most immediately were also the ones he cooked the most often with me.

This makes complete sense. As a pre-teen, he was very insistent on me understanding "process memory"; the act of something becoming memorable through repeating processes as physical action. This was an act of love about which you don't need to know the details right now, only that it was a method by which he taught me to manage and cope with incoming stimuli; to place things of this world within a process.

We shared the ability to note down things "verbatim" much later than the original "fact" if accompanied by physical actions in a sequence at the actual time. Go check it: it's actually cognitive psychology in motion.

And, for that very fact, it's almost impossible for me to locate it within a very specific time. My father could learn to play a tune by ear and then annotate it perfectly five years later simply because of the act of playing it repeatedly.

But, I digress...

Palermo, Palermo!

This is a recipe he describes as having learned, "in a little place that the family of local fishermen who were away for weeks at a time ran just off the docks, not so much a trattoria as something that looked like a workshop behind the building where they also offered cheap accommodation to sailors passing through.

"I gave the name of the stevedore who had recommended it as a place to eat and was immediately admitted, the formidable matriarch eyeing me up and down."

Denton loved Sicily and, by all accounts, Sicilian women loved him judging by the number of "family secret" recipes he managed to wheedle out of them. I saw him work his cute, ginger magic in Southern Europe when I was a kid, so he must have been really compelling when he was really young.

Casa what?

I'm cooking this recipe right now because I've managed to get my hands on some good casarecce. Contrary to what people may believe, central London has long ceased being a place where you're able to get your hands on everything. The blandness of globalisation has reached deep into this city.

Casarecce (literally "homemade") is a fairly thick pasta; short rectangles that have been twisted into a shape that is excellent for encouraging sauces to cling, and it also has a chunky, satisfying aspect to it. It's something that is very much a Sicilian specialism—though it can be found in numerous places on the southern part of the Italian mainland—and when it is good, it's second to nothing.

Of course, there's no reason you can't make this dish with other pastas. If you can't get your hands on casarecce, shorter pastas of a chunkier ilk such as paccheri or husky forms of rigatoni work very well. That said, thicker "ribbon" pastas—tagliatelle or pappardelle—also work very well; basically a pasta that has enough surface area for this relatively simple sauce to cling on in the ways we love.

Fishy business

Denton never uses the words cucina povera, of which he was a huge fan as a concept, about this recipe. And, it's hard to work out: it's certainly a dish of humble ingredients by today's standards. But, back then, the anchovies would have been something more likely to leverage cash, sold from the dock, rather than cooked up in a sailors' pensione for a weeknight supper. The truth is that I will never know.

Don't make the mistake of using the best quality anchovies—the fancy ones in brine that remain white that you can buy at the best Italian delis. These are meant to be eaten as they are and not put into a sauce. No, here you're looking to use those brown bottled, tinned or marinated workhorses of anchovies, the ones with a more pungent flavour. If buying the kind layered with a lot of rock salt, be sure to wash off the salt before adding to the sauce.

In this recipe, never add the anchovies until you've already added your cooked, drained pasta to the sauce you've placed in another pan to dress the pasta. Though the quantities may seem Spartan for the sauce here, they will readily make enough sauce for four to six people—remember, it's about coating the pasta, not swamping it. Thus, in preparing it for plating, ladel out the quantity of perfectly reduced sauce you will need into relatively big, deep frying pan, and gently keep warm. To this, add a little "pasta water", your cooked, drained casarecce and stir in. Only then do you add the anchovies.

This version is for 2 to 3 diners, but it's easily scaled up for larger groups.

3 top tips to get this recipe right:

• As with many other great tomato-based Italian sauces, you need to take time to cook this one down, reducing it slowly. It's important that you note the timing. Unlike numerous other Italian tomato sugos, the parsley, capers, minced peperoncino—and indeed the anchovies–only go in late in the cooking process compared with many other sauces.

• The anchovies that are key to this recipe require consideration. They need to be cooked into the sauce—heated rather than cooked, in fact—at the last minute. If preparing larger quantities of this sauce for refrigeration or freezing (as I often do), don't add the anchovies. Instead, add them when re-heating and folding in the pasta.

• The onions and red bell pepper are sliced in this recipe—as opposed to cubed—because you want some elements to cling to the pasta (they will cook done almost completely) that gives each bite and interesting taste. Don't be tempted to cube them.

Shopping list

for the Sicilian casarecce with caper and anchovy tomato sauce

• Approx. 80 to 90g (dried) casarecce per diner (or other pasta)

• Approx. 175g good quality anchovies, cut into thirds

• 3 small red onions (or brown); sliced

• 1 medium red bell pepper, finely sliced vertically

• 1 tin (400g) of chopped Italian plum tomatoes

• ½ a tspn Italian peperoncini, NB: the hot Italian peppers

• 1 cup passata

• 250ml vegetable stock

• 2tbspns virgin olive oil

• 4 cloves of garlic, very finely grated or made into a paste

• 1.5tbpsns Italian anchovy sauce (or 2tbspns Worcestershire sauce)

• Approx. 250ml dry white wine

• A generous clutch of fresh flat leaf parsley; chopped

• 3tbspns small capers, bruised (with the back of a knife), not chopped

• ½ a tbspn soft brown sugar

• salt and pepper to taste

for the side salad

• A classic "garden" salad of tomatoes, cucumber, mixed leaves etc.

• Bread, if desired

Cooking Method

the Sicilian casarecce with caper and anchovy tomato sauce

1. In a reasonably deep pan with a lid, heat the olive oil on a low-medium heat. Add the onions and sauté, stirring regularly. When they soften, season with salt and black pepper and stir in. Add approx. 100ml of the wine, stir in and cover. Cook in the liquid for 4 to 5mins

2. Add the sweet peppers and a little more olive oil if needed. Stir in as you sauté. When the red pepper softens, add the garlic and minced peperoncini and stir in. By now, the pan should be fairly dry. Before the garlic burns, add another 150ml of wine and stir in. Re-cover and simmer gently for approx. 5mins

3. Once both the onions and red pepper are soft, uncover and allow almost all remaining liquid to cook off. Add the tinned tomatoes, stirring in. Bring to a vigorous simmer and cook for about 3mins, stirring almost constantly

4. Add the passata and the vegetable stock and stir in. Bring to a healthy simmer. Cover and reduce the heat. Simmer gently for 20 to 25mins, stirring only occasionally

5. Deglaze, loosening anything that might stick with a spatula or wooden spoon. Add the anchovy sauce and stir in. Season with a little salt, but don't overdo it: the anchovies will play a role in seasoning when you eventually add them. Re-cover and reduce to a low heat—barely simmering—and cook for 40 to 60mins, stirring only occasionally

6. When the sauce in notably reduced and thickening, add the chopped parsley and stir in. Simmer for a couple of minutes—until the parsley has wilted—then add the capers and stir in. Re-cover and simmer for another 20mins on a very low heat. Halfway through, add half a tablespoon of brown sugar and stir in to aid reduction

7. When the sauce is at optimal consistency, transfer the amount you need to serve to a large, deep frying pan (or wok) that you have already heated on a medium heat

8. Just before adding your pasta to the boiling salted water, drain your anchovies from the bottle/can. Gently spread them out on sturdy kitchen paper towel or baking paper—something strong enough not to disintegrate—to absorb the excess oil/brine without sticking

9. Cook your pasta—how long it takes will depend on whether it's fresh or dry. When cooked al dente, drain, holding back three or four tablespoons of the "pasta water" to add to the sauce (depending on how thick the sauce has become)

10. Add the "pasta water" and stir in. Add the drained pasta, folding it in. As you do so, add the anchovies to the sauce folding in gently. Try not to break them up any further

11. As soon as the anchovies are piping hot, plate the pasta and take to table with any side dishes, such as a salad or bread

Alternatives

This is fundamentally a pescatarian dish. Yet, the simple omission of the anchovy sauce and anchovies in the last stages easily converts it to a vegan dish. And, indeed, this fish-free version is served as frequently as not. Certainly, with this kind of intense, piquant reduced sugo, it's the tomato sauce that's doing all the heavy lifting, so you're not "cheating" anyone if you don't use the fish.

Similarly, for carnivores, it's just as often cooked with pancetta cubes (or similar), but still adding the anchovy sauce for additional depth to the flavours.

Pairings

This is another of those dishes where I think one should be "colour agnostic" about the wine. Both red and white wines can work well with it.

If opting for red, head for a lighter red wine, such as an Etna Rosso or young Nero d'Avola if wanting to keep the Sicilian theme going. Better still, in warmer weather, why not try a Frappato, a red that is often served chilled in sweaty Sicily during the summer. One I particularly like is Cantine Paolini Gurgo Frappato - Syrah if not wanting to break the bank.

Okay, so all chips on the table: I default to sun-drenched Italian whites with this one, probably best achieved with one of those sunflower yellow Catarrattos that scream of Sicilian heat and simplicity. And, that's a great direction.

But, even with such modest ingredients, I want to tempt you to treat yourself to a (marginally) pricer wine in the form of Feudo Montoni Grillo della Timpa. I have had it with this dish—numerous vintages—and its mix of fruits with an almost nutty midpoint and soft finish work incomparably well with this dish.