Endlessly riffable pantry-ish pasta with sardines
An easy, fast, extremely adaptable lunch or dinner
This is the first of many recipes to come in this newsletter. I love cooking and figured that sharing some of my favourite things to make would be a nice addition. Most of the recipes will be relatively cheap, easy, and maybe even a bit fun. This newsletter is going to be free, the rest are probably going to be paywalled. If you have any questions about anything in the recipe, feel free to comment or shoot me an email.
If you follow me on any other platform like Twitter or Instagram you know I love cooking. It’s an essential skill that everyone needs to learn at some point, and I leaned into that pretty early. I won’t give you my whole fucking life story, that’ll come another time. But it all started with watching Emeril Live on the Food Network when I was probably around 6 years old, and the fascination has stuck with me ever since. Thankfully I matured in my celebrity chef tastes.
If there’s one recipe I think everyone needs to know how to make, it’s a basic foundational pantry pasta. Now, almost every recipe for a pantry pasta includes things that can’t be kept in a pantry. Things like cheese or lemon or other produce that needs to be refrigerated, or is at least perishable. In the spirit of naming things accurately, the pasta I’m going to be sharing is more of a “pantry-ish” pasta, since it uses some perishable ingredients, although they’re pretty optional.
Pantry pasta is for the lower income among us, the busy people, the lazy, and the experimental. It is an everyman lunch or dinner. It can be a consistent, reliable go-to or it can be an opportunity to chaotically put shit together that almost always ends up working out. Pantry pasta will appease anyone of any age, can impress a date, and is endlessly customizable and riffable. You need pantry pasta in your arsenal.
So here comes in my favourite mode of pantry pasta — a sweet, slightly spicy, garlicky pasta with sardines. I love tinned fish, I love garlic, and I love sun-dried tomatoes, so this hits all the elements I need to feel satisfied. Maybe don’t kiss anyone after you eat it, unless you made it for them too, in which case you’ll be indulging in a garlicky fishy makeout session together. That’s called solidarity.
This dish comes together in about 15 minutes if you time everything right. You also don’t really have to measure anything, it’s all kind of vibes-based, but I included measurements for the Virgos and Capricorns among us.
The sauce (if you can call it that) all comes together while the pasta is boiling, and I start chopping things up right after I put the water on the stove. I had sweet peppers in my fridge that my mom gave me, but any vegetable you like that can easily integrate into a pasta will do. If you have cherry tomatoes, cut those in half and let them get nice and jammy in the pan before you add the sun-dried tomatoes. The moisture from the tomatoes also makes the whole thing a little more sauce-like, which is lovely. If you have broccolini, parboil that for a couple minutes before letting it fry up the rest of the way in the olive oil. The options are probably endless.
The sun-dried tomatoes lend a really wonderful sweetness to the whole thing, and the garlic and dried pepper flakes add more of a zingy element. I used Aleppo pepper, but use any red pepper flakes you have on hand. Or if you’re a bit of a jarred condiment hoarder like me, use a little spoonful of Calabrian chili paste. Add some capers. Finish it off with some pickled onion. Fuck it, finish it off with some Lao Gan Ma once it’s plated if you’re feeling a bit fusiony.
Another thing I like to do if I have shallots on hand is chop one up into thin slices and start by sauteeing that up before I add the sweet pepper in, or even letting them get a bit caramelized. But that’s gonna make the whole thing take a lot longer, so do that only if you have the time to spare.
I used Nuri canned sardines in olive oil, which are pretty cheap and easy to find. I just use one sardine because I’m stingy, but you can use a whole can if you’re into it. Just drain the oil, there’s enough of that already in this. You can also use other tinned whole fish like sprats (I love Riga Gold), herring, mackerel, or whatever else. Or if you aren’t a tinned fish fan, just omit it. Whatever. Who cares. Add another protein if you want, or don’t. It’s your pasta, I’m not the boss of you.
This recipe makes one hearty serving, or if you like lighter meals you can divide it between lunch and dinner. Double it if you’re cooking for two, quadruple if you’re making it for a small family, etc. The point of this pasta is, while I’m giving you instructions and telling you what I like, you can make it your own. Do it according to your own taste. The foundational elements of it are the pasta, the olive oil, the garlic, and the sun-dried tomatoes. Do whatever else you want with it, it’s probably going to turn out well as long as you’re being smart about it.
I hope you all enjoy this, and if you have any questions about ingredients, substitutions, clarity on any of the steps, feel free to comment or message me about it.
My endlessly riffable pantry-ish pasta with sardines
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 small sweet peppers or 1 regular bell pepper, cut into small slices
2-3 cloves of garlic (or 1 huge clove of elephant garlic, if you’re me), minced
4-6 pieces of canned sun-dried tomatoes, roughly chopped into smaller bits
85 grams of pasta of any kind (I used tagliatelle, but anything you have works)
1-3 canned sardines packed in oil, however much you want, broken down into smaller pieces (any other small bits of fish work)
Dried red pepper flakes
Dried oregano
Black pepper
Any hard ripened cheese like Parmigiano Reggiano, Grana Padano, or Pecorino Romano. I used the cheapest knock-off parm wedge I found at the grocery store.
Bring a pot of water to a boil and cook your pasta to al dente according to package instructions. Don’t forget to salt your pasta water! Once it’s done, just take it off the heat and set it to the side rather than draining. Or, drain it and reserve a bit of the pasta water just in case you feel you need it.
Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a frying pan over medium-low heat. Add the pepper slices, seasoning with a pinch of kosher salt to draw out moisture. Sweat the peppers until they soften and the liquid is drawn out and evaporated, about 3 minutes.
Add the sun-dried tomatoes to the frying pan and cook until softened, about 3-5 minutes. Then, add the garlic to the frying pan and fry just until it’s no longer raw, about a minute. After that, hit it with a pinch of dried oregano, red pepper flakes, and a few cracks of fresh black pepper, letting them bloom lightly in the oil for about a minute. Feel free to add more pepper flakes if you want it hot. Add sardines to the pan and just heat it through, about a minute.
Add the cooked pasta to the frying pan, allowing whatever drops of pasta water that are clinging on to the pasta to come along. This will help everything stick to the pasta a bit better. Toss everything together in the frying pan until the pasta is coated. If you want to have an extra luxurious sauce, add 1/2 tablespoon of butter and let it melt while you toss the sauce, adding a bit more pasta water if it gets too dry along the way, 1 tablespoon at a time until it reaches a nice consistency.
Plate it and serve with however much cheese you want. I like an ungodly amount. For a little extra heat, drizzle some chili oil on top. If you want a little acidity to cut through the fat, hit it with a small squeeze of lemon juice.
“BAM!!”
Just made this it whips ass thank you samsmart