*Pasta puttanesca

from Is This a Cookbook?: Adventures in the Kitchen (page 180) by Heston Blumenthal

Wow! Fantastic Flavours.

The star of the recipe is the tomato compote, which as Heston says: “is a wonderful concentrated, almost jam-like tomatoeyness.” However the downside is that it takes about 5 hours to make. 2 kg of tomatoes are skinned and deseeded. The pulp is then pressed through a sieve to extract the juice. Half of the remaining tomatoes shells are roasted for 3 hours with basil, garlic, thyme, tarragon and a pinch of sugar. The other half chopped, added to the extracted juice and slowly cooked for 4 hours, with onion, star anise, garlic, tomato ketchup, Worcheshire sauce, thyme and tarragon. In the final hour the slow roasted tomatoes are added to the compote with the stems of the tomatoes added during the later part of the cooking. (I am not sure this added anything, other than extra time to remove the compote from the stems at the end of the process). The compote is finished with maple syrup and sherry vinegar.

The puttanesca sauce , combines the tomato compote with more garlic, chilli and anchovies, pasta cooking water, black olives, capers, parmesan, and fresh herbs.

Finished with more sherry vinegar, black pepper and more Parmesan.