Dinner for -ers

Because we're sick of living in a white box and because professional painters in Amsterdam charge €45 per bloody hour, nagpaka-er kami ni Marlon this weekend. We spent Friday to Sunday painting the bedroom a gorgeous rich cobalt blue from Farrow & Ball, more on which later.

Painting is hard work! (Apparently, it burns 200 calories an hour.) So my weekend menu was heavy on the carbs: sticky lemon chicken and lots of Thai jasmine rice (no more Surinamese rice! Yay!) for lunch yesterday, and pasta with roasted cherry tomatoes, capers, olives and basil for dinner tonight. After making the latter, I found it so ridiculously easy and so insanely yummy that I just had to blog about it.

The recipe is from America's Test Kitchen's Cooking for Two cookbook, a super thoughtful thank-you gift from Erika whom we hosted at Palazzo Plazo last year.

You'll need:

2 tbsp olive oil
500g/ 2.5 cups cherry tomatoes, halved (got mine for €3/500g! Paging Gutsy!)
500g/ 2.5 cups penne or fusilli
2 tbsp capers, drained and rinsed
2 tbsp pitted kalamata olives
3 garlic cloves, sliced thin
1.5 tsp balsamic vinegar
3/4 tsp sugar
Salt n' pepa (shoop, shoop-e-roop)
1/8 tsp red pepper flakes (I probably used a full teaspoon, I like the warmth)
2 tbsp chopped fresh basil (naduling pala ako and this was from another recipe lol!)
2 tbsp pine nuts (my splurge of the week at €3.95!)
Grated Pecorino or Parmesan for serving (didn't have any, it was fine without this)
Optional: splash of red wine

Makes two servings each for two hungry -ers!

Preheat the oven to 175℃. Gently toss the tomatoes, capers, olive oil, garlic, sugar, salt, pepper and red pepper flakes together.

Spread the tomatoes in a single layer (I was OC and made all the halves face up, haha) in a baking dish and pop it in the oven, without stirring, for 30 minutes. The tomato skins should be slightly shriveled, but the tomatoes should retain their shape. Remove from the oven after roasting and let cool slightly.

Cook the pasta and drain, reserving half a cup of the pasta cooking water. Return the pasta to the pot. Scrape the tomato mixture on top of the pasta and add the olives. The recipe also calls for 1 tbsp minced fresh oregano at this point, but I didn't have any.

There were nice crunchy garlic bits and assorted caramelized goodness stuck to the baking pan, so I splashed it with red wine and heated it over a low flame to deglaze. After pouring the deglazed yumminess into the pasta, I also took some pasta and rubbed it around on the pan (a.k.a. simot) before putting it back into the pot.

Toss the pasta and tomato mixture together, adjusting the consistency of the sauce with your pasta water. Season with salt and pepper. Serve with chopped basil, the grated cheese if you have it, and pine nuts. We also had the rest of the Pinot Noir that I used for deglazing.

Nagpaka-er man kami, at least sosyal pa rin sa huli. Buon appetito!