I feel like a treasure hunter when I look through my cookbooks each week.  Well, I’ll be honest.  I don’t feel like a treasure hunter at the time.  But after I finish making a new recipe for the first time, I most definitely feel like a treasure hunter.  There’s gold in them there pages!  Last night’s golden discovery was Chicken Puttanesca from The New Way to Cook Light (also known as the Cooking Light cookbook–recipe link through the picture).

It starts with standards–chicken and tomatoes.  But then it gets all spicy with crushed red pepper (I used about 1.5 times the recommended CRP, and it was pretty great) and capers and green olives and such.  Oh, and I got to whip out my anchovy paste as an anchovy substitute.  I’m pretty happy any time I get to use a relatively adventurous ingredient like anchovy paste.

(Don’t worry, it doesn’t taste like anchovy.  It tastes like Italy.)

I threw in a random green veggie to up the healthy factor and used an even more random pasta shape because it was in the pantry.  It was slightly less pretty than the professionally styled picture above, but it was still delicious and very Puttanesca-y.  Oh, and I recommend doubling the sauce portion of the recipe if you like your food saucy.  That’s my favorite recipe tweak–more of the awesome, please!