Puttanesca: Fresh or Bottled?

The sauce prepared the other night was out-of-this-world.  That's the good news. Spending the rest of the evening and another hour in the morning before leaving for work, cleaning up is the bad news. (Image from the Internet, but the dish looks very much like the one I made.)

All ingredients are fresh and everything requires chopping or dicing.  Time-consuming and exacting. And their order in the recipe made it tough to clean up while preparing. Timing is everything and the sink filled rapidly with bowls and plates of all shapes and sizes. Still, I got through it and eventually enjoyed a lovely and refreshing dinner.

Then I had to face facts: I simply do not have enough countertop space for prep of this volume. The sink is too small once filled with used bowls and plates, and it's difficult to clean the chopping boards for the next ingredients. Pans had to wait for the dishes to be washed because of their size.  (Put a 6 quart Dutch Oven in my sink and it's all over.)


It suddenly hit me that the last time I made this recipe I lived in a big house with a huge kitchen, every needless appliance and gadget known to man, 2 huge sinks, a food prep island, and (most importantly) a partner who helped clean up as the preparation progressed.  Oh, and let's not forget the automatic dishwasher.  Silly me.  How could I have forgotten all that history?  Well, I guess I did.

So logistically, this one was a nightmare of frustration. A co-worker suggested I look into some of the gourmet bottled sauces that she says are quite good.  She offered to send a few web addresses catering to those of us with small cooking spaces, but large love of food.  Still, I so enjoy the act of preparing a meal with my own hands so I guess it will be a trade-off.

Meanwhile, I have frozen 4 containers of the sauce for later enjoyment. That pays for some of the extra trouble.

And so it goes.
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