Pasta di San Giuseppe

This is my version of Pasta di San Giuseppe, generally you use sgombro, but I prefer anchiovies. (You can use anchiovy paste if you prefer.)
Basically it's a pasta dish with toasted breadcrumbs, oil, anchiovies and garlic. Another poormans dish but rather tasty. Maybe the only costly thing are the anchiovies. If you can find the ones in the large hermetic jars, invest in it, they are soaking in oil and take a very long time before they spoil, I generally keep them in the fridge.
You will need to toast your breadcrumbs in oil, I make enough that even if I don't use it all, I put it in a ziploc bag and keep it in the fridge, so I will have on hand the next time around.

1/2 cup olive oil
1 cup breadcrumbs
7-8 anchiovy fillets
6-8 dried tomatoes in oil
1 garlic clove
Pasta, here its called mafaldine, its long, thin and wavy on both sides


Put the oil in the skillet as you see on the left, start heating it up and add breadcrumbs. Stir until you have moistened all the breadcrumbs. Add more oil if too dry or add more breadcrumbs if it seems too wet. Medium heat and keep stirring until golden.

After you have toasted the breadcrumbs, take them out of the skillet and put them in a dish or else they will keep toasting and you'll get burnt crumbs.

 This is a bowl of the toasted crumbs.

 In the meantime get your salted water boiling to toss in your pasta.
While the water boils, get about 1/2 cup oil and in a skillet add your cut up anchiovies and start simmering on low until it all breaks up.

 Then add in your slivered dried tomatoes and simmer.
Then add the minced garlic and sautee. A few minutes at best, this too must be passed to another bowl or the garlic will burn. Add salt and pepper to taste but careful with salt, anchiovies can be very salty.

 This is the pasta we use for this dish. They have various types of this, there's the one that is wider, or the type that is wavy just on 1 side. You decide which you prefer. Once the pasta is cooked before draining, set aside about a cup of the pasta water, you may need it later.

 Once pasta is cooked toss in the skillet with the anchiovy mix, stir.
Then add the toasted breadcrumbs a little at a time. You want it a medium dry. If you see that it's too dry add a bit of that pasta water.

This is the finished dish with a sprinkling of breadcrumbs over the top and ready to eat.

Dig in and Buon Appetito!





By the way, you can make same dish, same way but just omit the dried tomatoes, that would make it closer to the original version.