Linguine Puttanesca

When I need something quick to make for dinner, I often turn to pasta.  The "Linguini Puttanesca" (page 196) is another one of the recipes in the "fast" category of the cookbook (ready in 30 minutes or less), and it did go together in a snap. I forgot to buy linguine when shopping for ingredients, and ended up using Chinese Lo Mein noodles, which happened to be in my pantry, and looked pretty close to spaghetti.  The recipe starts out by sautéing minced garlic in oil, but I skipped this step (and the oil) altogether and added the garlic to the completed sauce at the very end for more flavor.  The tomato-based sauce derives intense flavors from two kinds of olives, capers, and red pepper flakes, adding pizzazz to the dish, and helping it live up to it's name. (Did you know the word Puttanesca refers to Italian "lady of the night" style pasta dishes, so named for the quick meal that could be thrown together from handy ingredients after a hard night's work? The things you don't learn reading a cookbook!)  Using Lo Mein noodles does sort of detract from the Italian back story, but diversity is a good thing, right? J