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I like room temperature pasta this time of year and one of my favorites is Puttanesca. Allegedly called “whore’s pasta” because it’s concocted with never-go-bad ingredients that busy women are bound to have in their pantries (that’s pantries, not panties) – things like salty anchovies, olives in brine, capers and canned tomatoes.

First olive oil goes in with fresh garlic and chopped anchovies, and then pureed tomatoes perk along with last minute additions of Kalamata olives and capers. Finally, the whole affair gets topped off with a sprinkling of fresh parsley. The resulting sauté pan layers are deep, velvety and hypnotic for those of us who love all things tangy. Purists argue grated Parmesan is not allowed on this one and I tend to agree.

Elsewhere in the food-o-sphere, chefs Alison Vines-Rushing and Slade Rushing, who opened the fabulous Longbranch Restaurant in Abita Springs a year ago, launched a new venture this spring that’s got them commuting to the Big Apple. Dirty Bird to Go in New York City serves buttermilk dipped, double-battered, free-range fried chicken. These two darlings of the culinary world have been back and forth betwixt Louisiana and New York City for years. Homesickness drove them to Abita Springs in 2005 (they’re southerners). But before then, they’d received big time reviews for their handiwork at Jack’s Luxury Oyster Bar in the East Village. Longbranch serves haute cuisine often made with fresh, indigenous ingredients. The cheese plate includes John Folse’s award-winning Bittersweet Plantation Dairy Fleur de Lis Triple Cream (available at Whole Foods) with a douse of Steen’s Cane Syrup (available all over town). Great at home with a fresh hearty loaf of bread.

Allison Vines-Rushing once worked at the completely over-the-top Alain Ducasse at The Essex House, a restaurant that seems to pride itself on laughable prices and lackluster chow. Not that I would know personally, unwilling as I am to drop four figures on attitude.

And speaking of such, has anyone else had enough of celebrity chefs? With all the new restaurants they’re opening in places like Vegas and Orlando, not to mention their chronic appearances on Bravo and the Food Network, the one thing Emeril, Charlie Trotter, and Bobby Flay seem not to be doing these days is cooking in the restaurants their names are on.