Cookbook:Spaghetti alla puttanesca

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Cookbook | Recipes | Cuisine of Italy | Pasta Recipes

Spaghetti alla puttanesca
Category:	Italian recipes
Time:	1 hour

Spaghetti alla puttanesca (whore's spaghetti) is a spicy, tangy and somewhat salty Italian pasta dish that culinary experts regard as modern and reflects the bounty of the market rather than the garden. Italians refer to the sauce as sugo alla puttanesca.

The earliest reference to Spaghetti alla puttanesca in print, cited by the Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, occurred in Raffaele La Capria’s 1961 novel Ferito a morte. Also, Italy's Professional Association of Pasta Makers agrees the sauce became popular in the 1960s.^[1]

[edit] Origin

According to Annarita Cuomo, writer for Il Golfo, a newspaper serving the Italian islands of Ischia and Procida, sugo alla puttanesca was invented in the 1950s by Sandro Petti, co-owner of Rancio Fellone, a famous Ischian restaurant and nightspot.^[2]

The moment of inspiration came, writes Cuomo, when near closing one evening Petti found a group of hungry friends sitting at one of his tables. Petti was low on ingredients and told them he didn't have enough to make them a meal. They complained that it was late and they were hungry. "Facci una puttanata qualsiasi" (“make any kind of garbage”), they insisted. (In this usage, puttanata is a noun meaning garbage or something worthless even though it derives from the Italian word puttana, meaning whore.

At the time, Petti had nothing more than four tomatoes, two olives and some capers; the basic ingredients for the sugo. “So I used them to make the sauce for the spaghetti,” Petti told Cuomo.

Later, Petti included the dish on his menu as spaghetti alla puttanesca.

[edit] Metric conversions

Here's a great website with conversion tables for the metric and American measuring systems.

[edit] Cooking with chili peppers

This recipe calls for chili peppers. Choosing the right quantity and type of pepper depends on your personal taste and a bit of trial and error. Most chefs use peppers in the moderate range of the Scoville scale (a rating of 10,000 to 100,000) for this dish. Use one or one and a half small peppers the first time you make this recipe. Use one and a half or two small peppers if your first attempt at puttanesca sauce leaves you craving more pepper heat. Keep increasing the number of peppers until you get it right. Most chefs stop at three.

[edit] Recipes

Ingredients vary a bit among recipes according to individual tastes. However, the Lazio version always includes anchovies while the Neopolitan version never does.^[3][4]

An Americanized version of this dish has emerged that omits butter and oregano but includes onions, anchovies and chili peppers.^[5] Also, Americans tend to call the Americanized version pasta puttanesca rather than spaghetti alla puttanesca.

Finally, both recipes below contain no protein. However, shrimp and scallops sautéd in olive oil go beautifully with this dish. Another option would be to add canned tuna or salmon to the pasta after coating it with sugo.

[edit] Lazio recipe (serves six to eight)

[edit] Ingredients

• 600 grams of spaghetti
• 50 grams of butter
• 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
• 6 unsalted anchovy fillets, crushed into a paste (omit anchovies for Neopolitan version)
• 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 200 grams of black olives, pitted and chopped
• 1 tablespoon of salted capers, washed well and coarsly chopped
• 1 to 3 small dried chili peppers, chopped (optional)
• 600 grams plum tomatoes, peeled and puréed
• 1 tablespoon of chopped parsley
• salt

[edit] Procedure

1. Put the following in a skillet: butter, olive oil, garlic and anchovy paste.
2. Before the garlic browns, add the olives, capers, tomato sauce and chili peppers.
3. Add two to three pinches of salt, mixing at high heat.
4. Meanwhile, cook the spaghetti in a large amount of salt water. Strain it when it's al dente. Place it in a large serving bowl and cover it with the sauce then sprinkle it with chopped parsley.
5. Mix and serve hot.

[edit] Americanized recipe (serves two)

[edit] Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 6 oz onions, finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 anchovy fillets
• 2 teaspoons capers, thoroughly rinsed
• 1 to 3 fresh or dried chili peppers, deseeded and finely chopped (See information above on choosing hot peppers.)
• 8 large pitted black olives, quartered
• 14 ounces plum tomatoes, diced
• salt (1 tablespoon for boiling water, 1 teaspoon for sauce)
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley
• 7 oz dry spaghetti or linguine

[edit] Procedure

1. Fill a large pot with two quarts of water and add two tablespoons of salt.
2. Set heat on high to boil water.
3. Heat two tablespoons of oil in a large skillet over medium heat.
4. Add onions to skillet and cook for six minutes, stirring occasionally. Be carful not to burn the onions.
5. Add garlic and anchovies to skillet.
6. Cook for one minute maximum, stirring to break up the anchovies.
7. Add capers, chili peppers, olives, tomatoes, pepper and 1/2 teaspoon of salt to skillet.
8. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, uncovered, for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
9. Boil the pasta until al dente while the sauce is simmering. This should take about 12 minutes.
10. Drain the cooked pasta in a colander and put the sauce in the bottom of the pot.
11. Top with the cooked pasta, parsley and one tablespoon of olive oil.
12. Toss until pasta is thoroughly coated with sugo.

[edit] For both recipes

Italians customarily do not top this dish with grated cheese. Resist the urge to do so.

Wikipedia has related information at Spaghetti alla puttanesca

[edit] References