Quick and easy southern Italian pasta dish has a colourful history
The distinctive aroma and piquant taste of a puttanesca
sauce is something I always associate with Naples. It somehow evokes the
atmosphere of the city for me because you enjoy the enticing smell of
tomatoes and olives cooked in garlic as you pass restaurants hidden behind unobtrusive
doors in the narrow streets in the centre. .jpg "Spaghetti alla puttanesca is a tasty dish that is easy to cook at home")
Spaghetti alla puttanesca is a tasty dish
that is easy to cook at home
There are various theories about how the sauce, which
can be served with either spaghetti or linguine, acquired its name. Puttana is
the Italian word for prostitute, so it means literally, spaghetti cooked ‘in
the style of the prostitute.’
People have speculated that the dish could have been
invented to lure men into houses of ill repute, to be served to them while they
waited their turn. Or, the prostitutes may have cooked it to eat themselves, because
it was quick and easy to make.
Another version is that pasta cooked alla puttanesca
was convenient for married women to make so that they could spend less time in
the kitchen and more time with their Neapolitan lovers.
The sauce began to crop up on restaurant menus under
various names in the 19th century and the ingredients would vary slightly, according
to the area of Italy.
There was a reference to the dish in a 1960s Italian novel
when one of the characters says: ‘Spaghetti alla puttanesca, like they make in
Siricusa’. In Sicily, the sauce is referred to as spaghetti alla siciliana and
has green peppers added to it.
Most Neapolitan cookery books do not suggest adding anchovies
to the sauce, but In Lazio, where they also claim it as their own, puttanesca
sauce contains chopped anchovies.
It has also been claimed the sauce was invented at a
restaurant on the island of Ischia out in the bay of Naples. A group of
customers arrived late in the evening when the restaurant had practically run
out of ingredients. The customers asked the owner just to give them what he had
left, so he quickly made a sauce using four tomatoes, two olives and some
capers and garlic, to serve with their spaghetti.
You can use either fresh or tinned tomatoes to make spaghetti alla puttanesca. If you want to make the Neapolitan version, you should fry some garlic in olive oil, add the tomatoes, capers, black olives, and parsley and let it simmer for about ten minutes while the spaghetti is cooking.
I sometimes add a couple of chopped anchovies and a pinch of dried oregano to
it, just because I enjoy the taste. Buon appetito!
