Easy To Make Healthy Recipe

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. The ingredients are inexpensive, easy to find and typically Mediterranean. Italians refer to the sauce as sugo alla puttanesca .

Origin

Various accounts are given of the sauce’s origins, but it is likely that they date to the mid twentieth century. The earliest printed reference to this dish, as identified by the Grande dizionario della lingua italiana , is Raffaele La Capria’s 1961 novel Ferito a morte which refers to spaghetti alla puttanesca come li fanno a Siracusa (‘spaghetti alla puttanesca as they make it in Syracuse’). According to the Professional Union of Italian Pasta Makers the sauce became popular in the 1960s.

As to place, both Sicily and the Bay of Naples have been suggested. The 1971 edition of the Cucchiaio d’argento has no recipe with this name, but two which are similar. The Neapolitan Spaghetti alla partenopea , in which the anchovies are added towards the end of cooking, is flavoured with generous quantities of oregano, while spaghetti alla siciliana is distinguished by the addition of peppers to the ingredients.

Sandro Petti's claim

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.

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 " or “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 for whore, puttana. )

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 this dish on his menu as spaghetti alla puttanesca .

Diane Seed's Theory

Another story about this dish's origin comes from author and chef Diane Seed in her book, Top 100 Pasta Sauces (p. 20) ISBN 0-89815-232-1:

My introduction to this famous pasta dish occurred when I overheard two elderly priests discussing the pros and cons of spaghetti alla puttanesca ("whore's spaghetti") as they deliberated over the menu in a Neapolitan restaurant. Made of ingredients found in most Italian larders, this is also known as spaghetti alla buona donna - or 'good woman's spaghetti' - which can be misleading if one is not familiar with the ironic insult figlio d'una buona donna - son of a good woman.

To understand how this sauce came to get its name, one must consider the 1950s when brothels in Italy were state owned. They were known as case chiuse or 'closed houses' because the shutters had to be kept permanently closed to avoid offending the sensibilities of neighbors or innocent passers-by. Conscientious Italian housewives usually shop at the local market every day to buy fresh food, but the 'civil servants' were only allowed one day per week for shopping, and their time was valuable. Their specialty became a sauce made quickly from odds and ends in the larder.

Jeff Smith's theory

According to chef Jeff Smith of the Frugal Gourmet , it was a quick, cheap meal that prostitutes could prepare between customers.

Basic recipe

Chopped garlic, diced onions and anchovies are sautéd in olive oil. Chopped chili peppers, black olives, capers and diced tomatoes are added along with salt and black pepper to taste. The cook then reduces this mixture by simmering anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes depending on the amount of sauce being prepared. Once cooked, it's poured over spaghetti cooked al dente. The final touch is a topping of parsley.

Some cooks add either precooked tuna or salmon to the sugo just before pouring over pasta to provide protein. Others serve protein on the side.

Recipes may differ according to preferences. In most cases, however, the sugo is a little salty (from the anchovies), spicy (from the peppers) and quite fragrant (from the garlic). Traditionally, the sauce is served with spaghetti, although it also goes well with bucatini, linguine and vermicelli.

For a full recipe, see the Wikibooks entry for Spaghetti alla puttanesca.

References

1. ^ The dictionary entry is cited in Jeremy Parzen, ‘The origins of Sugo alla puttanesca?’, Do Bianchi , 13 January 2008, an article which supplied a number of the sources used here.
2. ^ ‘Sughi d’Italia: 1000 anni di pasta, 1000 anni di condimenti’, Unione Industriali Pastai Italiani
3. ^ Il nuovissimo cucchiaio d’argento , ed. by Antonia Monti Tedeschi, 6th edn (Editoriale Domus, 1971), pp. 220–221
4. ^ Annarita Cuomo, ‘Il sugo “alla puttanesca” nacque per caso ad Ischia, dall'estro culinario di Sandro Petti’, Il Golfo , 17 February 2005.
5. ^ The usual Italian phrase is "figlio di buona donna" "son of good woman" (See for example Dizionario Italiano Garzanti). The inclusion of the "d'una" ("of a"), while not ungrammatical, is probably influenced by "son of a good woman" being the English equivalent.
6. ^ Smith, Jeff (1986). ISBN 0-688-05852-3.  
7. ^ Recipe on Mediterrasian.com

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