Spaghetti alla Puttanesca
Spaghetti alla Puttanesca is a traditional Italian pasta from Naples that’s quick to put together from pantry staples. If you have canned tomatoes, garlic, olives, anchovies and capers in your cupboard, you can knock out this simple but flavourful sauce in a flash. It’s a stellar emergency meal everyone should know, with a “saucy” backstory of its own!
Ingredients
- 14
Instructions
- 9
1. Anchovies – An essential ingredient in an otherwise simple sauce that adds depth of flavour and salt (but so much more flavour than just plain salt!). Does not make the sauce taste fishy, it dissolves and just adds great savoury flavour. Only people with refined palettes can usually pick that it’s in the sauce!
Substitute with 3/4 to 1 teaspoon of anchovy paste.
2. Olives – Use good ones in oil, they have better flavour than cheap ones in brine (water, no oil). It’s necessary for this otherwise simple sauce because the flavour from the olives leaches into the sauce.
Cutting olives – Many recipes use the olives whole. I can’t figure out why – cutting releases flavour into the sauce which is key!
3. Capers – Normal or baby is fine here. Sometimes the standard capers are unusually large so I opt for baby.
4. Sugar – Better quality tomatoes will be sweeter and smoother. Economical ones can be quite sour, sometimes even with chunks that aren’t even red! Use sugar only if needed, add with the salt (taste tomato, if super sour, use sugar).
5. Pasta cooking water – The starch from cooking the pasta makes the pasta sauce thicken so it clings to every strand of pasta rather than leaving a watery pool of sauce at the bottom of your pasta bowl. Toss well and watch as the sauce magically sticks to the pasta strands!
6. Basil – Lovely fresh finishing touch, but if you don’t have it, just add a sprinkle pf parmesan instead. Obviously a completely different flavour, but brings something else to the dish. Don’t bother with dried basil.
7. Storage – Pasta is always best served immediately! As it sits around, the pasta soaks up the sauce and becomes dry. The sauce can be made ahead a couple of days. Leftovers can be reheated with a sprinkle of water to loosen.
8. Nutrition per serving.
Nutrition Facts
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Full Recipe & Notes
