Puttanesca – Italy’s Dirty, Delicious Pasta

We love Spaghetti alla Puttanesca in all it’s salty, saucy, briny, umami-rich glory. Mindi especially loves the dish and would be happy to eat it every day of the week whether we’re eating in Italy or at home in Lisbon. Okay, maybe not every day, but you get the picture.

While we can cook the classic Mediterranean pasta almost anywhere in the world, it’s especially easy in our Portuguese home. When we open our pantry, Puttanesca sauce is just a ‘chop’, skip and a jump away from the stove.

In Lisbon, great anchovies and salted capers are available at El Corte Inglés, a local Spanish supermarket. Olives are plentiful at neighborhood markets and our proximity to Italy makes Italian tomato products like passata cheap and convenient to use.

Pro Tip
Don’t despair if you don’t live in Europe and want to make Pasta Puttanesca. All of the necessary ingredients are available and abundant around the world.

In its essence, Pasta Puttanesca is great because of its timeless pairing of sweet, acidic tomatoes with salty capers and anchovies. These umami-rich elements combine to create a grand Italian chorus of flavor.

The best Italian pasta dishes don’t have clear origin stories. This is the case with the four great pastas in Rome and it’s also the case with Puttanesca. Sure, there are some legends about Naples, prostitutes and a restaurant owner who was desperate to feed a few people with ingredients he had on hand, but nobody knows for sure.

The elements of the story from Naples ring true with us. We love the rough and ready Italian food city and consider Neapolitan food to be some of the best in Italy. After visiting the seaside city a number of times, we understand the importance of the mighty yet tiny anchovy in Neapolitan cuisine.

To be honest, the best anchovies found in Naples are unique to the region and are (most likely) impossible to find anywhere outside the boot. We haven’t found plump, funky, salted beauties called “acciughe” in our Lisbon headquarters. But that’s okay.

Standard oil-packed anchovy filets provide more than enough deep, fishy flavor for this dish to work. When combined with sweet acidic tomatoes, their flavors are pure magic both on pizza and in Puttanesca pasta sauce.

Like most things in the kitchen, what you put into Puttanesca directly impacts what you’ll get out. For this recipe, we use capers packed in salt instead of brine. They’re bigger and impart a more verdant, vegetal flavor.

You’ll want to rinse the capers thoroughly to remove excess salt. This applies whether you used brined or salt-packed capers.

Buy salt-packed capers from Amazon if you can’t find them where you live.

We’re lucky to have access to high-quality anchovies where we live. Regardless of where you live, we suggest that you source imported Spanish or Italian anchovy filets if you can find them.

In most cases, you should be able to find good, umami rich anchovies at specialty shops. If not, you can order them online.

Buy Spanish anchovy fillets from Amazon if you can’t find them at a local specialty shop.

We first discovered the versatily of Ciro Passata Rustica when we lived in Naples for a month. Passata literally flew off off the shelves with Nonnas elbowing each other for bottles, often buying two or three at a time.

For the unfamiliar, passata is essentially unseasoned tomato purée that’s strained of seeds. Some passatas are smooth while others like Ciro Passata Rustica are chunky and ‘rustic’. You’ll typically find passata in glass bottles and lined paper cartons.

Pro Tip
Passata’s packaging doesn’t impart any metallic flavors that you may find in canned tomatoes. Tests have shown otherwise but we still prefer glass jars over metal cans.

So why do we like passata so much? First of all, it’s easy to use. We can pour a third of a bottle of passata over sautéed onions and garlic to create an instant sauce.

Since we live in Europe, we can buy Ciro Passata Rustica for excellent prices, often for under the equivalent of $2 a bottle or less. Also, glass resealable containers make passata easy to store and use.

Don’t give up if you don’t have easy access to passata. As an alternative, you can use whole canned tomatoes and mash them with your hands or a potato masher. But, with passata becoming more widely available, we highly recommend passata if you can find it and it’s affordable.

Buy a jar of Passata from Amazon if you can’t find it locally.

Executing this dish is simple.

While we wouldn’t call our Spaghetti Passata recipe a quick cook, it’s as easy as chopping ingredients, doing a quick sauté and letting the dish cook for 45 minutes to an hour.

True Story
We were once caught up in a conversation with friends while our Puttanesca sauce was on the stove. The extra simmering time let the intense flavors meld and mellow beautifully.

The preparation for our Spaghetti alla Puttanesca recipe is easy to accomplish with a cutting board and chef’s knife.

The first step is to remove olive pits and smash the olives. You can use the side of your knife as a smashing tool.

When you feel the sauce is done, boil 4 to 5 quarts of water in a saucepan or sauté pan large enough fit the spaghetti. Drop the pasta in the pan.

Pro Tip
If you’re using a narrower saucepan, you may need to bend the spaghetti into the pan in order to submerge it all in the boiling water.

About 3 minutes before the pasta is ready, turn the fire under the sauce to medium high. One minute before the pasta is done, spoon about 2 ladlefuls of the pasta water into the sauce. Then, using tongs, move the finished pasta to the sauce pot.

The pasta and sauce will be ready once you can see the bottom of the pot when you drag a wooden spoon. All that’s left to do is serve the pasta in bowls and enjoy.

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