Spaghetti alla Puttanesca

A sauce that cooks in the time the pasta takes, with no cheese on it.

Fish. Not vegetarian — contains fish.

Ingredients

• 400 g spaghetti
• 6 salted anchovy fillets
• 3 tablespoons capers, rinsed
• 120 g gaeta or taggiasca olives, stoned
• 500 g tinned San Marzano tomatoes
• 3 garlic cloves, sliced
• 1 dried chilli
• 5 tablespoons olive oil
• parsley
• 1 teaspoon salt

Method

1. Put the pasta water on first. EVERYTHING ELSE TAKES LESS TIME THAN THE SPAGHETTI, which is the shape of this dish — there is no long-cooked sauce to get ahead on.
2. Warm the oil with the garlic and crumbled chilli over a low heat until the garlic is barely blond.
3. Add the anchovies and PRESS THEM INTO THE OIL WITH A WOODEN SPOON until they dissolve completely. They are the salt and the backbone, and a visible piece of anchovy in the finished dish means they were not worked in.
4. Add the capers and olives, then the tomatoes crushed by hand, and simmer hard for 10 minutes.
5. Cook the spaghetti, pull it out two minutes early, and finish it in the pan with a ladle of its water.
6. NO PARMESAN AND NO PECORINO. The anchovy is doing that job and cheese on top of it makes the whole thing salty mud.
7. Parsley at the end, and go very carefully with the salt — taste first, because the anchovies, capers and olives have most likely done it already.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Italy · All recipes