Spaghetti alla Puttanesca is a traditional Italian pasta from Naples with a sauce based on pantry essentials. This plants it firmly in the (excellent) emergency-meals collection!
You don’t need much salt in Puttanesca sauce because the olives, capers and anchovies provide the seasoning. Don’t skip the anchovies – sauteeing it cooks out the fishy flavour and it just dissolves in the sauce, leaving behind savoury flavour you can’t get from just plain salt. You’d have to have a finely attuned palette to even know it’s in the sauce!
PREPARATION TIME
Ingredients
200g / 7oz spaghetti , or other long pasta
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil , plus more for drizzling
2 garlic cloves , finely minced (knife, not garlic press)
3 anchovy fillets , finely minced (Note 1)
1/4 cup pitted black olives , preferably in oil, quartered (Note 2)
1 tbsp capers , drained (Note 3)
1/4 tsp chilli flakes (red pepper flakes)
400g / 14oz can crushed tomato (or hand crush whole canned tomatoes)
1/2 cup water
1 tsp fresh oregano , roughly chopped (sub 1/4 tsp dried)
1/8 tsp kosher / cooking salt (or 2 pinches table salt)
1/8 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp sugar , if needed (depends on tomato quality, Note 4)
2 tbsp fresh basil , roughly chopped (Note 6)
Instructions
Recipe Notes:
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.
