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| Pasta alla puttanesca | |
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| A plate of pasta alla puttanesca | |
| Origin information | |
| Alternate name(s) : | pasta puttanesca |
| Country of origin : | Italy |
| Region or state : | Campania |
| Creator(s) of the dish : | Neopolitan prostitutes |
| Dish information | |
| Course served : | main |
| Serving temperature : | hot |
| Main ingredient(s) : | pasta olives tomatoes |
| Variations : | Pasta alla puttanesca with tuna fish |
Pasta Puttanesca (Italian Pasta alla Puttanesca) is an Italian pasta dish made with a sauce named sugo alla puttanesca. Puttanesca is an urban and a modern sauce, not dependent upon seasonal ingredients and reflecting the bounty of the market shop rather than the bounty of the garden.
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The name
The sauce is not part of traditional Italian cuisine: the earliest reference to pasta “alla puttanesca” in print cited by the Grande dizionario della lingua italiana is Raffaele La Capria’s 1961 novel Ferito a morte, 1961, and the professional association of pastamakers, Unione Industriali Pastai Italiani, agrees that the sauce became popular in the 1960s.1.
The name originated in Naples2 after the local prostitutes3, Pasta alla Puttanesca meaning "Pasta the way a whore would make it". The reason why the dish gained such a name is debated, though the most obvious contrast— with alla casalinga, simple "home-style" tomato sauce which has been "tarted up", as the English would say— is ignored for livelier original legends. One possibility is that the name is a reference to the sauce's hot, spicy flavour and pungent smell. Another is that the dish was offered to prospective customers at a low price to entice them into a brothelcitation needed. According to chef Jeff Smith of the Frugal Gourmet, its name came from the fact that it was a quick, cheap meal that prostitutes could prepare between customers.
A more thorough story about this dish comes from Diane Seed in her book, Top 100 Pasta Sauces (p. 20) ISBN 0-89815-232-1. She says:
| “ | 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.4 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. |
” |
Another variation of the name's origin is that, as a derivative of the Italian puttana, or "whore", this name literally can be translated as "smells like a whore." Whether this fragrance was from personal hygiene issues or shopping restrictions, no one can be certain.
Recipe
The ingredients for sugo alla puttanesca tend to be very easy to find, and are typically Mediterranean. To extra-virgin olive oil in a frying pan is added finely chopped cloves of garlic, (sometimes with onion), peperoncino (dried hot peppers) and anchovy fillets. When the anchovy fillets have 'dissolved', tomatoes (whole, chopped or as passata) are added and when the sauce comes to the boil chopped capers (best in salt; if in vinegar rinse under running water first) and stoned black olives are added. The sauce is reduced over heat and as a final touch, chopped parsley and fresh basil leaves are occasionally included.
Recipes may differ according to preferences; sugo alla puttanesca is a little salty (from salted anchovies and olives), spicy (from hot red peppers) and quite fragrant (with large amounts of garlic). Traditionally, the sauce is served with spaghetti (spaghetti alla puttanesca), although it may also be used with other dry pasta types like bucatini, linguine and vermicelli. The sauce is mixed with cooked pasta and minced parsley is sprinkled over the dish on the plate.
In popular culture
- Like many Italian foods, pasta puttanesca has gained some modern popularity as it has been featured on various cooking instruction programs on television, such as those hosted on the Food Network and Public Broadcasting Service in the United States.
- The dish was prepared by the Baudelaire children in the first book in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events and mentioned throughout the series. It was also featured in the film centering around the first three books of the series.
- Though sausage is not commonly an ingredient in the dish, the character Edie Britt is shown sharing a casserole of sausage puttanesca with a new neighbor during the first season of the series Desperate Housewives, apparently as one of her specialties. Since Edie is often shown as romantically prolific—and predatory, at times—linking the dish to her character is a subtle reference to the origins of sugo alla puttanesca.
Notes
- ^ Unione Industriali Pastai Italiani
- ^ The standard Italian spelling is puttana.
- ^ Food Network
- ^ 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.
External links
- Pasta puttanesca recipe with photo
- Recipe at The Italian Chef
- Recipe at sneakykitchen.comIncludes a brief description
- Recipe from the BBC
- deliaonline.com A recipe from cook Delia Smith
- www.homebistro.com information about many other pasta dishes
- Food Network Encyclopedia entry has a short description of pasta puttanesca.
- Low carb Linguine Puttanesca recipe using healthy Dreamfields pasta.
- Video recipe by The Minimalist Mark Bittman of the New York Times
- Foodtv.ca'sSpaghetti alla puttanesca
- I Love Pasta's Pasta Puttanesca from the Pantry
- About.com's Puttanesca Sauce - - Sugo alla Puttanesca
- Altered Food's Spaghetti alla puttanesca video recipe
- [1] Puttanesca Name
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 12 November 2008, at 16:14.
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