Spaghetti alla puttanesca — Neapolitan style, without anchovies

pareve Italian · easy · 30 min, including 20 hands-on

Italy's boldest store-cupboard sauce: Gaeta olives, rinsed capers, garlic, peperoncino and oregano simmered with tomatoes in ten minutes, with spaghetti finished in the sauce and fresh parsley scattered over.

Ingredients for two

Method

1. Bring 3 litres water to the boil in a large saucepan with 30 g coarse salt. Rinse the capers under cold water; if salt-packed, soak in a bowl of cold water for 10 minutes, then drain. Halve the olives, thinly slice the garlic and crush the peeled tomatoes by hand in a bowl with their juice. Chop the parsley.
2. Heat 30 g olive oil in a 28 cm sauté pan over a medium-low heat with the garlic and chilli flakes. Let sizzle gently for 2 minutes, stirring, until the garlic barely colours and the oil turns orange. Move straight to the next step as soon as the garlic colours; brown garlic would taste bitter.
3. Add the olives and capers, thoroughly drained and dried with kitchen paper. If wet, they would spit and cool the oil. Stir over a medium heat for 1 minute to coat in oil, then add the crushed tomatoes and oregano. Do not salt yet, as the olives and capers already add salt. Put the spaghetti into its water now, as in step 4, so pasta and sauce finish together. Cook the sauce uncovered over a medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until thick and glossy, with oil rising to the surface and a spoon leaving a trail across the base.
4. As the tomatoes enter the sauté pan at the start of step 3's 10 minutes, the pasta water should be at a rolling boil. If it boils earlier, lower the heat and cover to keep it simmering, then bring back to the boil. Add the spaghetti, stir for the first minute to prevent sticking, and cook for 1 minute less than the packet instructions, about 8–11 minutes depending on the brand, until still firm in the centre. Reserve a ladleful (150 g) of pasta water just before draining. If the sauce is ready first, keep over a low heat and loosen with 2 tbsp pasta water.
5. Drain without rinsing and add the spaghetti to the sauté pan over a high heat. Add half the reserved water, 75 g, and toss vigorously with tongs for 1–2 minutes until the sauce becomes creamy and clings to the pasta, with no loose liquid at the bottom. Add the remaining water by the spoonful if dry. Taste and add salt only if needed, using some of the 1/2 level tsp set aside, rarely all of it.
6. Turn off the heat, add the chopped parsley and remaining 10 g olive oil, toss once more and serve immediately on warm plates. No cheese: even in Naples, puttanesca is served without it.

On your plate

Cooking tips

This Neapolitan version has no anchovies, so it is pareve and needs no fish-free variation: everyone eats the same dish. Romans melt 3 anchovy fillets into the oil with the garlic; we omit them here, as they would make this a fish dish. Avoid bland tinned Californian-style black olives; choose table olives in brine, pitted so nobody has to deal with stones at the table. The sauce keeps in the fridge for 3 days and can be made ahead; cold on toast, it also makes a good bruschetta. This is a durum-wheat primo with little protein, about 17 g per person, all from the wheat. Serve after a protein-containing starter such as homemade hummus or mechouia salad with hard-boiled eggs, rather than a simple salad.

Equipment : large 5-litre saucepan for the pasta, 28 cm sauté pan, kitchen tongs

Legend places its birth in Ischia with Sandro Petti in the 1950s. Jeanne Caròla Francesconi recorded the anchovy-free version in La cucina napoletana (1965); Rome adds anchovies.