Pasta puttanesca
I always snicker slightly (but silently) when ordering fettuccine or spaghetti “alla puttanesca” at a restaurant: it translates as “prostitute’s pasta.”
As a spicy dish, puttanesca (“puttana” is Italian for whore) seductively intertwines luscious tomatoes, spices, nippy onions, salty anchovies and briny capers, heady oregano, and earthy black olives.
Good olive oil is the panderer that holds all the ingredients together marvellously. It’s a favourite dish of mine.
In downtown Kitchener, 271 West has a linguine puttanesca on the menu, as does Casa Rugantino in Belmont Village.
One theory, the claim supported by the model of basic puttanesca supply-and-demand, suggests that U.S. soldiers entering Italian cities during the Second World War were lured by the aroma of this rich mixture being cooked by ladies of pleasure.
Other treats may or may not have invariably followed dinner.
Anyway … enjoy the spicy dish!
[Image/wikimedia commons]
