Pasta puttanesca
It shows up on various menus at various times and has just the slightest historical salaciousness: fettuccine or spaghetti “alla puttanesca” 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. Food writer and and raconteur Bob Blumer, in his 2020 cookbook Flavorbomb, adds fried bread crumbs and harissa for the spice element.
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]
