Cherry tomatoes, black olives, capers, parsley and extra virgin olive oil. This is enough to put on the table one of the simplest and tastiest dishes of Campania cuisine: spaghetti alla puttanesca.
Also known as “capers and olives”, this recipe is the perfect combination of flavor and quick preparation. Different interpretations are on the origin of the name: the most popular one that makes it derive from a dating house in the Spanish Quarters in Naples, where the owner used to offer customers this dish. Another that places the origins of this name in Ischia, immediately after the Second World War. In particular, it is said that it was the painter Eduardo Colucci who would have renamed these spaghetti, which had become his specialty to give to his guests, “alla puttanesca”.
The puttanesca ingredients | Ph. Carolina Fragapane
Finally, Sandro Petti, owner of the restaurant Rancio Fellone, also in Ischia, boasts the authorship of this name and tells us about its birth: «One evening I made some customers sit in my restaurant, despite the closing time had passed and the kitchens were practically closed. They were so hungry that they asked me to prepare any “crap” for them. I spent five minutes and prepared this dish, which I did not like to call “spaghetti alla puttanata”. I therefore preferred to name them spaghetti alla puttanesca».
Ph. Carolina Fragapane
In short, great uncertainty about the origins, as happens for all the dishes of the popular tradition, which often did not immortalize traditional recipes in writing. Even another region, Lazio, contends Campania for the invention of the dish, adding salted anchovies and dripped oil. On the other hand, one of the ingredients, olives, are precisely the symbol of the meeting between these two regions, in particular in the variety called “Itrana” because it is grown between the two municipalities of Itri and Gaeta. Two Municipalities that are now in Lazio, but what for a long time have been part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in the district called “Terra di Lavoro”.
Whatever the origin, spaghetti alla puttanesca have always been a great success among lovers of popular cuisine, precisely because they are simple to prepare and can be made with ingredients that we can always find in our pantry or in the refrigerator.