What a wonderful pasta recipe! Tim does a great job bringing this risque recipe back to the forefront of pasta cooking. Tim relates how this sauce was a post-World War II newcomer to Italian cuisine. It has a name whose origins are as rife with speculation as they are skimpy on authority. Cheap shots like "fast" and "easy to make" don't help. One explanation is that since the sauce requires only ingredients typically available in poor urban Italian kitchens, someone working indoors with little time between clients could throw it together quickly. Time is money, after all. While several attributions point to the notorious brothels of Naples (can you imagine those kitchens?), one Italian cookbook claims Trastevere, a poor district in Rome, another, Calabria. Yet another, citing interesting research, says puttanesca was created not by "working girls," but by a flamboyant local artist and host on the Isle of Ischia near Naples

Pasta alla Puttanesca

4 large cloves garlic, minced

1 2-ounce can anchovy fillets (save oil), coarsely chopped

24 Greek Kalamata olives, pitted and chopped

2 tablespoons capers, rinsed

2 tablespoons chopped parsley

6 tablespoons oil from anchovies plus olive oil

1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper

1 14-ounce can diced tomatoes (Hunt's preferred)

Salt to taste

10 ounces spaghetti

1. Heat large covered pot of water for pasta. Keep at low boil until needed. Prepare all the ingredients.

2. In large frying pan over low heat, fry garlic in the oil 10 seconds, stirring. Add anchovies and red pepper. Stir and fry 1/2 minute. Add tomatoes, olives and capers. Raise heat and boil, stirring, 2 minutes.

3. Taste, and add salt as needed, making sauce slightly salty. Remove from heat and stir in parsley.

4. As sauce is cooking, add a tablespoon salt to pasta water, and over high heat add pasta, stirring immediately so it doesn't stick.

5. As pasta softens, bite a piece to test. When just tender, drain in colander and shake off excess water.

Serves six as starter course, four as a meal.

Tim Dondero is an international medical researcher as well as cooking teacher, chef and caterer. He divides his time between Atlanta and Athens,GA. and has family in both communities. Contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or visit his blog, t-jintan.blogspot.com.

Originally published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Wednesday, April 01, 2009

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