Puttanesca Pasta Recipe

I’d been eating a ton of olives, anchovies, and other ‘smelly’ foods while in Spain and my jetlagged self remembered that these were also the key ingredients to puttanesca at around 3am while unable to sleep. I went to the market the next morning (read: 1:30pm, thanks again, jetlag) and bought all the ingredients that I thought I would need. And oh my god, it is so good. Easily one of the best from scratch pasta recipes.

Ingredients:

  • 4 cloves of garlic
  • 6 anchovy filets
  • 5 cluster tomatoes
  • 1 tbsp capers
  • handful of Kalamata olives ~12 olives
  • 3-5 dried chili peppers (i used 5 but it had quite the kick), can also sub for chili flakes
  • spaghetti
  • parsley (optional)

Directions:

  1. Heat up some olive oil in skillet and toss in minced garlic. Let it cook for about a minute and toss in diced anchovy fillets, olives, chili peppers, and capers (you can leave the capers whole).
  2. Let cook on medium heat for ~5 minutes. Then, add in the diced tomatoes along with some pasta water (or water if you haven’t started cooking your pasta yet). Turn on low heat and simmer the sauce for about 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper as needed — I found that mine was fine without.
  3. Toss with spaghetti while over low heat, top with parsley, and serve. Bon appetit!