Puttanesca Day

I made pasta from scratch today. One, because the ref and cupboard dictated that I make this (the only ingredients left hehe I need to do groceries) and one... it felt like a pasta day!

Speaking of puttanesca, I read somewhere that puttanesca is not really part of traditional Italian cuisine. Earlierst references in literature date the sauce around the 60s. The colorful story is that the name originated in Naples and named after ...er...prostitutes, hence "putta." Pasta alla Puttanesca means literally "Pasta the way a whore would make it". It may also simply refer to its spicy flavor.

Frugal Gourmet's Chef Jeff Smith claims that it was a quick, cheap meal prostitutes prepare d out of available ingredients in between customers. Yikes.

A more thorough story about this dish comes from Diane Seed in her book, Top 100 Pasta Sauces:

My introduction to this famous pasta dish occurred when I overheard two elderly priests discussing the pros and cons of Spaghetti alla Puttanesca ("Whore's spaghetti") as they deliberated over the menu in a Neapolitan restaurant. Made of ingredients found in most Italian larders, this is also known as 'Spaghetti alla Buona Donna' - or 'Good Woman's Spaghetti' - which can be misleading if one is not familiar with the ironic insult 'figlio d'una buona donna' - son of a good woman. To understand how this sauce came to get its name, one must consider the 1950s when brothels in Italy were state-owned. They were known as case chiuse or 'closed houses' because the shutters had to be kept permanently closed to avoid offending the sensibilities of neighbors or innocent passers-by. Conscientious Italian housewives usually shop at the local market every day to buy fresh food, but the 'civil servants' were only allowed one day per week for shopping, and their time was valuable. Their specialty became a sauce made quickly from odds and ends in the lard.