Puttanesca sauce

Description

Our hearty puttanesca-style tomato sauce contains pine nuts as well as capers and green olive pieces, giving it a flavour and fragrance that recall a blend of mustard, black pepper and lemon.

Uses

Puttanesca tomato sauce is traditionally served with spaghetti or, alternatively, with penne. Add anchovies for a saltier version, or a spoonful of Favuzzi hot chili purée or spicy Italian herb mix if you're in the mood for extra heat. It's also a great starting point for a chicken cacciatore recipe. Authentically Italian pasta dishes are not served swimming in sauce. Average proportions are 375 mL (1 ½ cup) tomato sauce for 500 g (1 lb) pasta. Don't throw away all the pasta cooking water: it's a good idea to add a bit to your sauce. Mix in ¼ to ½ cup (or a ladleful) cooking water with the sauce before adding the pasta. The salted, starchy water will enhance flavours and thicken the sauce, helping it stick to the pasta.

Distinctives attributes

Nothing rivals with the taste of Italian tomatoes ripened under the Mediterranean sun and seasoned with fresh, locally grown aromatics. If our sauces have a velvety texture, comparable to a homemade sauce, it is partly because they are prepared in small batches and cooked over an open flame, the same technique traditionally used by Italian mammas, allowing the water to evaporate gradually.

Artisan

The De Laurentiis family owns an artisanal business in the Abruzzo mountain region. For two generations, it has been drawing on traditional ingredients and know-how to offer products with an authentically Italian taste. The family grows organic tomatoes, saffron and other seasonings on its own plots of land, and turns them into sauces and condiments thanks to a veritable regiment of cooks who busily tend the ovens.

Origin

Roccascalegna, Abruzzo, Italy.

History and anecdotes

"Alla puttanesca" literally translates as "prostitute style". The recipe's creator was not a prostitute, however: Sandro Petti, a restaurant owner from Ischia, Italy, who is said to have invented it in the 1950s by using whatever he had on hand (tomatoes, olives and capers). "Puttana" is also an Italian slang word referring to leftovers.

Ingredients

Tomato pulp and Cherry tomato puree 80% (Italy), Extra virgin olive oil, Green olives, Onion, Carrots, Celery, Raisins, Sea salt, Pine nuts, Capers, Garlic, Aromatic herbs, Basil, Pepper, Acidifier: citric acid.

Contains: Pine nuts. May contain: Milk.

Conservation

Refrigerate after opening and use within 3 to 4 days. Contains no preservatives.