Southern Italian · Dinner

Spaghetti puttanesca

Name: Spaghetti puttanesca
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 25 min
Total time: 40 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Southern Italian
Ingredients: 12 ounces spaghetti; 3 quarts water; 2 teaspoons kosher salt; 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil; 4 oil-packed anchovy fillets, drained; 3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced; 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes; 1 28-ounce can whole peeled tomatoes, crushed by hand; 1/2 cup pitted Gaeta or Kalamata olives, torn; 2 tablespoons salt-packed capers, rinsed well; 2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley

Spaghetti tossed with a fast southern Italian sauce of tomato, olive oil, garlic, anchovy, capers, black olives, and chile.

About 40 minTotal

About 40 minActive

$$Cost

EasyDifficulty

Makes 4 servings

Equipment

Use another covered 12-inch oven-safe skillet or transfer before the oven finish.
Best large covered skillet
All-Clad D3 12-Inch Fry Pan with Lid · 41126
View at Amazon
Another workable path: Use another covered 12-inch oven-safe skillet or transfer before the oven finish.
Paid links. As an Amazon Associate, Kwilt earns from qualifying purchases.
How we chose
Research-backed · reviewed Aug 2026
We matched the twelve-inch footprint, fitted lid, tri-ply heat distribution, 600°F oven and broiler rating, current model 41126 and UPC, ownership burden, and exact Amazon identity. Kwilt has not cooked with this pan.
All-Clad D3 12-Inch Fry Pan with Lid · 41126: Its twelve-inch cooking surface gives rice, shrimp, meat, and vegetables room to cook evenly, while the fitted lid and 600°F oven rating cover both the lidded stovetop method and the shepherd's-pie oven finish. Trade-off: It is a premium-priced pan, food can stick without sound preheating and fat control, and the long handle plus lid need more storage room than a basic skillet.
Another workable path: Use another oven-safe 12-inch skillet with a well-fitting lid; if the handle has a lower heat limit, transfer oven-finished food to a suitable baking dish.
Sources
All-Clad model 41126 specifications
Amazon exact product listing

Ingredients

1× recipe · Makes 4 servings

12 ounces spaghetti
3 quarts water
2 teaspoons kosher salt
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
4 oil-packed anchovy fillets, drained
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 28-ounce can whole peeled tomatoes, crushed by hand
1/2 cup pitted Gaeta or Kalamata olives, torn
2 tablespoons salt-packed capers, rinsed well
2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley

Instructions

Bring water and salt to a boil. Heat oil in a over medium-low and melt anchovies into it. Add garlic and chile and cook only until fragrant, without browning.
Add tomatoes and simmer briskly 10 minutes. Fold in olives and capers and continue until the sauce is concentrated but lively, 5 minutes; taste before adding any salt.
Boil spaghetti until 2 minutes shy of al dente, reserving 1 1/2 cups water. Transfer pasta to sauce and toss over medium heat with splashes of water until glossy and al dente.
Remove from heat, fold in parsley, and serve immediately without cheese.

Southern ItalySouthern Italian pasta traditions

From the table

About this recipe

Puttanesca is a mid-twentieth-century southern Italian pasta whose exact birthplace and colorful name stories remain disputed among Naples, Ischia, Rome, and elsewhere; its reliable identity is the fast briny tomato sauce itself.

Puttanesca is a mid-twentieth-century southern Italian pasta with disputed origin claims involving Naples, Ischia, Rome, and other places; its colorful name has generated many unreliable stories. This authors the anchovy-bearing Neapolitan-leaning family. Olives, capers, and anchovies make automatic salting a common failure. This Kwilt version follows the reviewed household adaptation: Select the anchovy-bearing southern branch, reject an invented single-origin story, and make salt control and rapid sauce reduction explicit.

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