[Sca-cooks] linguine puttanesca

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Also sprach Mark S. Harris:
>Hey, I *like* Spaghetti-O's and most other canned pastas. Wish I
>could get the one I remember from 20? 30? years ago which was long
>tubes of pasta in a pale yellow cheese sauce.
>Anyway, what is "linguine puttanesca"?
>Or is this an SCA joke? "puttaneSCA"? :-)

Puttanesca was probably a bad example; it's an uncooked pasta
sauce/garnish containing diced tomatoes. Also garlic, good olive oil,
parsley, anchovies, black olives, and, IIRC, capers and hot red
pepper flakes. You know. All the necessary Mediterranean coastal food
groups. You put this room-temp stuff on your boiling-hot pasta, toss,
and eat. This is a Neapolitan thang (in other words, from the fevered
imaginations of the people that brought you pizza). I've seen cooked
versions (boo, hiss, might as well put tomatoes in chowder if you're
gonna do that -- oops, let me rephrase that), also one webbed recipe
involving canned tuna (extraneous, IMO) and a couple calling for
grated Pecorino (sacrilege!) or Parmagiano (what's a word that means
worse than sacrilege?). No, it appears that the canonical version (or
rather, a synthesis of the most common elements of a wide, random
sampling of different recipes -- you know... canonical) is almost
like a salad (sans greens except for parsley) tossed with your hot
pasta.

"Mmmmmm..." (Feeble attempt at Homer Simpson voice...) "Extra-thin
linguine a la puttanesca..."

It is said that "a la puttanesca" means, "in the style of a whore",
supposedly a reference to brightly-colored foods and, by extension,
faces with too much makeup. Others have claimed this is something a
prostitute could put together quickly in a cheap apartment with
extremely limited cooking facilities. I think the first explanation
is better.

Adamantius

--
"No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes
deserves to be called a scholar."
	-DONALD FOSTER