Seeking Italian or the cupboard is low on things? Check out this Spaghetti Puttanesca recipe and forfeit the need of deciding anything!

Dieting is hard. Be that for losing weight as many of us have been trying to do or as incredible as it sounds, putting on weight. Well, to be totally clear, probably no one wants to put on weight as fat but rather as muscles and that could be even harder to achieve than losing the last couple of pounds that hides our six pack.

Most of the time though, the difficulty of following a diet isn’t in the food we have to eat, but rather in those, we can’t eat.

For many of us, dieting means restricting ourselves from certain food and munch on the rest of them out of necessity. While this is essentially the only way of doing any kind of change, having such state of mind will almost always guarantee failure.

We value our freedom greatly and once our freedom of choice is taken away, we handle the situation really badly, even if such restrictions are for our best interest. Apparently, not only kids who like doing something because it has been prohibited, but as grown-ups, we are all too keen to prove our agency once we feel it’s being threatened.

Just think about how The Prohibition worked out, not to mention the war on drugs or how the very recent mask mandate ruffled some feathers.

The curious thing is that even if such restrictions are implied on us by our very own self, we constantly inclined to rebel against them, hence sneaking in cheat days then chastising ourselves for doing so.

Many of us know all too well the arguments, we conduct with ourselves about not buying sugar stuffed things anymore, not having a second slice of cake or another piece of chocolate, only to end up having our cart filled with them and eating up whole things in one go.

So we may be able to get away with simple methods of self-discipline once or twice but for a complete overhaul of our life on the long run will require us to change our minds.

The first step on such a treacherous journey is to pick up an upbeat tone and think positively. Prohibition should only be applied to things that are clearly distinguished as a harmful thing for our body, like in the case of smoking, drugs or consuming sugar.

Anything else, that could carry any nutritional value, should be allowed in our plate if they can be crammed under the umbrella of our daily limits. If we don’t feel restricted, our mind won’t be occupied with searching for opportunities for things our body can’t have, but it will be kept busy making the best of its possibilities.

After all, choice is just an illusion created between those with power and those without. If we create enough possibilities for our body to choose from, we’ll gain control it’s decision making process and we can steer it towards desired results.

Curiously though, defying the desired results seems much harder than just improvising, yet to achieve exceptional results, we need to do more planning than just throw everything together as we go.

Spaghetti alla Puttanesca is, unsurprisingly, and Italian pasta dish invented in the mid 20th Century Naples.

As many Italian pasta dishes, Spaghetti alla puttanesca isn’t something of an overly affluent dish either. It consists of pasta, a sauce and some spices with preferably fresh herbs to distinguish itself from the rest of the dishes but that’s all. A barbebone dish that has never aspired for grandour or fame, yet once we give it a try, we’ll reserve a special spot for it in our hearts for times to come.

Although Puttanesca in its closest sense means “whore” in Italian, the dish has little to do with girls and much more to do with the word “Puttanesca” being used for an all purpose profanity word in Italy. So the name itself could be loosely translated to “Crappy Spaghetti” with the broad meaning of “throwing together whatever crap we have in the cupboard”.

Hence getting the exact recipe for Spaghetti alla Puttanesca is next to impossible but the general consensus is that the dish contains some sort of pasta, tomato sauce with some green stuff on it.

Garlic is a welcome addition, although some like to skip it similarly to capers, olives, anchovies or oregano. The type of pasta, we can use, is a bit narrowed down since spaghetti, Penne, Buatini, Linguine and Vermicelli are the ones preferred.

Although if we haven’t got them in our cupboard, we are free to use anything that survived the latest purge, given that we still have the freedom of choice.

Ingredients

2 teaspoons / 10g Salt
1lb / 500g Spaghetti
2 tablespoon / 30ml Olive oil (NOT extra virgin)
1 teaspoon / 5g Salt
4 cloves / 12g Garlic
6 fillets / 25g Anchovies or tuna (finely cut – more tuna for more protein)
2 tablespoons / 30g Red pepper (diced)
½ cup / 80g Black olives
2 tablespoons / 40g Capers
29 oz / 800g Tomato puree
1 oz / 30g Parmesan or any hard cheese to taste
2 tablespoons / 8g Fresh parsley (finely cut)

How to make Spaghetti alla puttanesca

Cook the pasta in salty water. Traditional instructions demand the pasta to be cooked in boiling water which is the most accurate way to achieve the perfect aldente pasta following the instructions on the packaging. If we like our pasta soft through and through, which also means less calories to volume ratio due to the increased water absorption, just put it in the cold water right at the start and cook until the desired consistency is achieved.
While the pasta is cooking, prepare the puttanesca sauce by sautéing (stir-frying) the diced garlic on hot oil and salt until slightly browned, about 3 minutes.
Mix in the optional anchovies or tuna. Tuna is an excellent source of protein, increase the amount as needed per serving.
Mix in the diced red pepper or red pepper flakes, black olives and capers.
Pour in the tomato puree then bring it to boil. Place a lid halfway on top so it prevents splutter and on low to medium heat cook away some of the liquid, about 10 – 30 minutes. The more water evaporates, the more intense the tomato sauce’s flavor will be, but once the pasta is done the sauce doesn’t need to wait any longer either.
Drain the pasta. To avoid pasta to stick together, place it under running water for a couple of seconds to remove surface starch.
Mix the pasta into the tomato sauce with the grated cheese and chopped parsley. Serve with extra grated cheese and parsley on top.