Pesto Rosso alla Puttanesca

Pesto Rosso alla Puttanesca...
There is many translations of puttanesca sauce and where it came.... Some believe that it was a sauce created by a restaurant owner who had many guests come to his restaurant to eat late one night as he was about to close. He didn't have enough of any one ingredient to make a meal for them all so he took everything out of his kitchen and put it together to make this legendary Italian pasta sauce.
Another not so endearing tale is puttana in Italian means whore. As told by my dear friend Carlo, it was a quick and easy pasta sauce for the puttanas to make in between customers, hence the name puttanesca sauce.
I was also told that puttanesca sauce was named after the term whore because it had everything in it. Because Italians are so frugal they would not throw away any food. They would just make it into this amazing tomato sauce recipe.
And finally one theory is that decent married women would see the ladies of the evening walking on the streets and they would through sauce made of left overs onto them from the balconies of their homes screaming PUTTANA, PUTTANA!
My inspiration for the Pesto Rosso alla Puttanesca comes from my general LOVE of spicy tomato sauce and basil pesto. Today I have made a spicy fresh dried tomato basil pesto with a fiery heat that accumulates until your addiction rages out of control...as they say "Hot as a whore house on dollar night."

Here is one of many versions of this famous pesto:
Pesto Rosso alla Puttanesca (yields about a 125ml glass):
* 140 g Sun-dried tomatoes
* 50 g pine nuts
* 1 garlic clove
* 1 shallot
* 15ml olive oil
* 30 g Parmesan cheese
* Some fresh oregano
* 2 tsp capers
* 1-2 anchovy fillets (according to taste, very salty!)
* 6-8 black olives
* 1 red chilli (if you like)
* Black pepper
Preparation:
1 coarsely chop the shallot and garlic. Together with the anchovy fillets in some olive oil Sauté until the anchovies break up.
2 golden brown toast the pine nuts in a pan without any fat.
3 may pit the olives. Coarsely grate the Parmesan. Chili and the sun-dried tomatoes coarsely chop the. All the ingredients in a high container and process with the hand blender pesto. Season with pepper, salt if necessary (caution! The anchovies are very salty!)


Grow, Harvest, Cook, Eat

Jenn