The last remnants of the home made pancetta made their way into a great puttanesca sauce.
Puttanesca has some variability in the dishes I've had, and herein there are no anchovies due to concerns about food allergies with our little ones. To me the core of puttanesca is olives, capers, lots of garlic and spice. As with all good tomato sauces in my opinion, long simmering yields the best results.
A few tricks with puttanesca ... first, puttanesca is at once a flavor cacophony and flavor symphony. To achieve a balance of dissonance and harmony, add garlic early and late in the cooking process; add olives midway, and add capers midway and very late (as in at the moment of plating). Second, it's not puttanesca without some spice, but it's not
arrabiata (the angry sauce) either ... add red pepper flake to the oil before anything else is in the pan, but be measured; finalize any addition of heat by the midway point and plan on tasting something a little tamer than the final product (due to the reduction caused by the lengthy simmer). The pancetta here was used as a base flavoring agent, and was added along with the onions, early in the process.
As many of you know, puttanesca is known to many as "sauce of the whore", the origins of which are cloudy at best. It is known that the sauce was served in Italian brothels, probably because of it's simplicity and use of cheap ingredients. I guess I think of this moniker for the sauce more as a metaphor for how to cook it ... occasional visits by the same and new ingredients.
Puttanesca has some variability in the dishes I've had, and herein there are no anchovies due to concerns about food allergies with our little ones. To me the core of puttanesca is olives, capers, lots of garlic and spice. As with all good tomato sauces in my opinion, long simmering yields the best results.
A few tricks with puttanesca ... first, puttanesca is at once a flavor cacophony and flavor symphony. To achieve a balance of dissonance and harmony, add garlic early and late in the cooking process; add olives midway, and add capers midway and very late (as in at the moment of plating). Second, it's not puttanesca without some spice, but it's not arrabiata (the angry sauce) either ... add red pepper flake to the oil before anything else is in the pan, but be measured; finalize any addition of heat by the midway point and plan on tasting something a little tamer than the final product (due to the reduction caused by the lengthy simmer). The pancetta here was used as a base flavoring agent, and was added along with the onions, early in the process. 
As many of you know, puttanesca is known to many as "sauce of the whore", the origins of which are cloudy at best. It is known that the sauce was served in Italian brothels, probably because of it's simplicity and use of cheap ingredients. I guess I think of this moniker for the sauce more as a metaphor for how to cook it ... occasional visits by the same and new ingredients.
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