Dive into the bold, briny world of Pasta alla Puttanesca—Southern Italian comfort food with a playful past! In this video, we’re putting a family spin on tradition by swapping anchovies for rich sardines and adding Italian tuna for extra depth. Follow along for our easy, flavor-packed recipe, plus tips for balancing those classic Mediterranean flavors.
Curious about the origins? Let’s just say this dish comes with a side of colorful lore—perfect for sparking conversation at your next Sunday supper.
Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more Italian-inspired recipes from @eatsundaysupper!
Links in bio for the full recipe and more family favorites.
Thanks for stopping by. Eat Sunday supper. Today we’re going to make spaghetti alaputines. Delicious. First off, we’re going to start getting our ingredients together. Got a half an onion, three garlic cloves, pepperonino, some tuna, dry cured black olives, a can of sardines. I like to use sardines instead of anchovies. a jar of pata, fresh basil, fresh parsley. We also are going to get some caper berries, and I’m going to use some green castle delrano olives at the end. So, we’re going to put some oil in the pan. I’m using a straight sided pan. You can use a roundsided pan if you want to toss the pasta a little bit. I put the oil in. I get my pepperonino going. When I start to see the pepperonino sizzle, I know the oil is ready for the onions. Get them in there. Move it around a little bit. Now I’m going to get out my sardines. I add them all oil and all tooti. We’re just going to move them around. Let them melt into the onions and they’ll start to dissolve into little pieces. I use a microplane for my garlic. Obviously, this video is sped up. Otherwise, I’d probably take a finger off. Go slow. Nice and thin. I’m going to add that in. Going to stir it around. It’s on medium flame. We’re not trying to brown anything. Just melt all the flavors together. Going to add about two tablespoons of tomato paste. Just let that toast and melt in with everything else. Going to use a nice uh Costco savon blanc Kirkland signature. Don’t hate participate. Um now we’re going to take our drycured olives. They have pits. So we’re going to Oh, somebody brought me a cocktail. Thank you very much. Go ahead and add our patada. Then I like to fill it with some water about halfway. Shake it up. Let’s get all the rest out. We’ll add our caper berries next. Want to rinse those. We want to get all the brine off of them. Uh we just want the flavor of the caper berries. We’re not trying to get that vinegar brine, salty vinegar brine in there. This is a pretty salty dish to begin with with all the canned seafood. So, we throw those in. Now, the fun part. Remove the pits from the olives. So, I I smacked them with my knife just to loosen them up. Now, I’m peeling them off. I love dry cured olives. They just have such an intense olive flavor. Just keep going one at a time. Easy money. Just try not to throw the pits in every now and then. Uh I put the wrong one in the wrong pot. Keep working it. Sometimes uh I put a little less or a little more depending on how uh excited I am to actually pit olives. It’s a bit of a chore, but uh it’s definitely worth it. The flavor without dry cured olives is for me it’s just completely different. It’s not quite the same. So, we’re almost there. Finish line. Now, we’re going to take the tuna out. You could take the tuna and put it in a bowl and break it up. I just put a glove on and broke it up over the pot like that. It’s going to break down a little bit more. And remember, this is a quick sauce. This is not something you’re going to cook for a long time. So, um, I’m just getting it all started. This should not cook more than 30 minutes. We’re going to add some herbs and seasonings. I’m going to add a little bit of parsley right now. I like to add parsley in the, you know, beginning stages and finish it at the end and then, uh, finish with some fresh herbs on top. Take some of our dried oregano, squeeze a little of that in off the branches. And um the way I do it is I start the water as soon as I get everything in the pot. And by the time the pasta is cooked, the sauce should be done. So now I’m going to take some Castlevano olives. These are already pitted, thankfully. And I just pinch them and I break them in half. Not trying to do any fancy, you know, round cut or anything like that. I just pick it up, pinch it, pinch it, and it just breaks in half the long way. Nice random rustic looking. There we go. My mom used to make this for us on Fridays during uh Catholic holidays when we weren’t supposed to have meat and uh hers wasn’t as fancy but uh was still pretty good. Okay, so we dropped our pasta in the water. Obviously, we’re using a deco pasta. We are a cheek household. Either we make it or we buy the czechco. It’s grounds for divorce. So, we salted water, two tablespoons, about uh um 3/4 of a gallon of water for the box of pasta. Now, we’re dropping the pasta. Just stir it up so it doesn’t stick together. No oil in the water. Don’t do that here. Shenanigans. Taste it. So, you’ll see in the recipe there’s no salt. Uh we’re going to taste it and make sure we don’t need to add salt. If we do, we will. But like I said, it’s pretty salty uh to start with with all the canned fish. So, besides the salt in the pasta water, I did not season this pasta at all with salt, just pepper. So, here we go. We’re going to chop up some fresh herbs. I was boiled over, so cracked the lid of the pot a little bit there. Get it nice and fine. Okay, stir it up. I’m going to throw some of my basil and parsley mixture into the sauce. And the sauce is uh pretty much off right now. It’s just sitting there. Add my extra garnish herbs into a bowl. Pasta’s almost ready. Few more minutes cook. We want to go in al dente into the sauce. Fish it out. I didn’t use the strainer feature on the pasta pot because I wanted to save some of the water to add to the sauce to get the right consistency. It’s one of the great things about pasta is just add a little bit of water. If you reduce it down a little too much or if it’s a little too liquidy, let it reduce down. That’s why we go in with the pasta um about a minute or two undercooked to let it finish in the sauce. Let all the starches come together. Just mixing it around a little bit. Now I’m going to add a little pasta water. And here we go. We’re going to plate it up. Isn’t that good? Twist it up. Go into our plate. Top it off. A little bit of the tuna. Little wipe down. Some fresh herbs. Of course, we’re going to drizzle with some oil. And there it is. Thanks for stopping by. Eat Sunday Supper. Go to the website. Full recipe and ingredient listing and links on the site.
Dining and Cooking