I used to be a party girl. I was legendary, dancing the night away and eating my primary meal at three o'clock in the morning before falling asleep. Nowadays, if you are hungry at any ungodly hour you can go get a burger off the dollar menu at any fast-food drive-thru, or go to an all-night Greek diner and have a cheese omelet and a milkshake, or even go home and whip up beef Wellington from what you may have in your convenient, modern refrigerator.

But you must remember that, back in the day, most peasants and low-income urban dwellers did not possess refrigerators. Fresh meats and vegetables had to be purchased at the open-air market while toting a wicker basket and wearing a headscarf, and they had to be prepared and consumed almost immediately — generally during the hours when decent people ate meals.

So, if you were a party girl (or perhaps a working girl) back in the days before microwaves and you did most of your business at nighttime, it could have been a bit of a hardship to regularly prepare nutritious dinners. The Italian working girls of yore had an ingenious solution to this: Pasta Puttanesca.

Pasta Puttanesca is said to have originated with the prostitutes of Naples (who apparently had a high tolerance for salt late at night) in the 1950s or 1960s. Pasta Puttanesca generally consists of spaghetti tossed with olive oil, anchovies, olives and capers. Today these ingredients share a common theme: They often can all be found— within cans or jars — in your cupboard. This makes the dish an ideal concoction for the hungry young lady who has rolled home at two in the morning, tipsy and hungry after a night of carousing and/or "business." Many of you (especially those who didn't take Italian in high school) have probably consumed this dish with no thought to the meaning behind its name. It always amuses me to see Pasta Puttanesca on the menu of a fine Italian restaurant, since they almost never explain what the name means, or why they charge $12 for a plate of something that contains only ingredients you're likely to find in a World War II bomb shelter.

The culinary ethos of Pasta Puttanesca is ingenious for those of us who, though not engaged in a trade likely to get us arrested, still find ourselves too busy to go to the supermarket regularly. Furthermore, should you find yourself stocking a bomb shelter or a submarine, it might do to keep the concept behind Pasta Puttanesca in mind. At one time, the availability of fancy foods in jars was less varied — anchovies and olives were pretty much it. These days, however, a person can find all kinds of roasted peppers, tapenades and tinned delicacies available. And most of them are delicious on pasta.

I should know, because lately the criteria for whether I'll cook something or not has become a.) do I have it already so I don't have to go to the store? and b.) will it take less than 10 minutes and involve only one pan, which I can then eat out of? Favorite recipes include pasta with tapenade and goat cheese; pasta with parmesan cheese, black pepper, and slightly-past-their-prime cherry tomatoes; pasta with tuna and capers; and pasta with roasted red peppers and sun-dried tomatoes (all
from a jar).

I am not really much of a party girl anymore, though my work still forces me to keep party-girl hours. I only have time to go grocery shopping once a week, and most of the time I leave myself five minutes in which to prepare my primary daily meal — often at 3 a.m. But food snob that I am, I can't bring myself to survive off frozen Lean Cuisine or fast food — life is too short to eat plastic. I'm not saying that I've begun to supplement my writing with other, less savory, pursuits — but I will say that I sympathize with those Neopolitan ladies, keeping such difficult hours but still maintaining their Italian love of fine dining. It's hard to be a girl working, even if you're not a working girl.

CLASSIC PASTA PUTTANESCA

Pasta

Garlic

olives

capers

anchovies

Prepare pasta. Preferably, yesterday, and have it sitting cold in your fridge. No one wants to wait for pasta to boil at 3 o'clock in the morning. Heat some olive oil in a sauté pan. Chop some garlic. Sauté the garlic. Open the jar of olives, can of anchovies and jar of capers. Add some to the pan. Sauté everything together briefly. Add the pasta, and toss together. Eat, standing over the sink, right out of the pan with a fork you pulled out of the sink of dirty dishes and rinsed off with your fingers.

You can reach Tantri Wija atthetwija@gmail.com.