Spaghetti alla Gennaro: Totò’s favorite pasta

Spaghetti alla Gennaro

If there’s one dish that embodies the spirit of Naples, spaghetti alla Gennaro might well be it. It’s named after the patron saint of the city after all. A cucina povera dish if there ever was one, it’s cheap, quick and simple to prepare, using only a few humble ingredients you’d find in any Neapolitan kitchen. It’s also delicious.

You can whip up a dish of spaghetti alla Gennaro in the time it takes to cook your pasta, at most 15-20 minutes. You sauté some slices of stale bread, rubbed with garlic and crumbled into small bits. Then, while you boil your spaghetti, you make a quick garlic and anchovy sauce scented with oregano. When the pasta is cooked, it’s tossed with the sauce, part of the sautéed bread and lots of fresh basil, then serve it topped with the rest of the bread and, if you like some basil leaves for color.

Homely perhaps, but a true delight to the palate. The anchovies provide their lusty umami as always, but what make this more than just a simple pasta and anchovy dish are the bits of fried bread, which lend a nutty flavor and an appealingly crunchy texture.

According to. his daughter, spaghetti alla Gennaro was the favorite pasta of the legendary Neapolitan comic actor Antonio de Curtis, known popularly as Totò, one of Naple’s favorite sons, who quite literally rose from rags to riches but apparently never lost his taste for simple but tasty cooking. If you don’t know who Totò is, you can read about him in the Notes below.

Ingredients

Serves 4-6

  • 500g (1 lb) spaghetti
  • 150-200g (5-7 oz) stale best quality bread, sliced
  • 2-3 cloves of garlic
  • 8 anchovy fillets (or more to taste)
  • A pinch of oregano
  • A handful of basil leaves, broken up if large
  • Olive oil
  • Salt

Directions

Rub the bread slices on both sides with a clove of garlic. Then break it up into small pieces, either with your hands (if the bread is very hard) or with a knife.

Sauté the bread gently in a skillet, with just enough olive oil to moisten all the pieces, until lightly golden brown. Transfer immediately to a bowl and set aside until needed.

Boil the spaghetti in abundant well salted water until al dente.

While the spaghetti is cooking, gently sauté a clove or two of garlic in a good glug of olive oil. When the garlic is just beginning to brown, add the anchovies and a good pinch of oregano. Sauté just until the anchovies have melted. Turn off the heat and remove the garlic.

When the spaghetti is done, drain and transfer it to the skillet with the anchovy sauce. Toss once or twice, then add about half of the sautéed bread and the basil leaves and toss again.

Taste and adjust for seasoning. (If your water is properly salted, it should need little or no more salt.)

Plate your spaghetti and top with the rest of the sautéed bread and, if you like, some more basil leaves as garnish. If you’re using fresh oregano, a few leaves or (as picture here) flowers would also be a lovely touch.

Spaghetti alla Gennaro

Notes on spaghetti alla Gennaro

The recipe is a simple one to be sure, but do be careful not to burn the bread. If you’ve fried bread or breadcrumbs beflore, you know that they go from brown to black with amazing speed. So fry the bread gently, then take it off heat just before you think they’re browned to your liking and transfer them right away to a bowl. And whategver you do, don’t walk away from the stove while they’re sautéing. Trust me on this… I’ve been there!

As funny as it might seem, the choice of bread is also crucial. It should be best quality crusty bread. A quality homemade pane casereccio would be ideal, but a baguette would also work nicely, as would a cimabatta. Avoid sandwich bread or soft breads generally.

Dried oregano is very strong so I wouldn’t overdo it. Personally I’m not a big fan of oregano so I only add a tiny pinch, though some recipes call for two pinches rather than one. Since I have it in the garden, I use fresh oregano, which allows you a freer hand.

The anchovies, on the other hand, I love, so I use them with abondon. Again, it’s a matter of taste. Recipes vary a lot in the amount of anchovy they call for. Add only a few and the anchovies will fade into the background, lending a subtle umami. Add more if you want their briny flavor to take center stage.

Truth be told, like a lot of this kind of cooking, all the measurements given are really “to taste”.

And, finally, no cheese please. This dish neither needs it nor wants it. It has plenty of flavor without.

Grandissimo Mimmo…

If you want to see spaghetti alla Gennaro made, I’d recommend this video from one of my favorite Italian YouTubers, Mimmo Corcione. He uses quite a bit more bread and anchovies than called for in the recipe above. He also adds a non-canonical drop of chili oil for extra kick. But his method follows the classic recipe:

Mimmo’s videos are only in Italian and don’t have subtitles, so unfortunately if you don’t understand in Italian you’ll miss the inimitable charm of his Neapolitan accent and wry sense of humor he brings to his presentation. That said, the method will be clear.

Variations

Some people will cut the bread into regular cubes as if to make croutons, but the orignal recipe calls for broken up pieces. I find irregular pieces more more interesting, both visually and in terms of mouth feel. Some recipes will tell you to cut off the crust, others to remove the crumb… so go with your own instincts. I’m just use the whole slice, crust and crumb. This is a cucina povera dish after all. No need to fancify it!

In some recipes, the fried bread is used solely as a topping. In others, it all gets mixed in with the pasta. Personally, i prefer the half and half method called for here.

If you’re using fresh oregano, as mentioned above, both the leaves and flowers can be used as garnish as well. (But whatever you do, don’t try this dried oregano!) Though not original, I’ve seen some recipes like Mimmo’s that call for a bit of heat in the form of dried chili pepper or some chili oil.

There also exists a variation of spaghetti alla Gennaro that calls for red or yellow cherry tomatoes, which you sauté along the garlic and let slightly melt before adding the anchovies and oregano. In this case, I’d recommend using the bread only as a topping, since the wet sauce will turn it soggy.

Making ahead and leftovers

Like most pastas, spaghetti alla Gennaro isn’t a dish you should make ahead. And there’s no real need, given how quick easy the recipe is. But you can, if you like, fry the bread ahead. Leftovers make a lovely filling for a frittata di maccheroni.

About Totò

Totò in his first film, Fermo con le mani

If you’re Italian—at least one of a certain age—you know and probably love the work of Antonio Griffo Focas Flavio Angelo Ducas Comneno Porfirogenito Gagliardi De Curtis di Bisanzi, or Antonio de Curtis for short, who went by the stage name Totò. Born in the slums of Naples in 1898, he was one of the most imiportant Italian performing artists of the 20th century, often mentioned in the same breath as the Marx brothers, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.

Although his mother wanted him to become a priest, his comic talents were evident from an early age. Starting his career with bit parts in local theaters, in 1922 he went to seek his fortune in Rome, where he worked in the Italian version of vaudeville called avanspettacolo. After gaining national fame on the stage, he appeared in his first movie Fermo con le mani in 1937, and went on to make a whopping total of 96 more films during his long career.

His style and sense of humor was quintessentially Neapolitan. His film persona was often comically clumsy and naive, and yet his portayals hinted at a certain sadness behind the happy face.

He died of a heart attack in 1967 at the relatively young age of 69. He had two funerals, one in Rome where movies stars and other notables of the era attended. But that was nothing compared to his second funeral in his native Naples, which over 250,000 citizens attended. The city shut down that afternoon. Even its famously choatic traffic stood still as his cortege made its way through the streets. His tomb in the Cimitero di S.Maria del Pianto in Naples remains a popular site for fans.

For more info on Totò, you can read this Wikipedia article in English. If you read Italian, this article provides much more detailed account of his life and work.

My favorite Totò film

My personal favorite Totò film is the 1964 Che fine ha fatto Totò Baby, or “What Ever Happened to Baby Totò?”, a spoof of the 1962 horror film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. It came late in his career and, somewhat unusually, he plays a homicdal maniac, albeit for laughs as only he could pull off.

For a taste of his comic talent, you can see a selection of scenes from the movie here. If you know the original movie, you’ll recognize a good number of them, including a send off of the infamous dinner scene. Now, so much of Totò’s genius lay in his masterful use and delivery of language, and the automatic subtitles here are fairly useless, so his genius might be lost on you if you don’t nderstand Italian. Still, you might get a small hint of why Totò was so beloved.

Spaghetti alla Gennaro: Totò’s favorite pasta

Ingredients

  • 500 g 1 lb spaghetti
  • 150-200 g 5-7 oz stale best quality bread, sliced
  • 2-3 cloves of garlic
  • 8 anchovy fillets or more to taste
  • A pinch of oregano
  • A handful of basil leaves broken up if large
  • Olive oil
  • Salt

Instructions

  • Rub the bread slices on both sides with a clove of garlic. Then break it up into small pieces, either with your hands (if the bread is very hard) or with a knife.
  • Sauté the bread gently in a skillet, with just enough olive oil to moisten all the pieces, until lightly golden brown. Transfer immediately to a bowl and set aside until needed.
  • Boil the spaghetti in abundant well salted water until al dente.
  • While the spaghetti is cooking, gently sauté a clove or two of garlic in a good glug of olive oil.
  • When the garlic is just beginning to brown, add the anchovies and a good pinch of oregano. Sauté just until the anchovies have melted. Turn off the heat and remove the garlic.
  • When the spaghetti is done, drain and transfer it to the skillet with the anchovy sauce. Toss once or twice, then add about half of the sautéed bread and the basil leaves and toss again. Taste and adjust for seasoning.
  • Plate your spaghetti and top with the rest of the sautéed bread and, if you like, some more basil leaves as garnish, or If you're using fresh oregano, a few leaves or (lowers.

Discover more from Memorie di Angelina

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

2 thoughts on “Spaghetti alla Gennaro: Totò’s favorite pasta”

  1. I just love how you state the ‘stale’ bread should be ‘best quality’ 🙂 ! Of course, Signor 🙂 ! Love anchovies naturally and use fresh herbs whenever possible. So this povera dish does not sound wanting at all! And I am old enough to remember seeing Toto – not that I necessarily understood his humour, but we had this one ‘foreign film’ cinema in Sydney, and our dates always wanted to ‘show off’ that they were taking us somewhere ‘smart and sophisticated’ 🙂 ! Thanks for the Saturday afternoon smile and the very simple recipe !!!

We'd love to hear your questions and thoughts! And if you tried the recipe, we'd love to hear how it went!

Did we whet your appetite? Then sign up for our newsletter and you’ll never miss another post!

Scroll to Top