Welcome to the first installment of my new series “Cooking without Borders”, where I want to incite joy, appetite, curiosity, and the occasional rage by cooking things I like and being willing to break free of any sort of cooking conventions while sticking with timeless battle-tested processes.
We start with a spin on tuna pasta!
The most classical variations I’ve seen of this dish range from the most basic ones to elevated and complex ones with several ingredients:
— Basic: Just you know, grab your tuna, and quickly fry it in some high-quality extra virgin olive oil. If you feel fancy, add a chopped red onion, and combine it with spaghetti;
— Level Two: This goes beyond the Basic version, but, just barely: I like to prepare a sauce in the exact same way, but, add a minced garlic clove (yes, BOTH garlic AND onion!) and a couple of chopped fresh basil leaves. You let that cook down and then add the best tomato passata you can find. Add the spaghetti to the saucepan, combine and serve;
— Level Three: Same as level two, except that we can go one step further and add some nice Italian olives, preferably some type that’s both citric and a bit acidic to contrast well with the sweetness imparted by the onions and the passata. The ones I love and have always used are the Cailletier olives. You might know them by their maybe more famous Italian name, Taggiasca olives. They really balance out the flavor profile in this dish, and it’s a great way to make a perfect tuna pasta;
I wanted to try something new besides these three simple recipes, and, while you can and should do the Level Three version every time you feel like having proper tuna pasta, this time I wanted to try something new and see how that turned out.
Usually, in cooking, need drives creativity, and, this recipe was no different: I needed to use eggs that were about to expire, and, I was out of olives, so I wanted to do something flavorful that would require me to come up with something new, on the spot.
The classic “Pasta Alla Zozzona” is a decadent Roman mix between Amatriciana and Carbonara, with sausage added to it for good measure.
I decided to somewhat inspire myself with the whole mix idea and combined the tuna pasta with a pesto and egg yolk mix to create the ultimate creamy tuna pasta dish that uses, obviously, no cream. But, before we start:
Pointers for cooking almost any pasta dish
There are a few tricks that I use to cook pasta to make it have a perfect bite and sauce consistency almost every time. These are really simple details that can make all the difference. In no particular order:
Salt your pasta water, generously, but not too much; The saltiness in the water helps to bring out the flavor of the pasta. I don’t make the rules. Boil pasta in unsalted boiling water, versus salted one, and you’ll feel the difference;
Use a large pot, enough for the pasta to be able to swirl around slightly. If the pasta is lumped all together in a small pot, the starch will do its job, and you run the risk of ending with a “spaghetti lump”, and ain’t nobody got time fo dat;
Reserve, always, a cup of the pasta water once the pasta is almost done cooking. The water you get has a lot of starch in it, and it will help you to both adjust the consistency of the sauce and ensure it “clings” well enough to the pasta;
Over-boiled pasta is a real thing, it can turn a good pasta dish into a bad one. If you’re too worried, ensure to cook the pasta between 2-3 min less, than the time indicated in the packet. Adding and mixing hot pasta with a warm sauce plus the eventual pasta water is enough to finish cooking it to perfection;
Tuna pasta, with a twist
The idea is to follow the steps of the famous Zozzona pasta, but adjust it in two key ways:
Ingredients:
2 garlic cloves, 2 tablespoons of pesto, one egg yolk, cherry tomatoes (120gr or so), one tuna can, one small red onion, salt and pepper to taste, one dab of butter to finish the sauce; Pasta shape used: spaghetti, around 100gr;
1. The base is simple tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil, one small red onion, and tuna, season with salt and pepper, and fry it all on medium fire until the tomatoes release all their water. I’ve added a couple of soup spoons of tomato pulp to give it some extra color, but this is optional! Let it cook on low fire for around 10-15 min until the ingredients are all melded together and a nice, rich tomato sauce has formed!
Start boiling the pasta, in a large pot of salted boiling water, and, set a timer for 2/3 minutes less than the al dente indication time;
Prepare the mixture of pesto and egg yolk, which will replace the “carbonara cream” originally used in Zozzona. Add one egg yolk, 2/3 teaspoons of pesto, the minced garlic, lots of black pepper, and a dab of olive oil and mix;
Once the pasta finishes boiling, take a mug of pasta water and reserve it for later. Mix the spaghetti directly in the tomato and tuna sauce on a low fire, adding splashes of pasta water to adjust consistency;
Then, remove the pasta from the fire and let it cool down slightly. This is very important. If you add the egg and pesto mix while the pasta is hot, you will likely create scrambled eggs, which you do not want;
Add the mixture to the pan, along with a splash of pasta water to clean the bowl and a dab of butter:
Finally, mix it all together and serve!
Here is then our final result:
A very simple, indulgent, creamy tuna pasta, taken to the next level!!!
Share, comment, like and let me know if you’d like to follow along with this series!!