Pasta Tonnato

When I saw this on Rome-based food writer Rachel Roddy’s Instagram my excitement for pasta was reignited! You see, we’ve been on lockdown for 50 days. Our local grocery store which delivers to us twice weekly sometimes runs out of onions and the only pesto we can get from him tastes more like mint than basil. Lately, innovation has been the name of the pasta game and so to keep things exciting we’ve made our own pesto from wild garlic. Lemon ‘carbonara’ has performed twice. While we even had pasta on Easter, Laurel made a family favorite, vitello tonnato (if you know, you know!). It’s difficult for many reasons and not likely something we’d whip up again anytime soon. This pasta, inspired by the iconic Piemontese dish, is a creative way to scratch your tonnato itch, while you wait out lockdown to head to your favorite Northern Italian restaurant.

For large bowl family of 4-6:

600 gr pasta - spaghetti or other
1 large onion, diced
generous splash of EVOO
320 grams of quality canned tuna in olive oil, drained
3 oz capers
1 cup of dry white wine
1/2 cup of milk or cream
4 egg yolks zest of 1/4 of a lemon or less 8-10 leaves of finely chopped parsley cracked pepper to finish

In a large, deep sauce pan sauté onions in olive oil. Add capers, let them fry a bit. Drain tuna (no need to rinse) and add to pan with half of the parsley, followed by wine and milk. Cook for 10-15 minutes and mix it, it will be a chunky sauce. NOTE: If you have a hand blender when sauce has cooled a bit blend 1/4 or 1/2 of the sauce (directly in the pan) so you have a little bit more creaminess (like real tonnato sauce). However, if you don’t blend that is OK too. The egg yolks which come later, will bring it together like a carbonara.

Boil a very large pot of water with 1-2 fists full of coarse salt. Cook pasta. Fill a mug with hot pasta water and set aside for later.

Crack egg yolks into a big bowl and stir them around a bit with a fork. This is the final presentation bowl you will bring to the table.

Once spaghetti is al dente (follow time on package), drain and pour pasta into your big bowl with the yolks. The hot pasta may cook them a little bit, wait a few seconds for pasta to cool a bit so they are only slightly cooked. Immediately pour warm tonnato sauce over the pasta. Mix it all together. There will be chunks throughout. Then, pour over 1/2 cup or even more hot pasta water from the mug you saved. This will make it smooth, silky and even more creamy. You shouldn’t need salt or parmesan as there is also salt in the pasta water. Here’s Rachel’s photo which is much better than mine.