Recipe for a truly delicious pasta with tuna
Vanja van der Leeden, known for various cookbooks such as Italopop and Indostok, as well as the Recipe of the Year 2024, knows how to make pasta with tuna truly delicious. And make some extra tuna cream right away, because it is delicious with salsa tonnata. For example, with a piece of meat or fish, on a sandwich or as a salad dressing.
Vanja: “I have mixed feelings about pasta with tuna. The association with Whiskas comes to mind, and it reminds me of birthday picnics with bone-dry, overcooked pasta salad with chunks of tuna. So you have to be pretty convincing to win me over to pasta with tuna. Until I tasted a jar of Sicilian orange and tuna cream at Bottega di Chiara in Amsterdam, a classic Sicilian combination. Absolutely delicious stuff that tastes like Sicilian salsa tonnata. When it was gone, I recreated something similar myself.”
How to make Vanja’s pasta with tuna
- Bring a pan of water to the boil and salt it. Add the pasta and cook until al dente.
- Meanwhile, put the cans of tuna with the oil in the measuring jug of the immersion blender. Grate the orange zest over the jug, then add the juice and olive oil. Blend until smooth and creamy.
- Halve the cherry tomatoes.
- Heat a frying pan and add another three tablespoons of olive oil. Add the cherry tomatoes along with the chilli flakes and sear the tomatoes briefly so that their juices run out. Fry briefly so they retain their shape.
- Meanwhile, finely chop the pistachios and mint leaves.
- Use a slotted spoon to transfer the cooked pasta to the pan with the cherry tomatoes. Add enough tuna cream to coat the pasta nicely without drowning it.
- Add a little more pasta cooking water to create a silky sauce. Stir well and divide immediately among four plates.
- Sprinkle with pistachios and mint and eat immediately.
Title: Italopop
Author: Vanja van der Leeden
Price: €39,99
Publisher: Nijgh & van Ditmar
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