Comments on: An Inspired Idea: Tonnato Puttanesca

By: Sophie

Sophie — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:37:54 +0000

What a delicious way to eat fish! The ingredients sound like they complement each other deliciously . I would love to include your recipe in our pre-loaded Demy, the first and only digital recipe reader. Please email sophiekiblogger@gmail.com if you’re interested.

To find out more about the Demy, you can visit this site:
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Thanks!

By: Hannah Mae

Hannah Mae — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 08:35:43 +0000

“The modern, newly-ascetic Cookie Monster” – I know! What on earth? What’s a kid got to aspire to these days if she can no longer equate autonomy with endless piles of junk food? (One day a few years ago, I sort of accidentally ate ice cream, french fries and a waffle for dinner, and I made sure to tell all my SAT-prep students about it that night. Stay in school, kids, and someday all this could be yours!)

And incidentally, while I’m thinking about it, mad props from a vegetarian/sometimes-vegan for always mentioning vegetarian possibilities, even in the recipes that are mainly meat – sometimes I feel like the only two food-blog/cookbook options are “omnivorous and can’t even think otherwise,” and “veg(etari)an and can’t shut up about it.” You do such a thoughtful job of avoiding either side – I really appreciate that you give vegetarian substitutes if there are reasonable ones, and that if you say a meat ingredient is essential, it’s because it really is. It’s a huge help, especially since most of your recipes come from cuisines that I don’t know enough about to alter successfully myself. So thanks!

By: Barbara

Barbara — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 17:52:48 +0000

You know, NH–the thought occurred to me while I was committing the crime against tuna of cooking it well done for a customer Saturday night. I grumbled to myself that if a person wants to eat fresh tuna well-done, they should just open a gd can, and be done with, when the idea flashed across my mind that for a poor college students who ate mostly vegetarian, but who had a few cans of tuna in the pantry, adding tuna to the puttanesca and putting it over pasta would be a pretty good thing.

Please note that the Italians use canned tuna in pasta sauces a lot, so there is precedence, and yes, “real chefs” tend to put their noses in the air when it comes to things in cans, when they do so, they are usually being elitist food snobs. Some canned foods are just fine, dammit, or they wouldn’t be used in really great home cooking like the Italians do.

So, here is what I say–try it. And come back here and let me know how it was, because I think it might well be a very tasty way to get a shot of protein and Omega 3 fatty acids in your diet.

I might try it out myself, but only for myself–Zak isn’t into canned tuna much, and I think that Morganna would turn her nose up at it, too. But I think it is worth trying, certainly.

Oh, but one thing–I would still use the anchovy paste in the sauce–tuna doesn’t pack the same jolt of umami that anchovy paste does. Beside, you can get it in little tubes like toothpaste that stay good forever and ever in your fridge, and a little dab will help out so many recipes that taste just a little flat. Besides, anchovies have lots of Omega 3′s in them, too.

By: Neohippie

Neohippie — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 17:11:41 +0000

Does this mean I can add canned tuna to my puttanesca sauce?

Ok, I’m kidding… um, sort of. I’ve always been a big puttanesca fan because it’s such a fancy name for a sauce that you can make entirely out of pantry stuff. Great for a busy college student like me (or a whore, I guess) to a have decent meal which isn’t much harder to prepare than boxed mac and cheese.

(It’s just that canned tuna is another one of those pantry staples along with pasta and canned tomatoes. Now you’ve got me thinking thoughts that real chefs would give me a thrashing for.)