When I was very little, my aunt married an Italian. Now, we live in the Balkans, and during the 90's, there weren't many interesting things to eat around, due to sanctions and general poverty. One summer, Antonio came to visit us, and he brought with him all the delicious secrets of Italian cooking. It was the first time I tried mozzarella or pesto! We were all beyond ourselves, and my mother and aunts quickly learned some of his recipes. One of them I'll share with you today - it's simple, fast and delicious. It has been a staple in our home for years, and I enjoy making it anytime, anywhere. Here's what we're cooking:
What you need is some garlic (of course), pesto, canned tuna, and tomato sauce. The carrot is there accidentally. Pesto is made from basil leaves, Parmesan cheese and various spices, so it brings enough flavor, but some more dried basil and oregano can't hurt. There's also nutmeg, salt&pepper, and curiously enough, sugar.
First, chop the garlic into tiny bit pieces and fry it until it starts smelling heavenly. Add the tuna and fry for 5 more minutes. Stir in the tomato sauce, add a teaspoon of salt and sugar. Supposedly, sugar does something good for the taste of tomatoes - I don't know what, something about the acidity. In any case, it works :) Leave it on the stove, stirring up a bit, until it starts boiling ever so slightly.
Add in the spices - be generous, a teaspoon of everything. Mix in again, and leave on the turned off stove to simmer. It needs to stay warm while you make the pasta.
Now, making pasta is pretty straight-forward business. Add salt to the water, and half a teaspoon of olive oil, if you want your pasta to be nice and slippery and not stick together after cooking. Besides, olive oil never hurt nobody. Never ever break the pasta in half - it will all come down after a minute or two. Cook for however many minutes it says on the box. I like my pasta al dente, which means I take it out one minute before its cooked. It retains some of its crispiness that way.
Grind some Parmesan. Now, you will know good Parmesan by the way it smells - ideally, it should stink like smelly feet, that's the best kind :)
When everything is cooked, strained and salted, you are ready to serve! Here we can see two very generous portions of red tuna pasta - I don't recommend eating this much unless you want to fall into a coma, but we here enjoy our food-induced hallucination siestas :)
This simple sauce is a gift that keeps on giving - you can use it later for rice or with some bread and cheese, or if you want to make some more pasta. It's so easy yet so, so tasty. And the way it smells! You definitely must try.
Fantastic!
Hey! Thanks mate :)
looks delicious, one of my favourite dishes, thanks for sharing, upvoted and following :)
Yay! :)) Tnx, follow back :D
Nice write up and the food looks delicious.
-- Antonio (not your uncle)
hey antonio-not-my-uncle, thanks a lot :)))
Fantastic food post. My family loves spaghetti
hey @gringalicious, thanks for following! :)