One of my favorite sauces is puttanesca, the pungent Italian sauce traditionally made with onions, garlic, anchovies, capers, olives, chiles and tomato.
Puttanesca is, of course, primarily a pasta sauce, usually a foil for spaghetti or linguini , but it can also work as a sauce for fish or as a garnish for rice or grains.
I like to tweak puttanesca just a little bit to bring out its affinity for seafood.
At Argyll, we always have a stock of olive-oil poached tuna tails, which is our version of the oil-packed tuna you can find in Italian groceries. I decided to try to make a version of Puttanesca with tuna instead of anchovies. My first version of the dish was delicious, but I felt that it needed something to bring out the tuna. I thought of saffron, always a wonderful accent to a tomato-based seafood sauce. The saffron added a nice fragrance and depth of flavor, and a squeeze of lemon juice and a pinch of fennel rounded it out.
At Argyll , we serve this puttanesca as a sauce for squid ink tagliatelle, but it just as delicious as a garnish for rice or dried spaghetti.
Tuna Puttanesca Sauce
Makes about 3 cups of sauce.
Ingredients
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, minced
6 cloves garlic, sliced
2 cups tomato puree
4 tablespoons chopped green olives
1 ½ cups canned tuna, preferably oil-packed , drained
2 tablespoons capers
pinch chile flakes
2 teaspoon ground fennel seed
pinch saffron
juice of ½ lemon
Directions
Heat the olive oil in a saucepan and cook the onions until tender and golden, about 10 minutes.
Add the garlic and sweat 3 minutes. Add the tomato puree, olives, tuna, capers and chile flakes, and simmer about 10 minutes. Add fennel, saffron and lemon, and cool. Adjust seasoning to taste.
