Skillet Tuna with Eggplant and Zucchini in Puttanesca Sauce

Here is a perfect recipe for a weekend family meal. I always say, let the ingredients shine. Because when you choose quality ingredients, it’s best to let them speak for themselves. These classic puttanesca flavors pair well with more than just spaghetti. Here I try it with tuna, eggplant, and zucchini. Buon Appetito! #LidiasRecipes #LidiasItaly #LidiasKitchen #LidiaBastianich #ItalianFood #LidiasTheArtofPasta #LidiasOliveOil @AccademiadeiCento

Skillet Tuna with Eggplant and Zucchini in Puttanesca Sauce

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in salsa. Today I have for you a classic dish that I will surprise you with because I’ll make a twist in the recipe. So here’s the oil. Let’s start with the onion. And the dish that I’m talking about is a panesca. You all know puta sauce. You make your pasta with the pinesa. So, let’s put some salt here on the onions. Let’s put some pepperonino. And that’s toasting. And let’s get to the vegetables. So, eggplant. And you know how I like to just sort of partially peel it. I got some of the skin left. Okay. And I’m going to cut it in cubes. nice cubes. I’m going to show you the eggplant. You see this long small eggplants are the best to buy. First of all, they should be firm. But you see that what makes an eggplant bitter is the seeds and the aging of the seeds. They mature as they’re in the eggplant and they become brown seeds and those are the bitter ones. So always a small eggplant and your chances of getting less seeds is there. Let’s make some zucchini and about the same the same size. And we have you say gee you have quite a bit of vegetables. Yeah, but you know vegetables kind of lose a lot of their water and uh become smaller in size. So, as you see here, I have all the ingredients of the paneska. Ultimately, I’ll add some tuna. One pot, you got the whole meal, vegetables and proteins and the intensity of the Italian flavor. So, now let me just salt a little bit the vegetables and pepperonino we put in. Let me get a little bit of anchovies now in here. Now this is let’s see how much. One, two, three. You can use anchovies as you like. If you like a lot of anchovies, then you use it. You can omit anchovies if you don’t like them and still make this dish. I’m going to make a little pot here and I’m going to put the anchovies there because I want them slowly to kind of break up a little bit. Okay. Diet olives. Usually that’s good in puta, but you can put green olives, whatever you’d like. Capers, of course, puta with capers. And this is chopped time. Let me just chop it a little more. some Marsano tomatoes. And these tomatoes are fantastic. They’re fantastic because they’re sweet, because they have a thin skin, a lot of pulp, and not too much juice and not too much seeds. So, when you’re making sauce, you have a lot of juice, a lot of acidity. The seeds, they have tannins, and that gives you the bitterness. So the less of all of that that you have, the sweeter your sauce. So samarano is the way to go. I think I’m all ready. I’m going to let this cook for about 15 minutes. And I’m going to add the fish to it. And I have lunch, dinner, whatever you want ready. How great is that? Here’s another email from Carol. It’s got a video. Let’s take a look. My grandma used to create fresh ravioli stuffed with spinach and ricotta. It was delicious. I’d like to try my hand. How do you do so and be seated for the meal? Oh, brava, carols. Well said. Uh, raviolis are simple and they can be made in advance. Follow your grandma’s recipe. Then you spread them out on a sheetpan and put them in the freezer to freeze. Once they’re frozen solid, then you can gather them and put them in little plastic bags and save them that way in the freezer so that when you need them, you pull the whole box out, you have your boiling water, plenty of boiling water because when you introduce something frozen and cold into the water, the temperature goes down. Throw the raviolis in and proceed like grandma. So have fun with those ravioli, Carol, and keep the family tradition going. Putesa. Here we go. Yes. Tuna. Nice tuna. You know, tuna doesn’t require a lot of cooking. Whenever you do fish or meat, there’s a natural sequence that happens with the knife and you just follow that. And that’s your best way of cutting meat or cutting tuna or cutting fish. I have the vegetables are big pieces. So, let me do this as well in fairly large pieces. Okay. And this is a beautiful filt of tuna, but I’m going to cut it in in pieces, chunks. One And here again. So, I’m going to season this before I put it in with some salt, with some olive oil just and the olive oil is going to coat the tuna and sort of protect it a little bit from the acidity. Okay, just like that. Let me add the tuna in. And this has got to go fast. You know, tuna takes very little time to cook. So although you know in Sicily they cook their tuna, they don’t leave it always raw, if you will. If they eat it raw is one thing, but if they cook it, they cook their tuna. So let’s see. Let me cover it all with sauce. The tuna. Let’s put it a little bit of olive oil just here. I can see that I need it. I’m going to raise the temperature because I want a quick cook. While we wait for the tuna to cook, let me chop some parsley. Okay, put that on the side. So, I have it ready. And let’s check this tuna. I think it’s done. [Applause] Close the fire. Lydia’s little plate. get the plates for you guys and I’m going to start taking the Okay, can you see how good, how delicious, how wonderful it looks? Mhm. Okay, this is enough for Lydia for today. Okay, that’s mine. So, and you can plate it or you can bring the whole casserole on the table and put a little bit of parsley. So, let’s taste it. You see it’s a little pink and this is perfect. This is the way I like it. Really good. All the complexity of autines and in this case the mellowess of the vegetables and of course the tomato really kind of binds it all together. Are you hungry yet? Do you want to come over? So I’m inviting you to amar. Come and enjoy. Salute.