🇮🇹 ItalyCatalog recipe
Spaghetti tangled with flaked tuna, briny olives and capers in a quick tomato sauce — a can-opener dinner that tastes like the coast.
For 4 servings.
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Warm the olive oil, plus a splash of the reserved tuna oil, in a wide skillet. Add the garlic and chili flake and cook gently until fragrant, about 1 minute.
Stir in the crushed tomato and simmer until slightly thickened, about 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, boil the spaghetti in salted water until just shy of al dente, about 9 minutes, reserving a cup of pasta water.
Flake the tuna into the sauce with the olives and capers, and warm through gently for 2 minutes without letting it boil hard.
💡 Fold the tuna in at the very end so it stays in soft flakes instead of turning to paste.
Toss the drained spaghetti through the sauce with a splash of pasta water, scatter with parsley, and serve.
Spaghetti al tonno belongs to Italy's coastal pantry cooking, built from tinned tuna the way inland kitchens reach for beans or lentils. It spread nationwide as canned tuna became a fixture of Italian cupboards after the Second World War, prized for turning almost nothing into dinner in the time it takes pasta to boil.
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