Spaghetti with Olive-Oil-Poached Tuna in Tomato-Fennel Sauce
I used to go to Lupa, Mario Batali’s Roman trattoria on Thompson Street in Manhattan, and eat preserved tuna belly with beans. It was SOOOOO good! The tuna belly—which is a highly underrated ingredient—becomes succulent and delicious when it’s slow-poached, and that’s exactly how I cook it. I use it in a pasta sauce that’s full of tomatoes, fennel, and lots of garlic to create a wonderful tomato-y, perfume-y, olive oil-y dish that just screams of Sicily. One of the great things about tuna belly is that because it’s considered the throwaway part of the fish, it’s really cheap. You have to spend some time cleaning it, but usually if you pay a bit more you can get it already prepped from your fishmonger (much easier!). If you can’t find tuna belly or don’t feel like making it, a good substitute is Sicilian tuna packed in olive oil.
Recipe information
Yield
serves: 4 to 6
Ingredients
for the tuna
for the sauce
Preparation
FOR THE TUNA
Step 1
Add the fennel seeds to a small sauté pan and bring to medium-high heat. (You need toasted fennel seeds for both the tuna and the sauce, so toss 2 tablespoons in the pan now and save a step later!) Toast the fennel seeds, shaking the pan frequently, until they are very aromatic and start to turn a brighter shade of green, 3 to 4 minutes. Remove from the heat and grind the seeds in a spice grinder or crush with a mortar and pestle.
Step 2
Season the tuna belly with salt, red pepper, and half the ground fennel seeds (you’re saving the other half for the sauce).
Step 3
Preheat the oven to 200°F.
Step 4
Put the tuna in a medium ovenproof saucepan and cover with olive oil. Toss in the garlic, bay leaves, and thyme bundle. Cover and put in the oven; cook for 1 hour. Remove and let cool to room temperature. Use immediately or refrigerate in an airtight container.
FOR THE SAUCE AND PASTA
Step 5
Coat a large wide saucepan with olive oil and add the onions and fennel; season with salt and red pepper and bring to medium heat. Cook the veggies until soft and aromatic, 8 to 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another 2 to 3 minutes.
Step 6
Add the tomatoes, the reserved tablespoon of toasted fennel seeds, and 1 cup water to the pan and season with salt. Bring to a boil (BTB) and reduce to a simmer (RTS); simmer for 30 minutes.
Step 7
Bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook for 1 minute less than the instructions on the package suggest. Taste it: It should be toothsome with just a little nugget of hard pasta still in the center—this is al dente.
Step 8
Remove the tuna from the olive oil, break it up, and add it to the sauce.
Step 9
Drain the pasta and add it to the sauce; stir vigorously to combine. Add a drizzle of big fat finishing oil and serve garnished with fennel fronds.
YOU SAY TOMATO, I SAY SAN MARZANO
Step 10
San Marzano tomatoes are, as the name suggests, from San Marzano, Italy, outside of Naples. Sweet and delicious, these canned tomatoes are naturally very low in acid. Sometimes you’ll notice people add a pinch of sugar to tomatoes when making sauce—this is not to sweeten the sauce so much as to offset the acid in the tomatoes. When you’re using San Marzano tomatoes, this isn’t necessary because they’re naturally super-sweet and low in acid. However, for this same reason, they need a lot of salt to bring out their best flavor . . . accept it and move on.
Step 11
San Marzano tomatoes are perfect for sauce, and they work beautifully with my favorite piece of kitchen equipment: the food mill. It’s super-old school but I love using a food mill to purée tomatoes because it lets the seeds slip through, leaving all the big-money stuff up top. Remember, when you put your tomatoes through a food mill, be sure to scrape the pulp off the bottom to get every last bit of tomato-y goodness! This is the stuff that will help thicken the sauce, so you don’t want to leave it behind. Got it?
