Friday, September 10, 2010

Tuna and leek pasta

A very simple but tasty one, can be done in 1/2 hour. I suggest either a tuna with leek, or bacon with leek with feta cheese. This cheese gives you a light creamy texture without smelly cheese smell and not too rich unlike cream. Buy a fresh good feta.

Ingredients for 4p:
- Either spaghetti or linguine - Cecco is a good Italian brand. The trick is dont buy those shiny smooth ones, buy the floury/powdery ones, they absorb the sauce better. 1 packet usually feeds 5.
- 1 leek, very very finely sliced.
Use only the white parts ie the stem, the dark green leefy bits are too course which I put aside for making stock for future use.
- 1/2 bulb of garlic ie about - or about 6 cloves - finely chopped or sliced.
- Either 500g of can tuna or 8 pieces of bacon
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Fresh parsley, chopped - maybe 3/4 of a Chinese soup bowl full when chopped.
- Good feta cheese about 60g. Chopped or crumbled into crumbly bits and set aside.

Cooking pasta
Boil water onto pot, make sure covers pasta well so that pasta cooks properly and evenly. When boiled, add a pinch of salt into water, and add pasta to cook. (Cooking time, look at instructions on pasta pack. Different ones/thickness etc requires different cooking time. )
When ready, dish out pasta onto a large mixing bowl together with a ladle full of the "hot pasta water". Then, add generously extra virgin olive oil and stir, for flavour and to keep the pasta from sticking together.

Cooking sauce
Sautee chopped garlic in a bit of olive oil till fragrant - not browned nor burnt. Add the leek and sautee till the leek is softened. Season with a pinch of sea salt.
When leek is cooked, while it is all hot, pour onto cooked pasta. Quickly add tuna, chopped parsley, lightly toss all together. Then add crumbled feta, lightly tossed all the ingredients, and serve.You want to toss with the still piping hot leek, to bring out the flavour of the fresh parsley and melt the feta! Which is why I time my cooking pasta such that it is almost done when my leek is done, so that everything is nice and hot when I am about to toss all together.

Bona apettite.:-)

Tip: If you like anchovies (I call it the kwai loh salted fish) - put 1 o 2 anchovies in when sauteeing garlic and combine together with leek for cooking.
- Fry chopped bacon, and add on to pasta, if you prefer bacon to tuna. Bon Appetit!

1 comment:

Nickname unavailable said...

Excellent recipe - I have done this a few times and makes a really nice change. However I reckon it works best with the curly tube pasta (cellentani). Anyway thanks for sharing the recipe.