Vitello Tonnato (Tuna Veal)

This is one of my favourite recipes from one of my Nan’s (Nonna Camilla). She used to do the most succulent vitello tonnato that you could ever taste and I hope I can give you some hints to what her secrets were. … And don’t worry: it doesn’t have to be veal!

Ingredients
A piece of lean veal, typical for roasting (use pork or turkey as alternative).
500g tuna in sunflower or olive oil (not in brine)
olive oil
12-15 capers (in salt or fresh preferably, but OK in brine)
mayonnaise (get a 500g jar but use less to start with - see Tips 1)
1 tbls mustard (sweet - I never know which type it is!)
salt and pepper
broth

How to prepare
Prepare the meat by gentle boiling it and then cool it down thoroughly. Slice it very very thin (almost ham-like) and leave it on a dish with a bit of broth on it so that it doesn’t dry. Save the broth from the boiled meet for the sauce.

If using salted capers, make sure you soak them in plenty of cold water and if necessary change the water a couple of times before using.

Drain the oil from the tin of tuna first and then put the tuna in a blender. Add 2-3 tbls of fresh olive oil to start with, add the mayonnaise, add the mustard and 7-8 of  the capers. Blend it all together, adding a little bit of cold broth to make the mixture a bit runny. Salt and pepper to taste.

You need to lay the slices of meat covered with the tuna sauce in a tray (see Tips 2). Decorate with a few extra capers and put it in the fridge for at least a couple of hours. Lovely when served with lettuces or on a bed of green salad tossed first with some olive oil, salt and a drop of red-wine vinegar. Don’t forget a slice or two of a freshly baked baguette (I would not add butter because the lovely tuna sauce taste delicious on its own on the bread

Tips
Tips 1 - Put the tuna in the blender and start adding half of the ingredients. Blend it all together and taste the sauce. Add each ingredient individually bit by bit, rotating the ingredients, so that you can taste and stop when you feel that you have reached a lovely taste and a smooth, a bit runny, consistency. Notice that the meat is a bit bland so the sauce needs to be quite flavoured, although delicate at the same time.

Tip 2 - Dip each slice of meat in the sauce and lay the slices in a tray. Overlap them slightly, but make sure you don’t have more than one layer otherwise you risk to tear your slices of meat apart when serving them. If the sauce is too runny, the meat will be just wet after dipping it in the sauce. If it is too think, you will have lumps of sauce on it. The right consistency is when the sauce covers the slice of meat, but drips off it slowly if you keep holing the slice up.

Tip 3 - Prepare the Vitello Tonnato the night before so that the sauce has time to soak in the meat. It is always best to keep a cup of sauce to the side so that you can add it just before serving. If you have done your dish with plenty of time to spare, remember that room temperature is the best for it, so take it out of the fridge a couple of hours before serving (notice that this is different if you have prepared it at the last minute!).