There’s this “rule” out there that I’m sure you’ve heard. No cheese with fish, or no cheese with seafood. Somehow, it’s out in the ether that it’s never done in “traditional cuisines”, which in the minds of those speaking is probably centered around the northern Mediterranean – Spanish, French, Italian, Greek. I know Italian restaurants that will refuse to even put cheese on the table on request if you’re having a seafood pasta.
The thing is, that the rule doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. A gratinéed fish topped with parmesan or other grated cheese, or cod served in a classic Mornay sauce; any of a dozen Greek seafood dishes featuring a sauce made from tomatoes and feta cheese; a Portuguese bacalhau aos quatro queijos, or cod in four cheese sauce; and plenty more. Here in Argentina I hear it all the time, yet trout smothered in blue cheese sauce is on many a classic bodegón menu (on the other hand, that’s a dish that shouldn’t exist). Tuna melts. Lobster thermidor. I could find dozens more examples.
But let’s stick to our pasta theme, and Italy. I noted in the previous post that many opine that cheese has no place on a pasta alla puttanesca simply because there are anchovies melted into the sauce. But from the same region around Naples, today we have the classic pasta alla caprese con tonno. Now, we’ve all seen abominable versions of a pasta caprese, often served up as some sort of cold macaroni salad studded with cubes of cheap, yellow mozzarella, some basil leaves, and some chopped tomatoes. But it’s based on a traditional dish, and one that it’s common to add tonno, tuna, to. Mozzarella and tuna? It works.
We’re using spaghettoni again, my local stand-in for the classic Italian thicker vermicelli. For our sauce, we have anchovies, canned tuna (oil packed is classic, though water packed will work), garlic, black olives, tomato passata, black pepper, basil, and fresh mozzarella (I only used half of that polpetta for this quantity – two portions.
This is another one that goes fast, so drop your pasta into its boiling water the way we’ve talked about in this series. In a skillet over medium heat, put a little olive oil, the garlic (lightly crushed but left whole), the passata, and a generous amount of black pepper. Get bubbling away until the garlic is starting to turn golden.
Add the basil leaves and let them flavor the mixture for a minute.
Remove the garlic cloves before they get brown and start to make the sauce bitter. Add the tuna, chopped anchovies, and sliced olives, and let those cook in for another minute.
Add a ladle of the pasta water and get it all emulsifying nicely.
When your spaghettoni is about two minutes short of finished, move it to the skillet, add another ladle of pasta water and start stirring and tossing.
It should cook down nicely, the pasta finishing cooking and absorbing the liquid.
Add the diced mozzarella, off the heat! Stir and toss until it melts into the pasta.
And, serve. Make it pretty with a little basil decorating it.
Eat your fish and cheese together and stop worrying about the rules.
Where to next? There are so many pastas to keep me going for, well, ever. Stay in Rome and Naples for a bit? Move on to another region? Thoughts? A pasta you always wanted to know how to get right?
