What’s cooking today: Store cupboard tuna and caper pasta

It’s thrifty January and time to tighten our belts with one hand while opening a can of something from the pantry with the other. This crafty form of kitchen exercise may seem impossible, but seasoned cooks have uncanny multitasking abilities.

It’s clear that everybody buys cans of tuna at one time or another, as evidenced by the piles of them available in the canned foods sections of all the supermarkets. They’re a kitchen staple, and they fly off the shelves, which means they must be being used for something.

I never seem to run out of capers. This is because only three or four impart a massive amount of flavour to a dish, so that we never need to use a load of them at once. Consequently, anyone who buys capers on occasion will almost invariably have a few of them in a hidden spot somewhere forgotten in the fridge. So, let’s get them out and add a few to this pasta sauce.

The other thing we most probably have leftovers of is pasta. I had half a packet of spaghetti as well as sundry bits of pieces of tagliatelle and farfalle. I chose the spaghetti, but you can use whatever pasta you need to.

The rest is easy. A glug of olive oil (in fact, I added a hint of chilli oil too, as I have some in the cupboard). A tomato, an onion. A few grindings of Grana Padano. And, because they were growing in an old bath in the back garden (it’s a Karoo thing), a few basil leaves for garnish.

A note on brine: we tend to discard the brine in cans. But the brine in a tin of tuna can be used to add flavour to a sauce, and you can even use it in a salad dressing, especially for a salade niçoise.

(Serves 2 generously)

Ingredients

Olive oil

Chilli oil

1 small onion, chopped finely

3 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 large ripe tomato, chopped

6 or 7 capers, chopped

1 x 170 g can of tuna, including the brine

250 g spaghetti (half a standard packet)

½ cup pasta water

Lots of black pepper

Salt

Grana Padano, grated

Fresh basil leaves, torn, for garnish

Method

Heat olive and chilli oil together in a saucepan. Add the onion and garlic and simmer gently, stirring now and then, until softened but not coloured. Add the chopped tomato and simmer for five minutes.

Add tuna and capers and combine the sauce so that the bits of tuna spread throughout. Season with salt and black pepper.

Meanwhile, bring a pot of plenty of water, lightly salted, to a rapid boil and plunge the pasta in all at once. Immediately work it with a wooden spoon so that the pasta strands separate. Leave it to boil until al dente. Drain in a colander, but reserve half a cup of the pasta water for the sauce.

Stir the pasta water into the sauce and simmer for a few minutes more.

Tip the pasta back into the empty pot and add the sauce. Toss through and serve, with grated Grana Padano and a few torn basil leaves. DM

Tony Jackman is Galliova Food Writer 2023, jointly with TGIFood columnist Anna Trapido. Order his book, foodSTUFF, here

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.

This dish is photographed in a bowl by Mervyn Gers Ceramics.