Meat, anchovies, tuna, capers and many other easy-to-find ingredients for an alternative and lighter version of the famous Piedmontese dish
What for many is a typical dish of French cuisine, is actually a true symbol of tradition Piedmontese culinary. Born in 1700, the vitello tonnato it can also be prepared in many ways. This second summer based on roasted meat, you can indeed cook too without mayonnaise. Such as? But of course.
Poor origins
Unlike what you can imagine the name, tuna, at least at first, had nothing to do with this all-Italian recipe. tonne, in fact, derives from the French Tanné, which means "tanned" and initially meant a poor dish, prepared exclusively with the remains of veal, who came boiled long up to become soft. Only with the advancing of the decades the recipe of vitello tonnato has become more and more similar to the current one, with mayonnaise and tuna sauce arrived in the twentieth century.
The recipe of Artusi
To do without mayonnaise, of course, was also the greatest Italian gastronomist of all time: Pellegrino Artusi. His recipe, reported in the memorable book The science of cooking and the art of eating well, prescribed "milk veal, in the thigh or in the culaccio", seasoned with anchovies and then boiled "with two clove nails, a bay leaf, celery, carrot and parsley". Nothing more. The meat was also cut into thin slices and kept "infused a day or two" in a sauce based on anchovies, tuna in oil, lemon, oil and capers. Not even a shadow of mayonnaise.
Preparation
To prepare the vitello tonnato without mayonnaise, we start by putting the meat in a large pot (800 g of magatello, walker or rod), a sprig of rosemary, two segments ofgarlic, one onion, cloves, one carrot, a leaf oflaurel and two tablespoons of oil. A pinch of is added salt and then pour two glasses of wine White. It is cooked for about an hour and a half (it is the degree of softness of the meat that dictates the time) and, while it is left to cool, it prepares the tuna sauce. Just chop roughly 200 grams of tuna in oil and eight anchovy fillets under salt. Then put it all in a mixer, together with the capers, to obtain a soft and homogeneous cream. When the meat it will be well cooled, cut to about 3 mm thick slices and place it on a plate, spreading the tuna sauce over it. All that remains is to garnish with some capers and serve at the table. Nothing could be simpler.
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