Recipe: Tunaghetti, When You Can't Find Shoulder Of Lamb For St. Patrick's Day

A funny thing happened on the way to giving you my recipe for St. Patrick’s Day. Irish stew seemed an easy choice — really good, easy to make, servings a-plenty, so you can feed a crowd, or coast for a few days. But grocery aisles weren’t exactly producing the main ingredient a-plenty. I checked a few stores and then resorted to the telephone. You need shoulder of lamb for an authentic stew — it’s well-exercised and therefore flavorful. Were you wondering why filet mignon is so uninspiring? It’s just along for the ride, shuns all work, pays the price of being a bland bore for that. Stews need a good, long, liquid cook. Shoulder of lamb is tenderized by the long cook; leg of lamb would dry out, it’s better roasted. Anyway, to go back to the story, nary a shoulder was to be found anywhere, at first. I did eventually find a store that had gotten some in for St. Patrick’s, but they were bone-in shoulders, six pounds or so at $11 a pound, and bone-in shoulders are usually about half bone. So no.

Okay, I thought, I’ll give my recipe but I’ll cheat and use a stock photograph. Imagine my surprise when I looked up Irish stew online. Basically, an authentic Irish stew, when brought to the table, looks pretty much like paste in a pot. Delicious, yes, but beautiful, it’s not. The glamour shots online, though, were gussied up with all manner of things — huge glistening chunks of carrot, unidentified green things. The lists of ingredients were pretty amazing too:  beef stock in a lamb stew, herbs no old-time Irish cook ever heard of, tapioca (!) in one.

An interesting side effect of this, though, was that when I really started examining the meat cases, I realized that many economical ingredients that used to be there in plentiful supply, aren’t. Big packs of chicken backs for stock, and so forth. Also, you can’t believe the prices, this inflation thing is apparently real. And so here we are in a world where ordering out instead of cooking is a common behavior, or we’re buying things that are quick to cook which, by the way, are generally more expensive. We’ve gotten away from the cucina povera, the “poor kitchen,” where recipes evolved in tough times. Good food made from indigenous, inexpensive ingredients. You want to have something in your back pocket for the skint days.

On top of all of the above, it snowed last week, and more a few days later. Freezing cold and icy on the roads, where crazy people drive while constantly checking their phones for the latest bulletins about nothing at all. I’m thinking it’s a good idea to stay home and rely on pantry stock kept handy for days like those, so on St. Patrick’s Day I'll make one of my family’s favorites, Pasta with Tuna, also known as Tunaghetti. And by the way, the Romans made their way to Ireland some time after the Lost Tribe did, and Ireland is an island surrounded by waters filled with fish we will pretend are tuna, so I don’t want to hear anything about Where’s the Stew.

Tunaghetti

I make a large pot of this and freeze the excess. The amounts given in parentheses will feed four, the larger amounts will yield ten or so generous servings. Do not drown the pasta in sauce. Pasta dishes should be Pasta With Some Sauce, just enough to coat the strands, but not so much that the sauce puddles in the bowl.

3 medium onions, chopped (1)
2 cloves garlic, pressed (1)
6 TB. neutral olive oil.  I use Berio. (4 TB.)
5  fifteen ounce cans of tomato sauce. I like Hunt’s. (1 can)
3 tsps. dried basil  (1 tsp.)
About 1 tsp. freshly ground pepper (a few grinds)
4 five-ounce cans of tuna in olive oil. Do not drain the oil. Put tuna and its oil into a bowl and break it up —  a pastry blender is good for this. I use Cento or Progresso tuna. (1 can; 1 and 1/2 would be better — tuna cans used to hold 7 ounces, but they’re smaller now, sigh.)
Pasta. I like linguine. However much you need for the number of people at your table. (The smaller recipe could dress up to a pound of pasta, depends how hungry people are.)
Parsley (flat-leafed Italian), chopped
Parmesan cheese. Some people say never use cheese with fish. This is not true at all: people in Italy routinely put parmesan on fish dishes, with the occasional exception of delicate, brothy ones.
Chili flakes or hot pepper oil on the table, for those who like it hot. I do.

A note about pasta: We are so lucky to have excellent pasta, made only with durum wheat and extruded through bronze dies, made in Italy. Several good brands, labeled as such, are available. This delicious pasta makes you realize how important it is that the pasta not play second fiddle to the sauce. Buy only the pasta described, and cook until just done, don’t undercook it in the name of al dente. You’ll never go back.

Saute the onion in the oil until it is tender. Push the onions to the side (I leave a circle in the center) and put in a small puddle of additional oil. Add the garlic and let it bubble a minute in the oil; it should still look white. Add the basil and stir it and the garlic into the onions. Add the tomato sauce and bring to a boil. Lower the heat, add the pepper, and simmer until everything is well blended, about 10 minutes or so. Add the tuna and its oil, simmer until it’s heated through. Cook and drain the pasta, keeping a bit of pasta water to the side. Put some pasta into each heated bowl, add sauce and mix. Serve with parsley and cheese (and chili flakes or spicy oil if desired). The extra water should be used only to loosen things, if necessary — sometimes pasta that is too well drained is sludgy.

Is it good? Why yes it is, very good indeed.  And you can keep some green in your billfold to remind you of St. Patrick, and of the blessing of having food on your table. Cheers!