CSA zero: radicchio tuna pasta
Here’s a recipe inspired by the fact that I had some radicchio in my refrigerator. Compelling stuff, I know! I realized a little while ago that my style of pasta recipe is basically “a salad but with noodles in it.” I think this yields a tasty and easy pasta, but if you like your noodles saucy you will not be crazy about this one.
Originally the concept for this newsletter was that I was sending out bad pictures of the food that I made. I stopped doing that, mostly because it’s kind of annoying to get pictures off of my phone and onto my computer, because I don’t have a mac, and, well, whatever. It’s not important. They weren’t good pictures, I am not a food photographer, which is, for this recipe, part of the point.
I think that radicchio is one of the vegetables that suffers the most from every food blogger being a food photographer, and every recipe writer being a stylist. Raddichio is beautiful raw. It is exquisite raw. It also, to me, tastes better once it has been a bit burnt. Unfortunately, burnt raddicho looks absolutely terrible. It turns this unappealing grey-brown-off purple that is not compelling material for a photograph. I don’t think you can make it look nice, and so I don’t see a ton of recipes that use it this way. I think that there are a number of foods that have gotten short shrift in the last few years because what is most important when posting a recipe is that it looks really good. It needs to have like, a cheese pull, or different colors, or stuff on top of it, it has to look fresh or cozy or some other adjective that makes you feel virtuous in some way.
Old cookbooks only had a few occasional line art illustrations, but now you get a full page of glossy full color for almost every recipe. I can’t deny that there are a lot of benefits to this: it is helpful sometimes to see the final version, and having recipes laid out with more space on the page makes cookbooks a lot easier to use than the old Fanny Farmer was, but, to be a contrarian, I wonder if they’re making us cook more attractive versions of food? I’m not talking about missfits market or some nonsense, I mean like, food that is all kinda one color, kinda mid looking. You know, home cooking. Regular food that just looks… sort of whatever.
Fortunately, I am too lazy to take pictures of my food most of the time (I have decided now that this is actually virtuous of me, I am brave for this and not lazy), and I hate trying to make normal food look beautiful. I appreciate a nice looking pastry or whatever, but I honestly do not wish to make one. It’s not that I think that beautifully staged pictures of food are dishonest, in fact my favorite instagram that isn’t just pictures of wrestlers is a lady who goes around the city and posts pictures of desserts that she buys, but I’m not making those. I love to buy a beautiful food, but I don’t want to make a geometric pie crust or whatever. If I’m making a pie crust I want it to be reasonably tasty, and reasonably easy, and I feel like any beautification of food is best left to experts.
Anyway, that’s a long way of saying that this is a pretty unappetizing looking dinner. It’s tasty, and it’s easy, and it uses a large head of radiccio. I also used a can of tuna for protein, because I thought it would go nicely with radicchio (and it did), but you could equally use walnuts, and then it’s basically my default pasta recipe (kale, walnuts, and panko over twisty pasta.)
Radicchio tuna pasta
Half a thing of pasta (8 oz if you’re… measuring pasta….)
Head of radicchio (mine was large, yours might be less large)
Two fat cloves of garlic (about a tablespoon, minced)
4 oz tin of tuna in olive oil (drain the oil though)
1 tsp or so gochugaru
zest of one lemon
salt, pepper, etc.
Core and wash the radicchio, getting it as dry as possible. Cut into, you know, pieces. Bite size. Whatever that means to you. Chop garlic. Put pasta water on to boil.
Heat a frying pan (not nonstick) at maximum heat until too hot, smoking. Add the raddichio in batches, burning each batch. Once you’ve gotten bits charred, move into a bowl. This took me three or four times in the pan.
Let pan cool down. Boil pasta, cook until it’s as done as you like. Save some pasta water. While pasta is cooking, add a tablespoon or so of olive oil to your pan, add garlic, cook slowly. Add gochugaru, lemon zest, salt, pepper. Toss the raddichio back in the pan, mix until it’s coated in oil and seasoning. Add your tuna.
Mix pasta with raddichio tuna mix, add parmersean if you want, mixing in pasta water so that it melts evenly.