Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Piedmont, makes it a little differently, using half butter and half olive oil, leaving
out the capers and substituting basil for parsley. That's good, too. This dish requires
good tuna, packed in olive oil. Under no circumstances try this with tuna packed
in water.
6 SERVINGS
In a food processor, puree the tuna with 1 tablespoon olive oil until it is smooth. Scrape
down the sides and continue to process, slowly adding another tablespoon of oil through
the feed tube. The mixture should be almost completely smooth, with a light, foamy tex-
ture and a pale color. Scrape the mixture into a small bowl and stir in the capers and their
liquid and 1 teaspoon of the parsley.
Place a pepper half on each of six small serving plates. Spoon 1 to 2 tablespoons of the
tuna mixture in the middle, then fold over the top. Drizzle lightly with olive oil, sprinkle
with the remaining 1 teaspoon parsley and sprinkle lightly with salt. Serve at room tem-
perature.
HOW TO ROAST A PEPPER
Roasted peppers are utterly unlike raw ones. In the first place, roasting removes the thin
skin of cellulose on the surface. That's the difficult-to-digest part. And roasting gently
cooks the meat, softening it and bringing out hidden dimensions. You can roast a pepper
using any number of methods. Perhaps the simplest is just to throw it on the grill. This has
the advantage of accommodating a large number of peppers at the same time. A regular
21inch kettle grill will easily hold more than a dozen large peppers at once. Just keep turn-
ing them to hit every bit of skin (including the bottoms and the tops) and move them from
place to place so every pepper gets its turn over the hottest parts of the fire. You're looking
