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Vitello tonnato in the old-fashioned way

17/11/2023

Vitello tonnato in the old-fashioned way is a traditional Piedmontese dish, refined and with a unique flavor. Here’s how to prepare it.

Ingredients

  • 800 g of veal eye-round
  • 250 ml of dry white wine
  • 1 onion
  • 1 carrot
  • 1 stalk of celery
  • 1 bay leaf
  • Some black peppercorns
  • Salt
  • As needed meat broth

For the tuna sauce:

  • 3 egg yolks
  • 150 ml of olive oil
  • 200 g of drained canned tuna
  • 30 g of salted capers, desalted
  • The juice of 1 lemon
  • 5 salted anchovy fillets, desalted
  • Salt, if necessary

Preparation

  1. In a suitable pot, place the eye-round of veal, cover it with cold water and add the onion cut into quarters, the carrot, the celery, the bay leaf, and some peppercorns. Bring to a boil and cook for about 1 hour and 30 minutes, adding white wine and meat broth as needed.

  2. Once cooked, let the eye-round cool in its broth to better absorb the flavors.

  3. In the meantime, prepare the tuna sauce. Start by whipping the yolks with the olive oil as if you were preparing mayonnaise, adding the oil in a thin stream and stirring vigorously.

  4. Add the tuna, capers, lemon juice, and anchovies. Blend everything until you get a smooth and homogeneous sauce. If it’s too thick, you can add a little veal cooking broth.

  5. Slice the eye-round into thin slices and arrange them on a serving plate.

  6. Cover the slices of veal with the tuna sauce and garnish with some whole desalted capers.

  7. Leave to rest in the refrigerator for at least a couple of hours before serving so that the flavors can blend well together.

Curiosity

The peculiarity of the “in the old-fashioned way” recipe lies in the use of simple ingredients and in the basic (yet precise) cooking procedure of the veal, which is then topped with a sauce that has tuna as the main player, enriched by the creamy texture due to the mayonnaise-like preparation. Although vitello tonnato may seem like an unusual combination for those who are not accustomed to Piedmontese cuisine, it is a harmonious encounter of flavors appreciated worldwide.