13 recipes. Page 1 of 1
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There is no extra cooking oil: garlic and anchovies cook in the olive oil from the tuna can, spiked with chili oil, and that fat already carries the taste of tuna and heat. Capers, black olives and anchovies bring the briny, salty edge of a puttanesca, while the tuna flesh is added late and left in big flakes you can actually bite into.
Rich, salty smoked salmon meets buttery avocado, and capers pop with briny tang in almost every bite. With nothing to cook, the salad comes together fast, and the only thing to hold back is the avocado, sliced at the last moment so it stays green.
Raw beef tenderloin sliced almost paper-thin is laid in a single layer and finished with olive oil, lemon, shaved Parmesan and arugula. Because nothing is cooked, it needs fresh beef suitable for eating raw, served before the surface starts to change color.
Four anchovy fillets melt into the garlic oil over medium-low heat until nothing fish-shaped is left, only a savory base under the tomatoes. Halved black olives and capers follow, and between them and the anchovies the sauce rarely needs added salt. The risk lies in reduction: when the sauce thickens too fast its saltiness turns sharp, and lowering the heat then does more good than simmering longer.
Hand-chopping the raw tenderloin with a knife keeps each tiny piece distinct, so the tartare has a clean, juicy bite rather than the pasty feel of ground meat. Anchovy and capers bring salt and brine, Dijon and Tabasco sharpen the raw beef, and the egg yolk on top binds everything into a silky mixture once stirred in. A short spell in the freezer firms the surface of the meat for neater knife work.
Briny olives, salty capers and anchovies, and red pepper flakes all land in the same tomato sauce, which comes out bold and sharply defined after eight minutes of reduction. The spaghetti leaves the water a minute early and finishes in the sauce pan with reserved pasta water over high heat, where the starch binds everything to the strands and leaves no watery pool behind.
Briny black olives and capers, a splash of red wine and canned tomatoes make a rustic sauce that soaks into bone-in chicken as it braises. The skin is seared deep brown first, and the wine lifts those browned bits off the bottom of the pot, giving the sauce its roasted depth. Leftover sauce goes well with pasta or polenta.
Yuja marmalade joins the lemon and capers of a classic piccata sauce, laying a bittersweet citrus note over the sourness. Chicken breast flattened to 1cm and dusted thinly with flour cooks for 3 minutes a side, enough for a golden crust and a moist middle.
Lemon juice and briny capers cut through a butter pan sauce, giving thin chicken cutlets a bright, sharp finish. The base of that sauce is the browned layer left in the skillet; white wine loosens it so none of that flavor is wasted. The lemon juice is added off the heat, because boiling dulls its fresh aroma. Cold butter swirled in at the very end emulsifies the sauce so it clings to the light flour coating instead of pooling. Mashed potatoes or pasta make good company for the extra sauce.
Cherry tomatoes burst as they cook, and their juice mixes with salty black olives, capers, and thyme into a bright southern French sauce. Skin-on thighs are essential: searing the skin over high heat until deep golden gives both crisp texture and the browned layer in the pan that white wine later dissolves into the sauce. The finished sauce is reduced just enough to coat a spoon thinly and cling to the chicken rather than run off.
Not a drop of water goes into this Neapolitan braise; the octopus releases its own liquid, and together with crushed tomatoes it becomes the sauce. Black olives and capers handle the briny side, while crushed red pepper adds a low, steady heat. That heat and the garlic are drawn into the oil over low heat at the start, and the tomatoes are added before the garlic browns. Reducing the sauce waits until the octopus is truly tender; if it still resists after the long covered simmer, the lid stays on for longer. Done right, the sauce clings to the octopus with no thin liquid pooling on the plate.
Lemon juice and capers give a sharp, salty edge to a butter pan sauce that cuts through the richness of salmon. A light dusting of flour gives the fillet a thin crust, and the browned bits left in the pan dissolve into chicken stock to start the sauce. The fish is only partly cooked in the first sear and goes back into the sauce for the last couple of minutes, so it stays moist instead of drying out.
Chilled, thinly sliced veal disappears under a cold sauce of tuna, capers, and anchovy blended smooth with mayonnaise and lemon. The meat is gently cooked in white wine over a bed of onion, then cooled completely so it slices thin without tearing. That cooking liquid is saved to loosen the sauce until it flows slowly off a spoon. Capers and anchovy bring the salt and acidity that the mild veal lacks, and a few extra capers are scattered on top before it is served cold.