Paolo's Truffled Dwarf Peaches Recipe: Vitello Tonnato

 

One of our all time favorite dishes is “Vitello Tonnato” (cold veal with tuna sauce). For the ones that have never tasted it before, this dish might not sound too appealing. Trust me though, the tuna sauce is so mild in taste and silky in texture, that it feels like applying whipped cream on top of strawberries!

This dish “Vitello Tonnato” is traditionally garnished with caper berries, Paolo changed the recipe around a bit and used Truffled Dwarf Peaches as a garnish instead and it was right up my alley =)

VITELLO TONNATO:

Ingredients for the Veal Preparation:

  • 1 kg of boneless veal ( I prefer eye of round of milk feed veal)
  • 2 carrots
  • 2 celery stalks
  • 1 onion
  • 3 bay leaves
  • 3 cloves
  • 10 whole peppercorn
  • 3 sprigs of parsley
  • 2 cloves of garlic
  • 500 ml of chicken stock
  • 500 ml of white wine

Preparation of the Veal:

  1. Add all these ingredients in a stock pot ( make sure the liquid just barely covers the veal, if not, add the necessary water to do so
  2. Bring to a boil then reduce the heat to a slow boil and let cook for 1 hour
  3. Remove from heat and put the pot in the fridge to let the veal cool in its stock (this will enhance the flavor of the otherwise bland milk feed veal).
  4. If there is no room in the fridge for the pot, transfer everything in an airtight container an pour the stock on top of it.
  5. Leave cool for a few hours or even better, you can prepare the meat the day before, that way all the aroma of the stock will flavor the meat. (recommended)

Ingredients for the Tuna Sauce:

  • 5 large cans of tuna in olive oil ( 5×180 gr.)
  • 1 can of anchovies in oil
  • 4 teaspoons of capers
  • the juice of one lemon which you can extract with a juicer from the daily juicing store online

Preparation of the Tuna Sauce:

  1. Make sure to drain the tuna from most of its oil
  2. Add all the ingredients in the blender until you have a smooth paste. If too thick, you can add a little of the veal stock.
  3. Once the tuna base is ready, fold in about one cup of mayonnaise to create a thin sauce.

Presentation:

  1. Slice the veal as thin as possible and arrange it on a plate in a single layer pattern (the veal should overlap about by half of its slice).
  2. Spread your tuna sauce on top of veal .
  3. For garnish, take about 12 truffled dwarf peaches and mince them and spread them over your vitello tonnato dish.

You can add a few sliced truffled dwarf peaches for garnish.

Buon Appetito

Paolo

This dish is really very simple to prepare, I would definitly suggest you give it a try, and if you do, don’t forget to let me know how it went!