I've eaten this dish many times, mostly in the Little Italy sections of NYC
and Cleveland. However, I've never made it before.

I found a nice veal roast last week at AJ's and popped it in the freezer.
Since I was spending most of the workday at home today, I rummaged for
recipes yesterday that I had never made. I began marinating the meat last
night. This recipe is from the magazine, La Cucina Italiana, and I think
it's as good as any I've had in restaurants.

We had a small serving tonight just to taste, but will let it spend another
day in the refrigerator for the flavors to develop further.

Vitello Tonnato

2½ pounds lean veal roast, preferably top round, tied
1 (750-ml) bottle dry white wine
1 carrot, chopped
1 celery stalk, chopped
6 sage leaves
3 whole cloves
2 bay leaves
Salt
1½ (7-ounce) cans tuna in olive oil
3 large eggs, hard boiled
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
5 anchovy filets
3 tablespoons capers, soaked and rinsed, plus extra for garnish
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
3 dill pickles, thinly sliced

Place veal into a large bowl. Add wine, carrot, celery, sage, cloves and
bay leaves. Cover and marinate, chilled, for 12 to 24 hours.

Transfer veal to a large, heavy pot. Strain marinating liquid into pot;
discard solids. Add enough water to just cover veal, then remove meat from
pot and bring liquid to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, return meat to pot,
lightly salt and simmer for 2 hours, adding more water if necessary to keep
veal just covered. Remove pot from heat and let veal cool in the stock.

Meanwhile, drain tuna and remove yolks from eggs; discard whites. In a food
processor or blender, puree tuna, oil, egg yolks, anchovies, capers, lemon
juice, vinegar and 2 tablespoons of the stock from the veal until smooth;
add more stock, little by little, until sauce is the consistency of heavy
cream.

Remove strings from veal, thinly slice meat and arrange on a platter. Cover
veal with tuna sauce, then cover platter with plastic wrap and chill for at
least 2 hours or up to 3 days before serving. Bring to room temperature,
garnish with pickles and capers, and serve.


--
Wayne Boatwright
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Custard: A detestable substance produced by a malevolent
conspiracy of the hen, the cow, and the cook. Ambrose Bierce

One and a half cans of tuna?

Hopefully there's a cat around to take care of the other 1/2.

Steve

On Sat 08 Aug 2009 11:12:49a, Steve Pope told us...

> One and a half cans of tuna?
>
> Hopefully there's a cat around to take care of the other 1/2.
>
> Steve
>

We have 5 cats. :-) However, that half can ended up in my sandwich for
lunch.

--
Wayne Boatwright
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Most of the food allergies die under garlic and onion. Martin H.
Fischer