Sorry for yet another beige-scale dish, but this lemony pasta with the fancy jarred tuna is so phenom. What I wasn’t expecting is the combination of fennel seeds and crumbled bay leaves with the lemon zest and garlic and red pepper. Why hello fennel!
I followed the Judy Rogers method as transcribed by Nicholas Day above, though I turned the heat off entirely under my little pan once the garlic and lemon zest had sizzled for just a couple minutes, letting the oil infuse more gently, then turned it back on low when adding the later ingredients, when there’s about 3-4 minutes left on the pasta. And for making just a single serving for a quick working-at-home lunch, these were my amounts: 2 tablespoons olive oil, probably like a teaspoon sliced lemon zest (from one swipe down a Meyer lemon), quarter of a Turkish bay leaf, ¼ teaspoon red chili flakes, ¼ teaspoon fennel seeds (lightly crushed), 10 grinds of black pepper, 1 thinly sliced garlic clove, 1 teaspoon chopped capers, 1 teaspoon minced preserved lemon, no pine nuts (who are we kidding), and about a quarter of a jar of Tonnino’s olive oil packed tuna my beloved. An optional trick is you can sub one tablespoon of the olive oil with olive oil poured off the tuna jar, then just replace it with a tablespoon of new olive oil back in to the jar, maintaining your supply of rich briny tuna oil for your next serving of pasta.
