Strozzapreti Pasta with Imported Italian Tuna Recipe

Italian Tuna Pasta Recipe

Strozzapreti pasta, with its rustic charm and perfect texture, is the ideal base for a simple yet flavorful dish. This recipe pairs imported Italian tuna, a premium ingredient that brings richness and depth to the table.

The tender, oil-packed tuna complements the slight chewiness of the pasta, while a few carefully selected ingredients create a light but satisfying sauce. This dish quickly prepares and showcases the natural beauty of Italian ingredients, making it a perfect choice for a weeknight dinner or a casual gathering.

The key to this recipe lies in using high-quality tuna, which elevates the flavor profile, ensuring every bite bursts with savory goodness. With just a handful of pantry staples—olive oil, garlic, capers, and a touch of lemon juice—this dish is a simple exercise, letting the flavors shine without overwhelming the palate.

Whether you’re an experienced cook or a beginner, this Strozzapreti with Imported Italian Tuna will impress you. With every bite, it will transport you to the heart of Italy. Enjoy this dish as a reminder that sometimes, the best meals come from the most straightforward ingredients.

When You Need a Quick and Easy Meal

Last night, I needed to whip up a quick dinner for the family. My oldest daughter had a tennis clinic, so we started late.

We briefly considered dining out, but both girls had too much homework and insisted on staying in for takeout sushi. Of course, these two are experts at finding any excuse to order sushi, so I said no. So, what should we make instead?

I always stock our pantry with interesting, versatile ingredients for situations like this—when I want to create a quick meal that still tastes special. I like to call these dishes "quick and easy," and on our newly redesigned site, I’ll have a category dedicated to them.

Lately, I've been discovering some fantastic pantry staples on Amazon, and with our Prime membership, we enjoy the benefit of free two-day shipping on all items fulfilled by Amazon. Several of the ingredients for this meal were ordered online and added to our pantry stash.

Yes, you often need to order in bulk, but usually, that means just six items per case. When you’re dealing with long shelf-life products or things you use regularly, it’s a total win—kind of like shopping at Costco, but online.

4/28/12 Updade - My friend Chef Ricco DeLuca suggested adding some fresh cracked pepper, fresh Italian parsley, and a sprinkle of extra virgin olive oil. I am adding these ingredients to this recipe. Ricco is one of the best cooks I know, so if he says this recipe will be better with these ingredients, I trust it will.

Strozzapreti Pasta

Strozzapreti Pasta

I recently ordered some new and exciting types of pasta, including strozzapreti, which I was particularly eager to experiment with. Since I’ve been following a gluten-free diet for a while, I decided to make two versions of the dish: one for my wife and kids and one for myself.

The girls have already told me they have no issue with rice flour pasta but were especially curious about the unique-looking strozzapreti.

Strozzapreti pasta, which translates to "priest choker" in Italian, has an oddly dramatic name. While I’m not sure how it earned this unfortunate moniker, according to Wikipedia, there are a few interesting legends surrounding it.

One suggests that gluttonous priests were so enamored with the savory pasta that they ate too quickly, sometimes choking on it and even dying. Another story claims that wives, who would make the pasta for priests as partial payment for land rents in Romagna, were so angered by the priests' greed that they hoped the priests would choke as they devoured their food.

Neither legend sounds particularly appetizing, but I can assure you, my girls loved the pasta, went back for seconds, and didn’t choke on it.

The pasta is made by hand-twisting strips of dough (though commercial manufacturers likely use machines for efficiency), cut into roughly 10 cm lengths. It’s irregular in shape, which gives it a rustic, homemade feel. You can find strozzapreti pasta on Amazon.

Italian Jarred Tuna

Jarred Italian Tuna

You want to try and find imported Italian tuna for a dish like this. There is no comparison to the everyday canned tuna we buy for making tuna fish sandwiches.

Yes, it is more expensive than most tuna, but the meat comes from the finest cuts of yellowfin tuna, and with a $7.00 jar, you can feed a family of four with leftovers for school lunches the next day.

I purchased the Tonnino Tuna Ventresca in Olive Oil at Amazon. According to Tonnino's, this is their "créme de la créme of their product line.

Imagine an extremely smooth, soft strip of tuna hand filleted from a small section of its underbelly and hand packed in its natural form." It is really that good!

Artichoke Hearts

So we have pasta, tuna and now some artichoke hearts. When I first had this dish in Rome on my honeymoon at a friend's home, the hearts of the artichoke were fresh and fantastic.

Since this is a pantry pasta dish, I pulled out a giant jar of artichoke hearts packed in water that I think I purchased at Costco. I usually have some smaller cans of artichoke hearts in the pantry, but we must have run out.

You can also buy a case of these at Amazon at an excellent price. Check out these artichoke hearts.

I suggest you don't buy the marinated hearts because the marinade doesn't taste that good, and you cannot get the flavor off the artichokes no matter how often you rinse them off. You can stick with the ones packed in water or brine and then add the flavors you want, and by all means, if you have the time, you can use fresh artichokes.

Kalamata Olives

Yes, you can purchase pitted Kalamata Olives at Amazon. I did once, and they were terrific, but it was a 5-pound bag of them.

That's a lot of olives! You can purchase them in small sizes, but olives are easy to find these days in most supermarkets and they're a great item to have in your refrigerator at all times for all sorts of recipes and salads.

Pine Nuts

Sometimes called Pignoli nuts, these babies are expensive, but they are so good when toasted and added to a dish like this. My wife suggested we add them to this pasta recipe, which was a great idea.

Pine nuts are the seeds found in the pine cones of certain species of pine trees. It's a lot of work to gather and process pine nuts; maybe that's why they are getting so expensive.

I purchased mine at Costco, but I did check, and you can purchase them on Amazon and have them shipped to you. Check out Amazon pine nuts.

That's it. Besides some hot peppercorn flakes to give it another layer of flavor, we are ready to go. Usually I would add the peppercorn flakes to the sauce, but then my kids wouldn't eat it, so I leave them out for whoever wants to add them to their dish to give it some fire.

Cheese or No Cheese

I posted a similar recipe back in 2007 that suggested finishing with grated Parmesan cheese as optional. Since then, I have learned from my good friend Chef Ricco DeLuca that combining cheese with fish sauces is not a good idea, and he went on to say, "his father would roll over in his grave if he ever combined the two."

I don't want any mass grave rolling, so this time, I'm going to say - No optional cheese.

Wheat Flour Strozzapreti Pasta and/or Gluten Free Penne Pasta with Tuna, Artichoke Hearts & Kalama Olives

It is a good idea to keep a well-stocked pantry so that on nights when you don't know what to cook, you can come up with something special and, just as importantly, easy!

📖 Recipe

Print Recipe

Strozzapreti Pasta with Imported Italian Tuna Recipe

Prep Time10 minutes mins

Cook Time20 minutes mins

Total Time30 minutes mins

Course: Pasta

Cuisine: Italian

Servings: 4 servings

Ingredients

• ¼ cup pine nuts toasted
• 1 pound strozzapreti pasta or penne
• 1 tablespoon olive oil extra virgin
• 12 pitted kalamata olives roughly chopped
• 1 can artichoke hearts packed in water but rinsed, drained and quartered
• 6.7 ounces imported Italian tuna packed in olive oil 1 jar
• 1 tablespoon fresh parsley chopped
• 1 teaspoon black peppercorns freshly cracked
• olive oil extra virgin, to drizzle on top
• hot peppercorns flakes to taste

Instructions

• Start by bringing a large pot of salted water to boil. While it's coming to a boil, prep all your ingredients. Once the water comes to a boil, add your pasta and start making the tuna sauce.
• I'm not sure if there is a particular order I should be following but I heated up a saucepan, added the olive oil and then started with the chopped olives. Let them cook for two or three minutes then add the artichoke hearts. The hearts will break up some while you heat them up especially if you are stirring often but this is fine.
• Add the jar of tuna WITH the olive oil it was packed in. Stir to combine ingredients and to break up the tuna chunks. Cook until all the ingredients are heated through.
• When the pasta is done (be sure to read my post on How to Cook Pasta), drain and reserve. I do not suggest you combine the sauce and the pasta but rather plate individually by spooning some pasta into each plate and then topping with sauce.

  Depending on how much tuna sauce you like, a pound of pasta may be too much or it may be just right. Besides one kid may like Kalamata olives and another might not.
• Sprinkle some toasted pine nuts, parsley, cracked peppercorns and olive oil on top and serve with the hot pepper flakes on the side so everyone can add to taste.

Notes

This is a quick and easy recipe that you can alter to your own likes and with what you have in your own pantry. It's a great example of a basic dish that can be modified in any number of ways. Go make it your own.

Some of My Favorite Pasta Recipes