tuna polpette with fresh tomato and pepper sauce

Doing this job, I’ve found that a lot of people are a bit funny about canned tuna. In fact there are all sorts of foods that people have issues with, usually because of the way they tried something as a child. I love it when I get someone to love something they’d avoided since childhood, so now tuna is on my list of the ingredient that needs a bit of PR. After all, it is such a handy thing to have in for a fast lunch or dinner and a less expensive source of protein. I taught this tuna polpette recipe in class recently and had a few tuna conversions so wanted to share it with you too.

This is such a fast store cupboard dinner and makes a good change from meatballs in the summer. It can easily be halved or doubled if you want to feed a crowd. The uncooked balls (polpette sounds so much better) can be frozen. By the way, if you have a better English name than tuna balls please let me know, until then I will use the Italian polpette.

A word on breadcrumbs

Make your own these by blitzing ends of loaves, half eaten pitta bread or any leftover bread in the food processor and use them, or freeze them in a bag. They can be used from frozen so it is worth building up a stash of them. I keep ends of bread in the freezer until I have enough, then have a very satisfying food processor session once they’re defrosted. I then re-freeze the crumbs until I need them. It is fine to have a mixture of white, grainy and brown breads.