Vitello Tonnato — The Correct Technique

Piedmont — specifically the Langhe and Monferrato areas. The dish appears in 18th century Piedmontese cookery books and reflects the region's access to Ligurian coast seafood (tuna and anchovies) via the salt trade routes.

Vitello tonnato is cold roasted or poached veal served with a smooth, pale sauce of tuna, capers, anchovies, and mayonnaise — a dish that sounds improbable (cold meat with tuna sauce?) and is one of the finest things in Italian cooking. The Piedmontese version (as opposed to later simplified versions) involves slowly poaching the veal in a court-bouillon with the tuna and aromatics, which then forms the base of the sauce. The sauce is silky, pale ivory, and has none of the fishiness one might expect — it is smooth, savoury, and slightly acidic.

• Cold poached veal with tuna sauce — the French have adopted vitello tonnato and serve it as an entrée in the same format; the Piedmontese technique of poaching with the tuna predates the French version → Veau en Sauce Thon French
• The principle of an acidulated, aromatic curing or poaching medium that flavours the meat or fish — vitello tonnato's court-bouillon carries the tuna flavour into the veal during poaching, just as gravlax's salt-dill-sugar cure penetrates the salmon → Gravlax Technique Scandinavian

Cold vitello tonnato has a flavour that defies simple description: the veal is mild and slightly creamy (the fat of the topside); the sauce is rich, savoury, and barely identifiable as tuna — it tastes like a sophisticated, meaty condiment. Capers provide the essential acid counterpoint. The combination of meat and fish is ancient in European cooking and vitello tonnato is its most elegant Italian expression.