Andy’s chilli tuna pasta bake

from The Next Element by Andy Allen (b35)

Apparently according to Andy: “This is a massive hit with my family and was also a hit with my housemates at the MasterChef house.”

It wasn’t a hit for me! Why take a perfectly al-dente pasta, and then bake it for a further 5mins?

Give me either al-dente pasta, or lasagna, but not this!

The sauce was good, and produced enough for 6 serves, but 1/4 of a Thai Chilli between 6 is not enough to use the title “chilli.” So I multiplied the chilli by 8 (ie 2 chillies), and that produced a good chilli flavour.

The other curious thing was that one of the ingredients was “5 thyme sprigs, leaves removed” which seemed odd to discard the leaves and just use the sprigs, so I kept the leaves on.

EVOO, onion, garlic, anchovies
tuna in brine (as my local Metro does not stock tuna in brine, I used Italian style tuna in EVOO), crushed olives, parsley, thyme, chilli
capers
canned tomatoes (I used Mutti whole tomatoes), pasta (again Mutti), lemon juice, and water
thickened cream (I found this an odd ingredient, and would omit it)
penne pasta cooked al-dente (I used Girolomoni spelt penne)
granted parmesan, and baked under the grill for 5 mins