Tonno

As a child, I spent summers with my family by the sea, in the far south of Puglia. Some evenings, my parents would take us to a pizzeria. I always chose the same pizza: tomato, onion, tuna, capers and basil.

I only ate it there, during the holidays. That combination of ingredients had come to mean something very specific to me: it was the taste of my summers by the sea.

The memory has stayed with me over the years, retaining a vividness that still surprises me. Tasting tuna, onion and basil together is enough to take me back to those evenings.

My TONNO sauce grew out of that pizza topping. In taking it from pizza to pasta, I wanted to preserve the relationship between the flavours: the sweetness of the onion, the tomato carrying the flavour of the tuna, the salty note of the capers and the aroma of basil. Familiar ingredients that take on a particular meaning for me when they come together.

As a child, I thought that pizza tasted wonderful. Today, I know that its flavour also held the holidays, my parents and the happiness of those evenings. When I make this sauce, that remains my point of reference.