Cooking With My Brother the Family Chef

My brother is cooking dinner tonight. Something light he said.

Start with a couple of cans of water packed tuna, drained. [I don't think you can buy Italian canned tuna -- oh wait, turns out you can -- but any brand will do.]

Add the zest of one and a half regular, not huge, lemons and the juice of said lemons. Or you can add more if you want to. We're not rigid here.

Add three tablespoons of capers. After carefully measuring out nine teaspoons because a tablespoon is too big to fit through the top of the caper jar, just dump in the whole bottle.

Add artichoke hearts to taste -- three cans tonight, drained over the sink.

Add some extra virgin olive oil to taste [about 1/4 cup per can of tuna].

Have a long discussion about not using EVOO to cook, even though Rachael Ray does.

Add just one clove of garlic -- instead of lots of cloves of garlic [According to my bro, "I don't want to spend the rest of the night in the bathroom]

Add Kosher salt to taste.

Chop in about a 1/4 cup Italian flat leaf parsley, right at the last minute.

Stir all those ingredients in a circle in a bowl. Around and around and around. Add some pasta, you know, something small and compact like fusilli, gemilli, penne rigate or rotini, anything but linguini. Dump on a platter and serve.

That's the entree. I think it's the Italian version of tuna noodle casserole.

Tonight's vegetable for this light meal is one giant artichoke per person except for the children who are getting mac and cheese with broccoli.

I thought we would be dipping the giant artichoke leaves in garlic butter or olive oil, but, no, my bro is making bagnacauda, which is almost as hard to pronounce as it is to spell. By the way, the spelling here was a group effort and may not have been successful. A quick check of Google could solve the problem, but why? I call it "that Italian stuff we dip the leaves in." Basically it's olive oil, butter and anchovies heated until they emulsify, but make sure you don't burn the butter.

I'm glad we're eating light tonight, since we had a big breakfast and a substantial lunch already today. I'd hate to worry about the extra calories.