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Vitel tonnè... that's piedmont dialect... 😂 I'm sorry Eva, I adore your recepies, but this time that salsa tonnata looks too pale and yellow and smooth, so I deffinetly agree with Harper that it must taste weird... but it's not suppose too, it's suppose to taste amazing. You should both check out sometimes the northern Italy like in fall/winter time, becouse I think that their couisine is at it's best in colder seasons...
as a student in the 80s, I once went to the fridge, starving for anything to eat, and the only things in the fridge was champagne and half jar of caviar. Which sounds fancy, but does not make a good dinner.
I Agree Vitello Tonnato is a wonderful dish ! I ordered it in a restaurant when I was younger, feeling adventurous because it sounded weird, and I loved it so much !
Italian food in the 80s: Penne alla vodka Farfalle al salmone Tortellini panna, piselli e prosciutto (cream, peas and ham) filetto al pepe verde (Pepper steak) Uova alla diavola (Deviled egg) And for desert: Zabaione (Egg cream) Salame al cioccolato (Chocolate salami)
I had never heard of salame al cioccolato until I took my son to a friend's birthday party. The boy's Mum asked me "vuoi una fetta di salame" and I said of course, yes, I was shocked when she gave me a slab of chocolate salame! I really thought she was offering me a nice slice of soppressa or similar!
I love Italian food and drink, but Prosecco tastes like potpourri mixed with slightly rancid orange peel and perfume. I never understood attraction. It is more like a fragrance than something you would drink. Cava and Champagne can be quite sharp and not even the same flavour profile as Prosecco so it is definitely unique. I personally prefer a good white wine to sparkling, though red is more my usual.
@tarantellalarouge7632 I think it is a national effort to protect what is there. The issue is the history sometimes contradicts these standards and what is traditional is called into question.
@@paulthomas8262 maybe, but I think that the phrase quoted above is quite ridiculous or at least "bad faith", I would never make such comments about Italian products. When something is worth it, you don't need to belittle others to shine, this is only the expression of an inferiority complex ! (excuse my English, but it is not my maternal language).
@@paulthomas8262Most of Prosecco you find around is low quality and that case what you say is rght. As an Italian I agree that in average Prosecco is overrated especially the low quality you normally find around. Champagne is a totally a different league, you may compare it with Franciacorta wines but certainly not Prosecco.
Oh we went through that phase in Italy too, more in the 1970s than in the 50s. One of my two grandmas could cook basically everything (Eva kinda reminds me of her besides age, I guess) and she did like some of those dishes and she kept making them until the 2000s: one was cow tongue in aspic, and the other one an entire casserole filled with ham slices rolled around a cilinder of pheasant pâté floating in jelly. I have never been a huge fan of either of them 😆
@@flaviopons142 Yep, one of my Grandmothers still did similar when I was little in the late 70s and early 80s. She was excellent at both cooking and baking so I never understood why. I guess the influence of friends and magazines :)
"Vitel tonné" is not a French expression, it's Piedmontese dialect. It's delicious and still rather common nowadays, although it's rarely prepared at home, it's generally bought in supermarkets or delicatessen/charcuterie stores. On the other hand, risotto with strawberry and champagne has not survived, I remember only one restaurant at which I've been that still serves it in Milan. Pesce finto? I've discovered it today :D
French POV : this is not "champagne" and should not be called like this ! a good white wine is better than a bad champagne ...and we don't eat veal with tuna : in this video it seems that the "French" inspiration is not French at all !🤣no grudge .....
Als Italiener muss ich sagen, Vitello Tonnato ist immer ein Klassiker unsere italienische Küche gewesen. Und es ist ein Klassiker in allen italienischen Restaurants auf der ganzen Welt. Grüße aus Niedersachsen !
Harper, you can't imagine the significance of Vitello Tonnato for northern Italian families. This classic dish, a staple of Sunday lunches and celebrations, is a true trip down memory lane.
You're quite wrong about Vitello Tonnato being just an 80s fad. It's a classic dish, and one I've encountered on menus at very good Italian restaurants all over Europe, the US, the UK and Australia. And, so far as i can tell, it's never gone out of fashion. I've even seen it featured as a starter at some of the best non-Italian restaurants. Done really well, it is sublime.
Came here to say this… vitello tonnato at a high end restaurant… I’d order it every time…. Sometimes lightly seared veal pink in the centre… sometimes crispy capers… and it’s inspired many similar dishes. I love it!
Was looking for this and I completely agree. Although I only learned about it after 2010. But then I started to see more of it, even in snack bars and on bread here in the Netherlands. I don't know why I never 'discovered' it earlier, maybe because most Italian food was always all about pizza and pasta.
I think vitello tonnato is one of the best dishes in the world. Here in Cuneo Province you can find it in every single restaurant (also in pizzerie). Is a dish from the Piemonte tradition ❤
You know you are Slav when you hear suggestions to replace the mayonnaise and you reflexively ask yourself 'can I dig deep enough to still respect this person?'.
@@JonaxII Nice advice cuz, going to have myself a chocolate salad now. 🤣 For real though, had no butter and used mayonnaise to butter each side of a chocolate toasted sandwich and it was still good.
Oh, finally you landed on vitello tonnato, which was my lunch today. It's not a 1980's fancy, it's actually a very common Piedmontese dish. I do it basically following the recipe you can find in Artusi's book, so no mayonnaise. I learned it from my Granny, who was born in the 1920's and learned it from her mom's employer, who was an Italian jewish lady whose niece was saved by a guy that was later considered a Righteous among the Nations. What I am sorprised not to see is the famous pennette vodka and smoked salmon, which is why I literally LMAO when I see Americans raving about vodka sauces for pasta and/or pizza. By the way, my vitello tonnato is simmered with the tuna and capers and anchovies, and with vinegar too. @Harper, the way the dish is presented is due to the fact that the original version (which I made, Eva made the fake 1980's version of vitello in salsa tonnata) require the meat to marinade in the cooking fond overnight, and then again for a few hours with the sauce. The slight acidity of the sauce softens the meat and makes it superjuicy.
@@kalina5076 it's my granny's recipe and it has granny measurements. Anyhow, 750-800 grams of meat, one large and one medium can of tuna (aka around 300 grams of tuna, drained weight), one or two carrots, one small onion, one stick of celery, a handful of parsley, 3 anchovies, one garlic clove, half a glass of white wine vinegar, half of dry white wine, peppercorns and cloves in a muslin bag, olive oil (I use tuna in olive oil and use the oil from the can plus some). Tie a bunch with the parsley and celery, put everything in a pot, simmer for an hour and a half, more or less (turn the meat a few times), let rest overnight. Next morning, retrieve the meat, eliminate any silverskin, cut thinly. Take out the spices and aromatic bunch (celery and parsley), squeeze out, throw away. Fish out the carrots and leave aside. Use a stick blender to cream the remaining ingredients. If the sauce is too thick, add a splash of boiling water and blend, if it's too loose simmer for a few minutes. Place the meat in a serving dish, top with the sauce, decorate with the carrots. If you want you can add capers or caper fruits in vinegar, olives, or slices of gherkins on top. For a creamier sauce, stir in a tablespoon or two of mayo.
Not purposely meaning to go off topic, I heard Eva mention different types of pecorino. Yesterday I received a small round of Pecorino Calabrese. Wow! The first thing I noticed was, it's not overly salty.then it was creamy inside, not rock hard like the Locatelli. The taste was great. Thank you Eva for the tip.
If you want to taste real mayo, only the Japanese will do. Just a warning, you will never be able to return to the bland cheap oil only American swill.
I just wrote the same thing above... I started to make it with Alex recipe and it was so much better than anything from the store or even homemade with an immersive blender like I did before. Thick and really good.
Yeah that "mayo" used in the video isn't really mayonnaise. Where I live it's just sold as "Real" and they are not allowed to put mayonnaise on the label. I'm surprised Eva didn't make her own since it is so easy to do with an immersion blender nowadays.
@@tuberNunyaI love japanese mayonnaise, but I'd never call it more "real" than a traditional homemade French mayonnaise. It's so simple too, just start with egg yolks and a dollop of real French mustard (not American mustard with the weird sweet taste and no pungency) and a big pinch of salt, then start with a few drops of any not-too-flavorful oil (not olive), and whisk. Then SLOWLY add a little bit more oil, increasing how much you add each time. It's rich, incredibly flavorful, and makes anything taste decadent.
Vitello tonnato (or tonnè) is a traditional recipe from the Piedmont region. The version of the ‘80 has a mayonnaise based sauce. The sauce is usually prepared with a base of homemade mayonnaise to which tuna, anchovies and capers are added.
VITELLO TONNATO IS GREAT! Go to Turin and try it, it is the best place where to eat in Italy! They make sandwiches with vitello tonnato and I actually ate one recently in Rome! Also gourmet chefs are revisiting it going beyond the 80's prejudice, with som pretty good results actually!
Hi Eva, vitello tonnato is not the only worthy dish from Piemonte : tallarin con tartufo bianco (the only truffle worth eating), l’albese, il brasato, fritto misto alla piemontese, panna cotta, etc, etc. In Piedmont we have a very varied and complex cuisine, you should come to visit😊
My mother was from France. My father from Italy. She always Frenchified all the Italian recipes from my Dad's family, some with great success, some as epic fails. Food was always interesting in our home, never boring. But I couldn't wait to visit my Nona' s kitchen on Sundays for the real Italian stuff. 😅
You need to consider that the modern French cuisine was influenced by the Italian one starting from the renaissance. The original Frankish cuisine was more similar to the British one.
yeah essentially if you wanna make the most quintessential 80's italian dish, you need mayo and pickles and canned tuna. I know that doesn't sound very appetizing and you'd be right in thinking that. We used to go crazy for pasta salads of any kind, especially if it involved pickles and mayo. Cocktail sauce, shrimp and champagne/aperol/campari are also very much an 80s combo. Most dishes from the 80s died out very quickly, one dish that survived the 80s though was Penne alla Vodka. It's not that popular here anymore but it became popular outside of Italy.
Farfalle al Salmone were also big in the 80's ( and heavy as it used Panna Vegetale ) but so delicious, especially if you added a splash of Cognac to the salmon and afterwards some tomato puree to turn the sauce pink.
Vitello tonnato is very popular in Veneto. It is NOT an 80’s fad. Not sure where you get the idea. Maybe it’s not popular in Calabria? You are supposed to cover it in the sauce, and let it sit for a while not eat it right away. I have never seen the pesce finto, but I would guess in Italy you would use home made mayo which has lemon juice in it.
The vitel toné I learned from my grandmother (Torinese) and have been making for years has a very different recipe for the sauce. It's basically a flavored mayonnaise.... 2 Eggs (1 + 1 yolk) 1 Tbsp Mustard 1 Oz Lemon Juice 2 tsps. Salt 1 ½ Cup Avocado Oil (traditionally olive oil, but I prefer avocado) 1 Can Tuna 1 Can Anchovies 1 Tbsp Capers Blend eggs, mustard, lemon juice, and salt until smooth Drizzle in oil slowly until emulsified Add tuna, anchovies, and capers. Blend until smooth Gradually add some of the stock to get a pourable consistency. (think pancake batter) And lastly, none of this gentle drizzle over the meat. Overlap the veal slices ~50% then cover all the meat with the sauce. It's the star of the show. Side note: There's nothing French about the dish. The name "vitel toné" is Piemontese.
I had Vitello Tonnato for the first time in Turin recently. Absolutely exceptional. You could tell the restaurant and done everything they could to elevate each element.
I think you covered this on another video but I was missing 80’s Italy’s major contribution to US “Italian” food. On my first trip to Rome in 1986, I was served what has become very popular in the US: Rigatoni Ala Vodka. It was amazing and the Trattoria made it with a unique variation. It included all the items associated with vodka not just pepper. It also included red caviar since vodka, caviar, onions and pepper on toast was a common combination. I thought it was red pepper flakes, at first, but realized that while there was red pepper flake there was something else which was the caviar. I make it like that to this day and my guests always enjoy it.
Not rigatoni but New York City has a pretty strong claim to penne alla vodka from the late 1960s by Armando Mei at his restaurant Fontana di Trevi in midtown Manhattan. I don't know that the history of it will be definitively sorted, but it does seem most likely to come down to New York or Bologna.
The way I used to make strawberry risotto: macerate the cut strawberries in balsamic vinegar, and stir them in at the end, just before butter and cheese. Always a big hit! I once had a risotto on Lipari that was scallop and cantaloupe. Very memorable.
Vitello tonnato weird? It's amazing but I have noticed people from the US, UK etc do not even know it. In Germany, Austria etc where veal is more common, it is a standard at Italian restaurants. These days chefs create "different versions" where you get seared or tataki tuna slices etc. you could make it also with other meat (poultry, pork) or vegan nowadays. I stay with the original of course done right
Non sono d'accordo. Il vitello tonnato è tradizionale del Piemonte, lo mangiavamo negli anni 60, non è cibo di moda anni 80 . Si mangia da sempre in Piemonte e anche ora è, secondo me, un piatto eccellente. Non sono piemontese ma marchigiana, in famiglia adoriamo il "vitel tonné" .
Ho detto che è presente nel libro di Artusi (quindi ricetta presente in Italia dalla fine dell’ ‘800) ho specificato che in Piemonte ancora ne vanno pazzi, tutto ciò non basta? 🤔
@@PastaGrammarno perché è completamente sbagliato dire che "in Piemonte ne vanno pazzi". È un piatto molto diffuso in gran parte dell'Italia. Forse sarebbe stato più corretto dire che in Calabria non si usa molto.
Vitellio tonnato is so amazing. When I lived in Germany, our local Italian restaurant, owned and run by a couple from Sorrento, talked me into trying it. But I believe they used raw veal, and the hot sauce cooked it. So very good.
0:48. Ma io non parlerei di “imbarazzo”. Ci sono diversi canali italiani di cucina che negli ultimi tempi riscoprono un po’ la famosa cucina degli anni 80, guardando con nostalgia a quegli anni e non con “imbarazzo”.
Vitel Tonnè (it's not a not french name but piedmont dialect) is a masterpiece of traditional piedmont cusine. It's not a 80's weird receipe at all and in north of Italy, especially Piedmont and Lombardy, is a very common dish you can find in every restaurant menu during spring/summer.
Se il vitello tonnato é un piatto anni 80 allora lo é anche la carbonara. Il vitello tonnato si trova in carta nei ristoranti più tradizionali piemontesi oggi.
Infatti lo è. Anzi, nella sua forma attuale è un piatto anni '90. Negli anni '80 nella carbonara si metteva ancora la panna, e prima ancora si metteva di tutto (fughi, carciofi...). La carbonara attuale è stata ottenuta per sottrazione.
@@neutronalchemist3241 No non lo é. La carbonara é degli anni 50. Che poi abbia subito delle evoluzioni, certo. Ma quello che volevo dire é che il vitello tonnato non é come le penne alla vodka anni 80. É un piatto tradizionale in Piemonte
Anche in tante altre regioni d'Italia. Piccola nota di colore: giusto l'altro ieri, al concerto dei Duran Duran, Simon Le Bon saluta il pubblico raccontando di come abbia appena mangiato un ottimo vitello tonnato. Ora, non credo che abbiano fatto appositamente per i Duran Duran un menù anni 8 😂. E il concerto era a Lucca, abbastanza lontano dal Piemonte. 😂
Well, I disagree with friends that basically think "only what my mother cooked for me as a child is good". Besides italian cuisine (about 15 different cuisines actually), also spanish, german, argentinian, indian, chinese cuisine are good (just to name a few).
@@psalux18963I meant for Christmas. The most common thing is to eat bbq only some people eat that specific food then. We ate all different kind of cuisine the year round. 😊
I checked. This is the translation from the italian wikipedia. "The first mentions of the dish in its original composition date back to the eighteenth century. At the beginning the recipe did not include tuna; desiring the adjective "tonnato" meant cooked in the manner of tuna. In the 1836 French recipe book Dictionnaire de Cuisine et d'économie ménagère by M. Burnet, the "Way to give veal the appearance of marinated tuna" (Maniére de donner au veau l'apparence du thon marineé) is illustrated." "Tuna appears in the second half of the 19th century, when Dubini published three variations of vitello tonnato in The cuisine of weak stomachs (1862), of which only one involves the use of tuna and anchovies. In 1891 Pellegrino Artusi proposed the recipe again in Science in the kitchen and the art of eating well. The modern recipe, which involves the use of tuna-flavoured mayonnaise, only began to spread in 1950 following the release of The Silver Spoon. Anna Gosetti della Salda, in The Italian regional recipes of 1967, classifies it as a Lombard recipe which includes "abundant mayonnaise".
@@julieblair7472 Yes but unfortunately she is wrong (after 3/4 years of posts it may happen to be wrong once!). When i was a kid, well before the 80s, I had a lot of vitello tonnato. My mom would prepare it for us at home and you could find it in every restaurant in Piemonte (and I would choose it as antipasto every time). Maybe in the south of Italy it became popular in the 80s but in north Italy it was popular well before that period (and btw the sauce should be ticker than that). Also the choice of proposed music... we have many absolute masterpieces from the 80s and they come up with Mammamia and Al Bano... songs for kids and old people. I like Eva and Harper and I always watch their posts, but this is the first of their videos that made me cringe a bit :)
@@julieblair7472 If you like synth you might know a certain Giorgio Moroder for example... career between the 70s and the 80s. Myself I'm more with "cantautori" kind of music and the album "Dalla" by Lucio Dalla (which I would put against any album of any international artist) is dated 1980. Or for example Fabrizio De Andre composed two beautiful albums in the 80s and Mina was still very active... just to say that it was a very good decade for Italian music. But they probably wanted to make fun of the period, so the chose "mammamaria" and the other song that I have already forgotten!
In the 80s, my Sicilian aunt (living in Milano) came to visit us in Montreal and made what I guess was carbonara... The sauce came from powder in an envelope she brought from Italy and she added pancetta (ultra small pieces barely cooked). It’s the last time we let her cook. Here zia, have pasta con porcini instead!
After this episode, I would like to see an episode from you on Futurist cuisine, which might have been the first cultural rebellion against mainstream Italian cuisine? Such as Sauce Marinetti, compared to what the Futurists were actually writing.
Vitello Tonnato is still decently popular, to this day in restaurant, in supermarkets and at home (as in home cooking). Pasta with Vodka, afaik, was a staple of 80's. I used to eat in Senigallia, in the Marche region, until early 00's.
In Argentina they do something they call Vittel Tone, that is very similar to the second dish you made🤔 and they usually eat it in the holidays One more proof of the Italian influience in Argentinian food
Vitello tonnato needs the veal to be cut very thin, not as presented here... And you need it to be covered with the sauce (and to let the meat season in it for an hour or two in the fridge, so it becomes tender and juicy).
Mate, vitello tonnato is one of the finest dishes umanity ever created. It’s full of contrasts, velvetness, acidity, sweetness. Totally soury and umami, it’s litterally perfect. Go to the doctor and let him check your tastebuds cause u might have a problem.
We’re actually missing two hugely popular dishes in the 80s, staple of most households at parties and meetings, “Tortellini Panna e Prosciutto” (Ham and Cream tortellini) and “Filetto al Pepe Verde” (Green Pepper sirloin, which also implied A LOT of cream).
BTW in Poland we make a sweet kind of risotto that is very good, you just boil your rice and then when in season you add the strawberries and sweetened cream, or apples quickly coocked in a pan with sugar and cinnamon adding the cream at the end. We like sweet, fruit based, dinners, like sweet pierogi filled with fruits or crepes filled with white sweetened fresh cottage chees and/or fruits. When I was a child I often ate at my grandma fruits soups served chilled with homemade pasta, or at school they were serving us milk soup with pasta or rice inside and it was our sweeet breakfast. Something that no one in Italy can imagine but yes, we used pasta and rice to very very strange sweet dishes. Even if in Italy too there is a dessert made of tagliatalle, in Emilia, "torta di tagliatelle", It's a classic recipe where the thin pasta is used as the filling of a classic sweet pie.
Same! We had a neighbor as a kid who was Italian, and she served it at a dinner party as one of the appetizers in the buffet. We thought it was pretty fancy when we were kids, but yeah - I laughed out loud when I saw it!
I just watched a video of both of you from 3 years ago after YT fed it to me somehow. I loved it. So clicked your chan and here you both are! Still together and doing food videos! Im so happy. I knew when I saw that video she is a keeper. You two are wonderful together. Reminds me of me and my late wife. Im gonna sub and get to watching a backlog of what I expect to be fun food videos with two fun people.
Well, my Italian eighties food was the same as the sixties and seventies - Grandmas cooking. Spaghetti and meatballs, chicken and olives, fried cauliflower, eggplant parmigiana, almond ice - I was spoiled. My mom is a great cook too.
vitello tonnato is one of the most amazing dishes!! Everyone absolutely loves it from children to elders in Piemonte. However I have never eaten the sauce with broth and boiled eggs, everyone does it with mayonnaise nowadays. Please give it another go!!!! Try out the recipe from giallozafferano, the version made by Scannable (a traditional restaurant in Turin), use high quality tuna and make the mayonnaise at home (the store bought one is tasteless especially the American pale ones), just follow that recipe (they roast their veal and use mayonnaise as I said). Another more bougie version if from Diego Rossi, owner of a popular restaurant in Milano, you can find the recipe online. I've never heard anyone say vitello tonnato is not delicious, your reactions were shocking to me. Fatemi sapere se provate a rifarlo!
I'm actually a fan of some of the party food from the 7ties and 8ties we had here in Germany. Like the "Käse-Igel" = cheese groundhog. Where you put a tookpick through a grape and a cube of cheese and stick it on to an orange, so it would look a bit like a groundhog. Or deviled eggs: you can do so many variantions of that! Or those dips you would put on top of a Ritz Cracker? It hasn't been seen for such a long while, now. A cap of a tomato, put on top of half a hard boiled egg. With some tiny dots of mayo on the tomato. To make it look like a fly agaric? Just for the nostalgic touch of it (I'm 63, by now.)
I lived in Texas during the 80’s. The gourmet food of the time was to combine French techniques with Southwestern ingredients. Much of it was delicious. I remember Julia Child tasting a SW Caesar salad and telling the famous Texas chef who made it, “this is a delicious salad buy it certainly NOT a Caesar salad.”
This is off topic in relation to this (last week's) video, but I just have to thank you for teaching me what you have about food. I came home from work, tired, and stopped in at the grocery store and eyed the monochrome-grey prepared foods from which I had to choose. And out of nowhere, I recalled a video you did a few years ago where Eva taught us how to make a quick pasta sauce. And so I bought some cherry tomatoes and pasta. I came home, heated very gently the tomatoes (split), some garlic, added some basil from the garden, some hot peppers I had in the fridge. Oh, and boiled the pasta while all of this was going on. When done, I grated some parmesan and added a bit more fresh basil. The whole thing took 30 minutes. I just finished eating what felt like the meal of kings. I am so happy. What a great way to end what was a very difficult week. Thank you so much.
OMG! 80's flashback! I had vitello tonnato the year I lived in Italy (high school exchange program). I haven't thought about that dish in decades! Watching this brought it all back. From an 80s US teenager's perspective who had never had it before, it tasted like under-seasoned, cold, tough meat with a dollop of white sauce that smelled like tuna. It was an unusual taste and texture combination. Not bad, not great, just unremarkable. Now I want to make it for nostalgia!
I am italian and I can swear that apart from the Vitello Tonnato I have never heard the other two mentioned anywhere, anywhen. And I was in my twenties during the eighties, so I would definitely remember...
Veal is difficult to get/super expensive where I live. So I make maiale tonnato (less medium rare, of course). Also: not sure if this is super traditional, but leaving it to marinate overnight makes it even better.
i was 23 in 1980 and glad to say i never ate any of these dishes in the Italian community in London England during the 80s! hope there are none of them in your new cookbook 😊😊😊😊😊
My husband loves strawberry risotto (we make it with white wine though). People expect a rice pudding, but really its sort of like a lemony risotto. I do like surprising people's taste buds with it.
One of my favorites Italian dishes from the 80’s was fresh pappardelle in a cream sauce with smoked salmon and capers. I had a favorite restaurant (Greenwich Village, NYC) where I ate it, but it was available all over the city. I still make it at home, but I haven’t seen it on a menu since the mid-90’s.
Vitello Tonnato! That’s nostalgia food for me! My mom used to make her version of this recipe for our family probably from the 70’s till the 80’s. The tuna anchovy sauce is so great. In my mom;s rendition, the deal was stuffed with ground meat which was probably veal mixed with beef and fresh herbs including parsley. I fondly recall swiping some for late night snacks out of the fridge. Years later I sought this particular recipe from other family members and was able to reproduce it faithfully. Thanks for showing it.
Many people are unaware that Prosecco was not widely popular in the 1980s and was mostly enjoyed locally in the Veneto region. Its popularity only began to surge in the late 1990s and 2000s.
My family recipe for tuna salad is really simple and with no mayo; it's canned tuna (I prefer a mix of tuna in oil and jellied tuna, but you can use any kind of canned tuna), fairly fine chopped leek, and then (instead of mayo) add sour cream/creme fraiche (we use Norwegian "rømme" which is basically a sour cream, slightly different fat percentage, 35% for the traditional kind and 10-15% for the lighter variant) which is much more fresh than the mayo variant. Season with pepper. I'm pretty sure our family recipe is just a standard Norwegian tuna salad that replaces the mayo with rømme and it's simplified to a lot; most recipes I find for tuna salad in Norwegian has both mayo and rømme and often also mustard, lemon, celery, onion, etc. But I find that without mayo the sourcream is fresh enough without requiring lemon, and I don't particularly like celery so I never add that. (I'm guessing mayo gives such salads longer shelf life, since you almost never find a salad like this ready made in stores that isn't based on mayo, while most peoples recipes only have some mayo)
When I traveled through the north of Italy in 1985, and again in 1995, I had vitello tonnato in Brescia! And if I remember correctly, the sauce was served with another meat as well, but not sure if it was turkey or beef.
The Fake Fish dish makes me think of Swedish "smörgåstårta", except we don't use potatoes and we use layers of Cake bread with Mayo and other stuff in-between, and we top it with way more stuff
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Vitel tonnè... that's piedmont dialect... 😂
I'm sorry Eva, I adore your recepies, but this time that salsa tonnata looks too pale and yellow and smooth, so I deffinetly agree with Harper that it must taste weird... but it's not suppose too, it's suppose to taste amazing. You should both check out sometimes the northern Italy like in fall/winter time, becouse I think that their couisine is at it's best in colder seasons...
“All I have in the fridge is champagne and strawberries.” Harper just captured the essence of the eighties.
And some nose powder
I knew way too many people like that, for real. Except Arborio rice wasn't easy to come by in the US.
as a student in the 80s, I once went to the fridge, starving for anything to eat, and the only things in the fridge was champagne and half jar of caviar. Which sounds fancy, but does not make a good dinner.
Vitello Tonnato is a staple of PIemonte cuisine and it's unbelievable when done properly. Not fine.
in Argentina we eat this every Christmas/New Year and we love it (it's summer down here)
it's a main dish in Lombardy as well. My Mum used to make also for Christmas. Btw it's one of my favourite dishes 😋
it used be done with cream instead of mayonnaise, and afaik it's something from the late 19th century
Storia della cucina 3-
I Agree Vitello Tonnato is a wonderful dish !
I ordered it in a restaurant when I was younger, feeling adventurous because it sounded weird, and I loved it so much !
Italian food in the 80s:
Penne alla vodka
Farfalle al salmone
Tortellini panna, piselli e prosciutto (cream, peas and ham)
filetto al pepe verde (Pepper steak)
Uova alla diavola (Deviled egg)
And for desert:
Zabaione (Egg cream)
Salame al cioccolato (Chocolate salami)
Basically what they served us in the cafeteria at school 😂
Lomo a la pimienta le decimos en Uruguay.
but zabaione is also sooo good
You're totally right 😊
I had never heard of salame al cioccolato until I took my son to a friend's birthday party. The boy's Mum asked me "vuoi una fetta di salame" and I said of course, yes, I was shocked when she gave me a slab of chocolate salame! I really thought she was offering me a nice slice of soppressa or similar!
"Prosecco we drink; Champagne is the cooking wine in Italy." Ok Eva, I really cracked up!
I love Italian food and drink, but Prosecco tastes like potpourri mixed with slightly rancid orange peel and perfume. I never understood attraction. It is more like a fragrance than something you would drink. Cava and Champagne can be quite sharp and not even the same flavour profile as Prosecco so it is definitely unique. I personally prefer a good white wine to sparkling, though red is more my usual.
Eva is doing too much French or American bashing in my opinion, and Italian don't need this to shine !
@tarantellalarouge7632 I think it is a national effort to protect what is there. The issue is the history sometimes contradicts these standards and what is traditional is called into question.
@@paulthomas8262 maybe, but I think that the phrase quoted above is quite ridiculous or at least "bad faith", I would never make such comments about Italian products. When something is worth it, you don't need to belittle others to shine, this is only the expression of an inferiority complex ! (excuse my English, but it is not my maternal language).
@@paulthomas8262Most of Prosecco you find around is low quality and that case what you say is rght. As an Italian I agree that in average Prosecco is overrated especially the low quality you normally find around. Champagne is a totally a different league, you may compare it with Franciacorta wines but certainly not Prosecco.
Harper needs to do 1950s Weird American food.
I would love to see Eva's face when vegetables are floating around in gelatin :)
🤣🤣
Aspics for All!! 😂😂😂
Oh we went through that phase in Italy too, more in the 1970s than in the 50s. One of my two grandmas could cook basically everything (Eva kinda reminds me of her besides age, I guess) and she did like some of those dishes and she kept making them until the 2000s: one was cow tongue in aspic, and the other one an entire casserole filled with ham slices rolled around a cilinder of pheasant pâté floating in jelly. I have never been a huge fan of either of them 😆
I didn’t see this comment, but had the exact same idea!
@@flaviopons142 Yep, one of my Grandmothers still did similar when I was little in the late 70s and early 80s. She was excellent at both cooking and baking so I never understood why. I guess the influence of friends and magazines :)
"Vitel tonné" is not a French expression, it's Piedmontese dialect. It's delicious and still rather common nowadays, although it's rarely prepared at home, it's generally bought in supermarkets or delicatessen/charcuterie stores. On the other hand, risotto with strawberry and champagne has not survived, I remember only one restaurant at which I've been that still serves it in Milan. Pesce finto? I've discovered it today :D
Concordo completamente, se il vitello tonnato e' ben fatto con ingredienti di alta qualita', e' un piatto prelibato.
I forgot pesce finto but Eva made me remember it today 🐟
French POV : this is not "champagne" and should not be called like this ! a good white wine is better than a bad champagne ...and we don't eat veal with tuna : in this video it seems that the "French" inspiration is not French at all !🤣no grudge .....
And it's not exactly from the 80s. It was modified in the 50s but it is a traditional dish from the 1700s
@@mr.sandman1341 I think Eva didn't mean that those dishes were born in the 80's, she probably meant that they became a trend in the 80's
Vitello Tonnato is absolutely amazing, I loved it even as a child! (Here in Germany, it‘s a classic antipasto in pretty much every italian restaurant)
😁should have read the other posts before writing practically a copy of yours in 😅 But then, shows I'm not alone😃
Volle Zustimmung aus Bayreuth
Als Italiener muss ich sagen, Vitello Tonnato ist immer ein Klassiker unsere italienische Küche gewesen. Und es ist ein Klassiker in allen italienischen Restaurants auf der ganzen Welt. Grüße aus Niedersachsen !
I agree. But please don’t mention Germany in your arguments. 😂
@@schmirohwhy not?
Harper, you can't imagine the significance of Vitello Tonnato for northern Italian families. This classic dish, a staple of Sunday lunches and celebrations, is a true trip down memory lane.
God no.
Vitello Tonnato is still very popular in Switzerland today.
And it’s actually very good.
vitello tonnato is still very popular in Turin too, and if well made is very very good!
Vitello Tonnato is still popular in germany today. And I love it
I saw Vitello Tonnato on the main-dishes menu in a very expensive restaurant just north of Sorrento just last week.
Reading all the comments i think it’s popular everywhere except for the US and Calabria. 😂
It's Christmass food in Uruguay.
You're quite wrong about Vitello Tonnato being just an 80s fad. It's a classic dish, and one I've encountered on menus at very good Italian restaurants all over Europe, the US, the UK and Australia. And, so far as i can tell, it's never gone out of fashion. I've even seen it featured as a starter at some of the best non-Italian restaurants. Done really well, it is sublime.
Came here to say this… vitello tonnato at a high end restaurant… I’d order it every time…. Sometimes lightly seared veal pink in the centre… sometimes crispy capers… and it’s inspired many similar dishes. I love it!
Was looking for this and I completely agree. Although I only learned about it after 2010. But then I started to see more of it, even in snack bars and on bread here in the Netherlands. I don't know why I never 'discovered' it earlier, maybe because most Italian food was always all about pizza and pasta.
Yes. Usually all the videos are quite spot on on the informational side, but this is just completely wrong.
I think vitello tonnato is one of the best dishes in the world. Here in Cuneo Province you can find it in every single restaurant (also in pizzerie). Is a dish from the Piemonte tradition ❤
in argentina, and in particular in my italian family, vitel tone was pretty much a “christmas / new year” dish
Can confirm, we eat this dish every Christmas in Argentina.
Still a traditional Christmas/new year dish in northern Italy too!
You know you are Slav when you hear suggestions to replace the mayonnaise and you reflexively ask yourself 'can I dig deep enough to still respect this person?'.
Whatever it is, just add enough mayo and you got yourself a nice cold salad.
Man I want some pickled herring salad now.
@@JonaxII Nice advice cuz, going to have myself a chocolate salad now. 🤣
For real though, had no butter and used mayonnaise to butter each side of a chocolate toasted sandwich and it was still good.
Però Eva mi aspettavo i mitici gamberetti in salsa rosa piatto indissolubilmente e tragicamente legato agli anni 80
In realtà in voga molto prima , almeno dalla metà degli anni ‘60…..
E le pennette alla vodka. Ché tenevano distanti dalla vodka i bambini... almeno fino ai vent'anni e oltre
Oh, finally you landed on vitello tonnato, which was my lunch today. It's not a 1980's fancy, it's actually a very common Piedmontese dish. I do it basically following the recipe you can find in Artusi's book, so no mayonnaise. I learned it from my Granny, who was born in the 1920's and learned it from her mom's employer, who was an Italian jewish lady whose niece was saved by a guy that was later considered a Righteous among the Nations. What I am sorprised not to see is the famous pennette vodka and smoked salmon, which is why I literally LMAO when I see Americans raving about vodka sauces for pasta and/or pizza.
By the way, my vitello tonnato is simmered with the tuna and capers and anchovies, and with vinegar too. @Harper, the way the dish is presented is due to the fact that the original version (which I made, Eva made the fake 1980's version of vitello in salsa tonnata) require the meat to marinade in the cooking fond overnight, and then again for a few hours with the sauce. The slight acidity of the sauce softens the meat and makes it superjuicy.
The overnight version is amazing.
@@ragazzotexano We'll distract ourselves with some Cleromaniadance th-cam.com/video/updNRBlTfJQ/w-d-xo.html
Divino
do you think you could share your full recipe? i would absolutely LOVE to hear it!
@@kalina5076 it's my granny's recipe and it has granny measurements. Anyhow, 750-800 grams of meat, one large and one medium can of tuna (aka around 300 grams of tuna, drained weight), one or two carrots, one small onion, one stick of celery, a handful of parsley, 3 anchovies, one garlic clove, half a glass of white wine vinegar, half of dry white wine, peppercorns and cloves in a muslin bag, olive oil (I use tuna in olive oil and use the oil from the can plus some). Tie a bunch with the parsley and celery, put everything in a pot, simmer for an hour and a half, more or less (turn the meat a few times), let rest overnight. Next morning, retrieve the meat, eliminate any silverskin, cut thinly. Take out the spices and aromatic bunch (celery and parsley), squeeze out, throw away. Fish out the carrots and leave aside. Use a stick blender to cream the remaining ingredients. If the sauce is too thick, add a splash of boiling water and blend, if it's too loose simmer for a few minutes. Place the meat in a serving dish, top with the sauce, decorate with the carrots. If you want you can add capers or caper fruits in vinegar, olives, or slices of gherkins on top. For a creamier sauce, stir in a tablespoon or two of mayo.
Not purposely meaning to go off topic, I heard Eva mention different types of pecorino. Yesterday I received a small round of Pecorino Calabrese. Wow! The first thing I noticed was, it's not overly salty.then it was creamy inside, not rock hard like the Locatelli. The taste was great.
Thank you Eva for the tip.
Here in Argentina where the 60% of population came from de Italian immigrants, vitelo tonato is very common for christsmas
It is also common in Italian restaurants in Germany
Lo más rico de la mesa navideña
Por supuesto que en Uruguay también. Nos pasan robando estos tanos bo.
Si, solo que acá lo bañamos un montón más en esa salsa, pero aún así, delicioso! Es lo más rico de la mesa navideña
@@napoleonfeanor And German supermarkets as well.
After the strawberry risotto, there should no objections to pineapple pizza.
I will forever remenber that argument.
Pineapple pizza makes an italian cringe, but not the strawberry risotto.
Beat me to it
To be fair, you could make the same argument with raw ham and cantaloupe (which is delicious by the way)
I do object to the pineapple pizza ! 🍕
French make homemade mayonaise with lemon or vinegar and dijon mustard. It's a world apart from the American mayonaise used in this recipe.
I mean in Italy we make homemade mayo as well, my grandma and my mom make it all the time.
If you want to taste real mayo, only the Japanese will do. Just a warning, you will never be able to return to the bland cheap oil only American swill.
I just wrote the same thing above... I started to make it with Alex recipe and it was so much better than anything from the store or even homemade with an immersive blender like I did before.
Thick and really good.
Yeah that "mayo" used in the video isn't really mayonnaise. Where I live it's just sold as "Real" and they are not allowed to put mayonnaise on the label. I'm surprised Eva didn't make her own since it is so easy to do with an immersion blender nowadays.
@@tuberNunyaI love japanese mayonnaise, but I'd never call it more "real" than a traditional homemade French mayonnaise.
It's so simple too, just start with egg yolks and a dollop of real French mustard (not American mustard with the weird sweet taste and no pungency) and a big pinch of salt, then start with a few drops of any not-too-flavorful oil (not olive), and whisk. Then SLOWLY add a little bit more oil, increasing how much you add each time.
It's rich, incredibly flavorful, and makes anything taste decadent.
I love how Eva says "Kirkland," as if it's the Land of the Kirks instead of a suburb of Seattle.
Vitello tonnato (or tonnè) is a traditional recipe from the Piedmont region. The version of the ‘80 has a mayonnaise based sauce. The sauce is usually prepared with a base of homemade mayonnaise to which tuna, anchovies and capers are added.
VITELLO TONNATO IS GREAT!
Go to Turin and try it, it is the best place where to eat in Italy!
They make sandwiches with vitello tonnato and I actually ate one recently in Rome!
Also gourmet chefs are revisiting it going beyond the 80's prejudice, with som pretty good results actually!
Hi Eva, vitello tonnato is not the only worthy dish from Piemonte : tallarin con tartufo bianco (the only truffle worth eating), l’albese, il brasato, fritto misto alla piemontese, panna cotta, etc, etc. In Piedmont we have a very varied and complex cuisine, you should come to visit😊
My mother was from France. My father from Italy. She always Frenchified all the Italian recipes from my Dad's family, some with great success, some as epic fails. Food was always interesting in our home, never boring. But I couldn't wait to visit my Nona' s kitchen on Sundays for the real Italian stuff. 😅
You need to consider that the modern French cuisine was influenced by the Italian one starting from the renaissance. The original Frankish cuisine was more similar to the British one.
yeah essentially if you wanna make the most quintessential 80's italian dish, you need mayo and pickles and canned tuna. I know that doesn't sound very appetizing and you'd be right in thinking that. We used to go crazy for pasta salads of any kind, especially if it involved pickles and mayo. Cocktail sauce, shrimp and champagne/aperol/campari are also very much an 80s combo. Most dishes from the 80s died out very quickly, one dish that survived the 80s though was Penne alla Vodka. It's not that popular here anymore but it became popular outside of Italy.
Farfalle al Salmone were also big in the 80's ( and heavy as it used Panna Vegetale ) but so delicious, especially if you added a splash of Cognac to the salmon and afterwards some tomato puree to turn the sauce pink.
I believe that the most representative object of 80s Italian cuisine is the "Martini glass" full of mayonnaise with shrimps sticking out all around
There are pretty decent claims tracing penne alla vodka to Fontana di Trevi in midtown Manhattan in the late 1960s.
Do you have an ice cream machine Eva? The “Malaga” ice cream was a must! 🤭
And the "Puffo" ice cream
Still the best ice cream flavour ever. Malaga I mean, not puffo
@@eleanor9004 puffo is still around, they just named it "vi@gra" :)
Vitello tonnato is very popular in Veneto. It is NOT an 80’s fad. Not sure where you get the idea. Maybe it’s not popular in Calabria? You are supposed to cover it in the sauce, and let it sit for a while not eat it right away.
I have never seen the pesce finto, but I would guess in Italy you would use home made mayo which has lemon juice in it.
The vitel toné I learned from my grandmother (Torinese) and have been making for years has a very different recipe for the sauce. It's basically a flavored mayonnaise....
2 Eggs (1 + 1 yolk)
1 Tbsp Mustard
1 Oz Lemon Juice
2 tsps. Salt
1 ½ Cup Avocado Oil (traditionally olive oil, but I prefer avocado)
1 Can Tuna
1 Can Anchovies
1 Tbsp Capers
Blend eggs, mustard, lemon juice, and salt until smooth
Drizzle in oil slowly until emulsified
Add tuna, anchovies, and capers. Blend until smooth
Gradually add some of the stock to get a pourable consistency. (think pancake batter)
And lastly, none of this gentle drizzle over the meat. Overlap the veal slices ~50% then cover all the meat with the sauce. It's the star of the show.
Side note: There's nothing French about the dish. The name "vitel toné" is Piemontese.
This is how I remember the vitel tonè in the 70's or 80's. Exactly as you said.
YES! not French de tout.
I had Vitello Tonnato for the first time in Turin recently.
Absolutely exceptional.
You could tell the restaurant and done everything they could to elevate each element.
I think you covered this on another video but I was missing 80’s Italy’s major contribution to US “Italian” food. On my first trip to Rome in 1986, I was served what has become very popular in the US: Rigatoni Ala Vodka. It was amazing and the Trattoria made it with a unique variation. It included all the items associated with vodka not just pepper. It also included red caviar since vodka, caviar, onions and pepper on toast was a common combination. I thought it was red pepper flakes, at first, but realized that while there was red pepper flake there was something else which was the caviar. I make it like that to this day and my guests always enjoy it.
Not rigatoni but New York City has a pretty strong claim to penne alla vodka from the late 1960s by Armando Mei at his restaurant Fontana di Trevi in midtown Manhattan. I don't know that the history of it will be definitively sorted, but it does seem most likely to come down to New York or Bologna.
Mai ho visto un ristorante in Piemonte che NON ha il vitello tonnato nel menù.
The way I used to make strawberry risotto: macerate the cut strawberries in balsamic vinegar, and stir them in at the end, just before butter and cheese. Always a big hit!
I once had a risotto on Lipari that was scallop and cantaloupe. Very memorable.
I had one once in Sardinia that was crab and mango. I enjoyed it
EVA "Prosecco we drink , champagne we cook with" , if that wasn't a backhanded slap to the French 🤣🤣
Absolutely ! This underlines the “great love” that we Italians have for the French and for the things that come from France. 😉😅
Io vi amooo. Sono siciliano e vivo all'estero e pure coppia mista come voi. Che fatica farsi Capire! Con voi è più facile! grazieeeee
Isn’t Penne alla vodka another dish from the ‘80? Maybe it didn’t make the cut for this episode 😉
Well, we made it in another video... But yes, very true!
@@PastaGrammarsorry, I’ve seen in for sure, and now that you mention it, I kind of remember…
"Vitello tonnato" is the best choice in Summer, it's unbelievably good!!
Vitello Tonnato - a stable dish of Italian restaurants in Germany still today - and delicious 😂
lol! I died with the fake fish! 😂
Vitello tonnato weird? It's amazing but I have noticed people from the US, UK etc do not even know it. In Germany, Austria etc where veal is more common, it is a standard at Italian restaurants.
These days chefs create "different versions" where you get seared or tataki tuna slices etc. you could make it also with other meat (poultry, pork) or vegan nowadays.
I stay with the original of course done right
I suspect that is because much of the Italian diaspora in the Americas came from the southern provencesand this is a Piedmontese dish.
That canned tuna potato salad was straight out of a post-war American cookbook.
Non sono d'accordo. Il vitello tonnato è tradizionale del Piemonte, lo mangiavamo negli anni 60, non è cibo di moda anni 80 . Si mangia da sempre in Piemonte e anche ora è, secondo me, un piatto eccellente. Non sono piemontese ma marchigiana, in famiglia adoriamo il "vitel tonné" .
Quando vado nelle Langhe, ogni ristorante ha il vitello tonnato nel suo menu.
Ho detto che è presente nel libro di Artusi (quindi ricetta presente in Italia dalla fine dell’ ‘800) ho specificato che in Piemonte ancora ne vanno pazzi, tutto ciò non basta? 🤔
Ha anche detto che è un piatto la cui popolarità nel resto del paese è esplosa negli anni 80, non che è un piatto limitato agli anni 80.
@@PastaGrammarno perché è completamente sbagliato dire che "in Piemonte ne vanno pazzi". È un piatto molto diffuso in gran parte dell'Italia. Forse sarebbe stato più corretto dire che in Calabria non si usa molto.
Si in piemonte lo mangiamo con cadenza settimanale
She played it so straight, I could not tell if she was trolling us the whole time or not, lol
Vitello ton auto still used in Trentino…my aunt made a risotto with blueberries and sausage which I thought was weird but it was delicious
Vitellio tonnato is so amazing. When I lived in Germany, our local Italian restaurant, owned and run by a couple from Sorrento, talked me into trying it. But I believe they used raw veal, and the hot sauce cooked it. So very good.
0:48. Ma io non parlerei di “imbarazzo”. Ci sono diversi canali italiani di cucina che negli ultimi tempi riscoprono un po’ la famosa cucina degli anni 80, guardando con nostalgia a quegli anni e non con “imbarazzo”.
Vitel Tonnè (it's not a not french name but piedmont dialect) is a masterpiece of traditional piedmont cusine. It's not a 80's weird receipe at all and in north of Italy, especially Piedmont and Lombardy, is a very common dish you can find in every restaurant menu during spring/summer.
Se il vitello tonnato é un piatto anni 80 allora lo é anche la carbonara. Il vitello tonnato si trova in carta nei ristoranti più tradizionali piemontesi oggi.
Infatti lo è. Anzi, nella sua forma attuale è un piatto anni '90. Negli anni '80 nella carbonara si metteva ancora la panna, e prima ancora si metteva di tutto (fughi, carciofi...). La carbonara attuale è stata ottenuta per sottrazione.
@@neutronalchemist3241 No non lo é. La carbonara é degli anni 50. Che poi abbia subito delle evoluzioni, certo. Ma quello che volevo dire é che il vitello tonnato non é come le penne alla vodka anni 80. É un piatto tradizionale in Piemonte
@@ettorefieramosca5460 La carbonara degli anni '50 non è quella attuale. Si chiama carbonara, ma è diversa. Come detto, c'è dentro di tutto.
Anche in tante altre regioni d'Italia. Piccola nota di colore: giusto l'altro ieri, al concerto dei Duran Duran, Simon Le Bon saluta il pubblico raccontando di come abbia appena mangiato un ottimo vitello tonnato.
Ora, non credo che abbiano fatto appositamente per i Duran Duran un menù anni 8 😂. E il concerto era a Lucca, abbastanza lontano dal Piemonte. 😂
Solitamente ha molta più salsa sopra di quella messa da Eva o sbaglio? Almeno noi a casa lo facevamo così
Some Italian descendents in Argentina eat Vitel Tone in Christmas 😅 I'm glad I'm Native mix with Spanish we do Barbecue meats instead 😁
Well, I disagree with friends that basically think "only what my mother cooked for me as a child is good".
Besides italian cuisine (about 15 different cuisines actually), also spanish, german, argentinian, indian, chinese cuisine are good (just to name a few).
@@psalux18963I meant for Christmas. The most common thing is to eat bbq only some people eat that specific food then. We ate all different kind of cuisine the year round. 😊
Vitello Tonnato is still very popular in Northern Italy, particularly in Friuli. It’s one of my favorite foods.
I think vitello tonnato exists at least since the sixties, I remember my grandma cooked it in 1970.
I checked.
This is the translation from the italian wikipedia.
"The first mentions of the dish in its original composition date back to the eighteenth century. At the beginning the recipe did not include tuna; desiring the adjective "tonnato" meant cooked in the manner of tuna. In the 1836 French recipe book Dictionnaire de Cuisine et d'économie ménagère by M. Burnet, the "Way to give veal the appearance of marinated tuna" (Maniére de donner au veau l'apparence du thon marineé) is illustrated."
"Tuna appears in the second half of the 19th century, when Dubini published three variations of vitello tonnato in The cuisine of weak stomachs (1862), of which only one involves the use of tuna and anchovies. In 1891 Pellegrino Artusi proposed the recipe again in Science in the kitchen and the art of eating well.
The modern recipe, which involves the use of tuna-flavoured mayonnaise, only began to spread in 1950 following the release of The Silver Spoon. Anna Gosetti della Salda, in The Italian regional recipes of 1967, classifies it as a Lombard recipe which includes "abundant mayonnaise".
She explained it is even featured in a centuries old cookbook but it had a revival and was very trendy in the 80's.
@@julieblair7472 Yes but unfortunately she is wrong (after 3/4 years of posts it may happen to be wrong once!). When i was a kid, well before the 80s, I had a lot of vitello tonnato. My mom would prepare it for us at home and you could find it in every restaurant in Piemonte (and I would choose it as antipasto every time). Maybe in the south of Italy it became popular in the 80s but in north Italy it was popular well before that period (and btw the sauce should be ticker than that). Also the choice of proposed music... we have many absolute masterpieces from the 80s and they come up with Mammamia and Al Bano... songs for kids and old people. I like Eva and Harper and I always watch their posts, but this is the first of their videos that made me cringe a bit :)
@@tpn3561 I am a synth pop lover and noticed that about the music too.
@@julieblair7472 If you like synth you might know a certain Giorgio Moroder for example... career between the 70s and the 80s. Myself I'm more with "cantautori" kind of music and the album "Dalla" by Lucio Dalla (which I would put against any album of any international artist) is dated 1980. Or for example Fabrizio De Andre composed two beautiful albums in the 80s and Mina was still very active... just to say that it was a very good decade for Italian music. But they probably wanted to make fun of the period, so the chose "mammamaria" and the other song that I have already forgotten!
I love Eva's face when Harper calls her out for using lemon to cover up the mayo. I'm with you, Eva!!!
In the 80s, my Sicilian aunt (living in Milano) came to visit us in Montreal and made what I guess was carbonara... The sauce came from powder in an envelope she brought from Italy and she added pancetta (ultra small pieces barely cooked). It’s the last time we let her cook. Here zia, have pasta con porcini instead!
Vitello Tonnato is still on the menu of a lot of restaurants in the North of Italy
After this episode, I would like to see an episode from you on Futurist cuisine, which might have been the first cultural rebellion against mainstream Italian cuisine? Such as Sauce Marinetti, compared to what the Futurists were actually writing.
Oh mamma! Alle medie la mia professoressa di italiano ci fece fare la cucina futuristica… un disastro 😂😂😂😂
Such a comforting thought that even in Italy, the 80s made for a good spread of culinary weirdness.
In the 80 s, in ltaly vegetables were still tasty, meat was too. Everything was good. Now the quality of food is under the shoes. In ltaly
If trump gets re-elected, FDA and Dept of Ag will be reduced and stop f-ing with our food.
@@Critter145 OK boomer
@@Critter145If the Department of Agriculture is cut, your food will be laden with pesticides. THAT will undoubtedly "own the Libs," won't it?
@@Critter145 And how would that possibly have an effect on the vegetables in Italy?
@@Critter145Yep, that will be 100% left up to the unregulated mega-corporations. Enjoy your Bill Gates lab-"meat"..
Vitello Tonnato is still decently popular, to this day in restaurant, in supermarkets and at home (as in home cooking). Pasta with Vodka, afaik, was a staple of 80's. I used to eat in Senigallia, in the Marche region, until early 00's.
Looks like you had a lot of fun as I have never seem Eva laugh so much.
Your WTAF was perfectly timed.
No way would I try any of that 😅😅😂😂😂
Actually the presentation of the Vitello tonnato was very poor.
However one of the most iconic dishes from the 80 's was "Penne alla Vodka".
Their 80’s were like our 60’s - 70’s with the weird jello mold salads.
Vitello tonnato , the Star of each Antipasti Buffet. 😊😊😊❤❤
Can t believe that is unknown in the US (or less) it’s a all time classic
"Pesce Finto" is the Italian answer to the German "Mettigel" 😂
You beat me to it, that's what I was going to say as well! :D
@@JJ-nb3vp Great minds think alike ;D
I’m Colombian but my mother was Italian, vitel tonè was one of my favourite dishes ever since I was a little kid !
In Argentina they do something they call Vittel Tone, that is very similar to the second dish you made🤔 and they usually eat it in the holidays
One more proof of the Italian influience in Argentinian food
Vitello tonnato needs the veal to be cut very thin, not as presented here... And you need it to be covered with the sauce (and to let the meat season in it for an hour or two in the fridge, so it becomes tender and juicy).
In Argentina, with our huge italian tradition, the "vitel toné" is a "de facto" dish present in almost every Xmas dinner. But we use a lot of sauce.
Mate, vitello tonnato is one of the finest dishes umanity ever created. It’s full of contrasts, velvetness, acidity, sweetness. Totally soury and umami, it’s litterally perfect. Go to the doctor and let him check your tastebuds cause u might have a problem.
We’re actually missing two hugely popular dishes in the 80s, staple of most households at parties and meetings, “Tortellini Panna e Prosciutto” (Ham and Cream tortellini) and “Filetto al Pepe Verde” (Green Pepper sirloin, which also implied A LOT of cream).
I lived in Florence in the 80s! The Disco Days!!! Everything was glamorous. A fancy dinner that I recall was Squab and my date had Steak Tartara.
In Argentina Vitel Tonne is a traditional christmas plate. We make it a bit different, but is my favourite holyday meal for sure
You should make a mayonnaise-centric episode
BTW in Poland we make a sweet kind of risotto that is very good, you just boil your rice and then when in season you add the strawberries and sweetened cream, or apples quickly coocked in a pan with sugar and cinnamon adding the cream at the end. We like sweet, fruit based, dinners, like sweet pierogi filled with fruits or crepes filled with white sweetened fresh cottage chees and/or fruits. When I was a child I often ate at my grandma fruits soups served chilled with homemade pasta, or at school they were serving us milk soup with pasta or rice inside and it was our sweeet breakfast. Something that no one in Italy can imagine but yes, we used pasta and rice to very very strange sweet dishes. Even if in Italy too there is a dessert made of tagliatalle, in Emilia, "torta di tagliatelle", It's a classic recipe where the thin pasta is used as the filling of a classic sweet pie.
NGL, I burst out laughing at the sight of Pesci Finto. Will I give mashed potatoes a go in tuna salad? Heck yeah.
Same! We had a neighbor as a kid who was Italian, and she served it at a dinner party as one of the appetizers in the buffet. We thought it was pretty fancy when we were kids, but yeah - I laughed out loud when I saw it!
I just watched a video of both of you from 3 years ago after YT fed it to me somehow. I loved it. So clicked your chan and here you both are! Still together and doing food videos! Im so happy. I knew when I saw that video she is a keeper. You two are wonderful together. Reminds me of me and my late wife. Im gonna sub and get to watching a backlog of what I expect to be fun food videos with two fun people.
Well, my Italian eighties food was the same as the sixties and seventies - Grandmas cooking. Spaghetti and meatballs, chicken and olives, fried cauliflower, eggplant parmigiana, almond ice - I was spoiled. My mom is a great cook too.
vitello tonnato is one of the most amazing dishes!! Everyone absolutely loves it from children to elders in Piemonte. However I have never eaten the sauce with broth and boiled eggs, everyone does it with mayonnaise nowadays. Please give it another go!!!! Try out the recipe from giallozafferano, the version made by Scannable (a traditional restaurant in Turin), use high quality tuna and make the mayonnaise at home (the store bought one is tasteless especially the American pale ones), just follow that recipe (they roast their veal and use mayonnaise as I said). Another more bougie version if from Diego Rossi, owner of a popular restaurant in Milano, you can find the recipe online. I've never heard anyone say vitello tonnato is not delicious, your reactions were shocking to me. Fatemi sapere se provate a rifarlo!
I'm actually a fan of some of the party food from the 7ties and 8ties we had here in Germany. Like the "Käse-Igel" = cheese groundhog. Where you put a tookpick through a grape and a cube of cheese and stick it on to an orange, so it would look a bit like a groundhog. Or deviled eggs: you can do so many variantions of that! Or those dips you would put on top of a Ritz Cracker?
It hasn't been seen for such a long while, now. A cap of a tomato, put on top of half a hard boiled egg. With some tiny dots of mayo on the tomato. To make it look like a fly agaric?
Just for the nostalgic touch of it (I'm 63, by now.)
I lived in Texas during the 80’s. The gourmet food of the time was to combine French techniques with Southwestern ingredients. Much of it was delicious. I remember Julia Child tasting a SW Caesar salad and telling the famous Texas chef who made it, “this is a delicious salad buy it certainly NOT a Caesar salad.”
Champagne is the cooking wine in Italy! A true classic utterance from Eva!!!
This is off topic in relation to this (last week's) video, but I just have to thank you for teaching me what you have about food.
I came home from work, tired, and stopped in at the grocery store and eyed the monochrome-grey prepared foods from which I had to choose. And out of nowhere, I recalled a video you did a few years ago where Eva taught us how to make a quick pasta sauce. And so I bought some cherry tomatoes and pasta. I came home, heated very gently the tomatoes (split), some garlic, added some basil from the garden, some hot peppers I had in the fridge. Oh, and boiled the pasta while all of this was going on. When done, I grated some parmesan and added a bit more fresh basil.
The whole thing took 30 minutes. I just finished eating what felt like the meal of kings. I am so happy. What a great way to end what was a very difficult week.
Thank you so much.
OMG! 80's flashback! I had vitello tonnato the year I lived in Italy (high school exchange program). I haven't thought about that dish in decades! Watching this brought it all back. From an 80s US teenager's perspective who had never had it before, it tasted like under-seasoned, cold, tough meat with a dollop of white sauce that smelled like tuna. It was an unusual taste and texture combination. Not bad, not great, just unremarkable. Now I want to make it for nostalgia!
I am italian and I can swear that apart from the Vitello Tonnato I have never heard the other two mentioned anywhere, anywhen. And I was in my twenties during the eighties, so I would definitely remember...
This video had me laughing out loud. The pesce finto in particular. 🐟🤣
Veal is difficult to get/super expensive where I live. So I make maiale tonnato (less medium rare, of course). Also: not sure if this is super traditional, but leaving it to marinate overnight makes it even better.
A suggestion, try chicken or turkey
5:06 😂😂😂😂 ahhahaha, amazing Eva!
Penne al salmone e vodka. Real Italian food of the 80s😂
I also remember the version of penne alla vodka with tomato sauce, pancetta and cooking cream
i was 23 in 1980 and glad to say i never ate any of these dishes in the Italian community in London England during the 80s! hope there are none of them in your new cookbook 😊😊😊😊😊
Eva, when I was a kid in the 80's my dad made the cocktail di scampi 😋. We make it today for new year's eve.
My husband loves strawberry risotto (we make it with white wine though). People expect a rice pudding, but really its sort of like a lemony risotto. I do like surprising people's taste buds with it.
One of my favorites Italian dishes from the 80’s was fresh pappardelle in a cream sauce with smoked salmon and capers. I had a favorite restaurant (Greenwich Village, NYC) where I ate it, but it was available all over the city. I still make it at home, but I haven’t seen it on a menu since the mid-90’s.
Vitello Tonnato! That’s nostalgia food for me! My mom used to make her version of this recipe for our family probably from the 70’s till the 80’s. The tuna anchovy sauce is so great. In my mom;s rendition, the deal was stuffed with ground meat which was probably veal mixed with beef and fresh herbs including parsley. I fondly recall swiping some for late night snacks out of the fridge. Years later I sought this particular recipe from other family members and was able to reproduce it faithfully. Thanks for showing it.
Many people are unaware that Prosecco was not widely popular in the 1980s and was mostly enjoyed locally in the Veneto region. Its popularity only began to surge in the late 1990s and 2000s.
Vitello Tonnato is so good! Very popular in Denmark.
I'm so glad Italian food has come a long way since the 1980s.
My family recipe for tuna salad is really simple and with no mayo; it's canned tuna (I prefer a mix of tuna in oil and jellied tuna, but you can use any kind of canned tuna), fairly fine chopped leek, and then (instead of mayo) add sour cream/creme fraiche (we use Norwegian "rømme" which is basically a sour cream, slightly different fat percentage, 35% for the traditional kind and 10-15% for the lighter variant) which is much more fresh than the mayo variant. Season with pepper.
I'm pretty sure our family recipe is just a standard Norwegian tuna salad that replaces the mayo with rømme and it's simplified to a lot; most recipes I find for tuna salad in Norwegian has both mayo and rømme and often also mustard, lemon, celery, onion, etc. But I find that without mayo the sourcream is fresh enough without requiring lemon, and I don't particularly like celery so I never add that.
(I'm guessing mayo gives such salads longer shelf life, since you almost never find a salad like this ready made in stores that isn't based on mayo, while most peoples recipes only have some mayo)
Vitello tonnato is one of my favourites dishes
Il Pesce finto!!! My gradma usually prepared this dish on fridays, because venerdì pesce, and she really enjoyed decorating it.
When I traveled through the north of Italy in 1985, and again in 1995, I had vitello tonnato in Brescia! And if I remember correctly, the sauce was served with another meat as well, but not sure if it was turkey or beef.
The Fake Fish dish makes me think of Swedish "smörgåstårta", except we don't use potatoes and we use layers of Cake bread with Mayo and other stuff in-between, and we top it with way more stuff