Zucchini Pasta With Tuna and Chile Paste

Have been making this sort of quick dinner for years. Yellowfin tuna works best. And I like to stir in a can of cannellini beans, rinsed.

This is addressed in the introductory paragraph & related article "Each paste contributes a host of nuances, spices and textures, leading the dish in slightly different directions. Stick with your favorite and you’ll do no wrong."

If cooking a small amount of pasta for one or two people, significantly reduce the amount of water used to boil the pasta. When adding the pasta water, what's really being added is the starch from the boiled pasta. Reducing the amount of water assures that there is plenty of starch in the water from the pasta-for-two in the pot.

What is "chile paste" - type, brand, other details? How is it the Times fails to distinguish between the dozens of SPECIES of chili pepper, with hugely different flavor profiles, degrees of heat, etc, but can be so fastidious about nearly always insisting on kosher salt ... even when dissolved in liquid?

the time spent typing that could have been used to better advantage by looking up "chile paste." Less whining, more cooking.

Tuna noodle casserole has come a long way!

Made this following the recipe and used gochujang. It’s yummy but in reheating it the next day, I added some cherry tomatoes I had confited and I realized that this recipe needed the extra juiciness from the tomatoes. Would recommend adding some cherry tomatoes to cooking of the dish. Will do next time.

I think here you can use whatever chili paste you like, to taste. I appreciate not having to run out and buy a specific kind. They’re particular about salt because kosher and regular salt require different amounts and you don’t want to oversalt something by mistake.

This is a delicious dish, but be careful with the salt. Capers and tuna can be salty, and so is the pasta water. I ruined one the other night by adding anchovies for umami. Otherwise an easy weeknight meal with protein & carbs!

@Jamie: The reason recipes - here and elsewhere - are specific about the use of kosher salt is all about varying densities of different salt, which - because few home cooks have a scale with precision finer than a gram - is almost always specified in terms of volume rather than weight. For example 1t of Diamond Crystal is .5t of fine sea salt.

This is not your mother's tuna casserole. I cooked it exactly as the recipe detailed. I used harrisa (2 tablespoons) and cilantro. Outstanding!

A highly rated delicious chili crisp is the Lao Gan Ma Spicy Chili Crisp Hot Sauce, available online. You will end up putting this into everything.

This is fine with tuna but much better with sardines. We also use penne as it works well as a pasta salad the next day and I find cold spaghetti odd for some reason.

I make this quite often but add some anchovies towards the end with some red pepper flakes to give it a kick, delicious

We used calabrian chile paste for this dish. I wanted to like it, but felt the pasta shape was wrong (something short and stubby would have been better) and the ingredients seemed like they were all fighting for dominance, and because so, their flavours were muddied. Perhaps this dish sans tuna would have been more balanced?