Instructions
- Cook pasta in boiling salted water until al dente. Get the pasta into your colander right away, and allow it to drain. Toss with half the oil.
- In a large frying pan, heat remaining oil over medium heat.
- Add onion and cook until softened.
- Add garlic and peas. Cook for 1 minute.
- Stir in cream, tuna, oregano and pesto. Simmer for 2 minutes.
- Add pasta and season with salt and pepper. Stir until just heated through.
Tuna Pasta with Sun Dried Tomato Pesto is a quick pantry pasta that turns a can of tuna into something far more flavorful than it sounds, thanks to a rich, tangy sun-dried tomato pesto stirred through a creamy sauce. Sautéing onion and garlic first builds a soft, sweet base before the peas join briefly, just enough to warm through and add small bursts of freshness against all that richness.
Cream, tuna, oregano, and the pesto all go in together and simmer only a couple of minutes, which is enough time for the tuna’s sharper canned aroma to mellow out and blend into the sauce rather than dominating it. The sun-dried tomato pesto is really what carries the dish, bringing a concentrated, slightly sweet-tart tomato depth that a plain cream sauce wouldn’t have on its own, while the cream keeps everything smooth and rounds out the pesto’s tang. Tossing the pasta in a bit of oil before it meets the sauce also helps keep the noodles from clumping, so the finished dish coats evenly rather than turning gluey. The result lands right in the middle, creamy but not heavy, saucy but not soupy, a fast weeknight pasta that gets a lot of flavor out of a short ingredient list.
