Meaty non-meat tuna pasta.... and preparation for a Stallone themed birthday party

The boyfriend's birthday party was a fun and delicious celebration last night featuring a Sylvester Stallone theme (and a bit of Stephen Chow) and lots of food and drink.

But a few days prior to that, I wanted to eat something meaty, yet without meat, as inspiration for the then upcoming Stallone party.

Tuna adds a nice meatiness and a great protein substitute and is low in saturated fats. Apparently, while training for the filming of Rocky III, Stallone's got his body fat percentage down to 2.8% (As a point of reference, normal for Stallone's age category, men ~ 8 - 19%, women ~ 21 - 33%).

So tuna sounded right.

Pasta is a good starchy medium to carry some robust flavours. Given that Stallone played some robust characters and he's the Italian Stallion, pasta sounded right too.

I also included some grated sweet potato to make the sauce thicker and to add a little sweetness to counteract the salty of the olives.

So here we go: A Stallone inspired pre-party pasta dish :)

Ingredients:

Olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 white onion, diced

3 tbsp cooking wine
125 g sweet potato, grated
1/3 cup tomato puree
1/2 head of cauliflower, diced
1 zucchini, diced 1/3 cup of kalamata olives, roughly chopped + 2 tbsp olive juice from the container
3 tsp dried oregano
213g can tuna in water, drained
Dash dried chili pepper flakes

In a pan, heat minced garlic in olive oil. Add in onions until slightly wilted then add some cooking sherry. Add in grated sweet potatoes and tomato puree. Let it start bubbling and add water (or more sherry) if it starts to stick.

Add in cauliflower and zucchini and let cook, about 5 to 7 mins. Then add chopped olives with juice, oregano, and canned tuna. Dash in some dried chili flakes and stir gently to combine.

Serve immediately and enjoy!