Tuna salad and more

My ideal lunch

Salmon salad at top left, leftover tabouli next to it

fruit salad, with a couple of slices of leftover lamb shish kebab

 

I love tuna salad and go around town testing tuna salad almost any place it’s offered—I feel the same way about potato salad but that’s a different story. My current favorite tuna salad is at the Swiss Pastry Shop. It’s a scoop of tightly packed tuna, mild in flavor, a hint of lemon, and just enough mayonnaise to hold it together, not a bunch of other stuff like pimiento, bell pepper, egg, etc. Just tuna—that’s the way I like it. My idea of salads, be they tuna, salmon, egg or chicken, is purist—I do not, for instance, want pickle in my ham salad. The tuna at McKinley’s runs a close second in my personal salad poll.

I start my salad with that wonderful albacore I get from Pisces in Oregon. When I can I also get salmon from them—it’s not always available. The cans are more expensive, but the couple who own the company fish from their own boat, never with nets, and dolphins swim alongside. The tuna is packed in cans and then cooked once—most tuna you eat is cooked twice. No preservatives, just plain tuna. Both tuna and salmon are available smoked or plain, but I prefer the plain. The salmon is great in croquettes, one of my favorite foods, and the tuna s good for lots of things besides salad—creamed on toast, flaked into hot pasta drizzled with olive oil and topped with Parmesan. Somewhere there’s a book on all the things you can do with tuna.

For tuna salad, because the chunk meat is fairly solid, I give it a whirl in the blender, for an even, flaked base for my salad. Friends said it would just turn to mush, but it honestly doesn’t if you drain it properly.

To one 7 oz. can tuna, flaked, I add:

Juice of one lemon
2 chopped scallions
A squirt of anchovy paste (gives it a tang—careful or you’ll end with anchovy salad)
Just enough mayo to bind—start small and add more if you need it. Jordan and I used to make tuna salad that swam in a soup of lemon juice and mayo, but we’ve gotten over that.
Serve chilled if possible.

I use variations on this formula for other salads. For salmon salad, I skip the blender. Salmon is softer and flakes more easily.

In addition to lemon juice and scallions, I add finely diced cucumber.
And then the mayo.

For ham salad, I buy a slice of boiled ham between ¼ and ½ inch think, cut it in chunks, and flake it in the blender. (I buy a French ham called, in French, Three Pigs—mild and good.)

Add diced scallions and chopped celery to taste
A good squirt of yellow salad mustard
Mayo to bind

I don’t make chicken salad as often, and I’m not sure why. But when I do, I flake the cooked chicken. It’s easy to put a boneless half chicken breast in an oven-proof dish, cover with salt, pepper, and sliced onion rings, put foil over the top, and bake at 325 for half an hour or so until done.)

Cut down on the lemon, using maybe half a lemon
2 chopped scallions
Equal parts sour cream and mayo to blend
Plenty of salt and pepper, which the other salads don’t seem to require.

Egg salad for one

Two-hard boiled eggs—I discovered recently that one of my sons, who eats a lot of hard-boiled eggs, didn’t know to peel them under cold running water. Makes it so much easier. Dice eggs and mix with
Chopped scallions and diced cucumber
Squirt of yellow salad mustard
Mayo
Salt and pepper to taste

My idea of heaven is to  have one of the above every day for lunch—not in a sandwich but on a salad plate.

 

Summertime, and the eatin' is light

My idea of a great summer lunch!

In summer, I love salads--no, not tossed green salads, though I like those too--but tuna, chicken and ham salad. I have pretty much a standard recipe, with variations depending on the meat. Here's what I do:

Tuna salad: I used canned albacore that I order from the Pisces fishing company. A husband-and-wife team catch their own tuna, without nets so that dolphins swim alongside the boat. Then the tuna is canned--cooked once, in the can, instead of the usual twice, no preservatives. The result is a wonderful, mild chunk tuna. I whirl it in my counter-top blender to shred it, add the juice of one good-sized lemon--if you don't have a juicer like this, get one. You'll be amazed at how much juice it extracts

Then add two or three chopped scallions, including part of the green tops, and a generous squeeze of anchovy paste. (Don't tell you you don't like anchovies--you won't taste them directly, but it gives it  a great zing). Finish with just enough mayo to bind--better to be cautious at first and then add more if you want. What you don't want is soupy tuna salad. The picture above is tuna on a half avocado, with grape tomatoes and lightly sauteed asparagus.

Ham salad: I buy a slice of ham at the deli counter, between 1/4 and 1/2 inch thick. Ham comes in pretty good-sized slices, so 1/2" gives you a lot of ham salad. I prefer a milder, boiled ham for this rather than a salty one. Again, whirl in the blender, add two or three chopped scallions and some chopped celery. Add plain old salad mustard to taste (I don't like too much) and enough mayo to bind.

Chicken salad: You can us poached, oven roasted, grilled, whatever. The other night I used a half breast that I had grilled with a white marinade--mayo, vinegar, etc. (Not sure I'd like bbq chicken with traditional bbq sauce in this.) Dice fairly small, add the juice of  half a lemon, scallions and celery, mayo to bind--and then blend in crumbled blue cheese. Delicious!

I ate dinner out almost every night this past week, so I decided on Friday and Sunday this weekend I would cook a good dinner just for me (I so often have Sunday night company), and I'd fix new recipes. On Friday night, I tried scallop and asparagus kebobs on the indoor grill--I think the outdoor grill would just have made it worse. I had bought slim, tender asparagus rather than the thick stalks--every time I tried to put a skewer through one, it split; I ended sauteeing them in a bit of olive oil with light salt; following instructions, I brushed the scallops with "herb-infused" olive oil--that means I put some basil and thyme in a bit of olive oil and let it sit all afternoon. I used medium sea scallops and threaded them evenly, but they kept sliding around on the skewers to I never got good char marks on any part. Yet it was plain they were cooked--you can tell by feel--and if I didn't take them off, they'd get rubbery. Good, but next time I'll stick to my tried and true method of sauteeing and get a little brown crust on them.

Tonight's experiment was better. I poached a piece of salmon (bigger than I wanted) in water and wine with basil, peppercorns and a bit of salt. I'm discovering this is my favorite way to cook salmon--never comes out overdone or dry. Then I chilled it. Tonight I added juice of a lemon, 1 Tbsp. olive oil, chopped cherry tomatoes, just a bit of cilantro, pepper, and a pinch of cayenne. Mixed it all up and let it chill for an hour. Good but not the best I've ever eaten. The finished product needed more salt. Maybe the best part of the meal was the half zucchini I grilled on the indoor grill. That may become one of my favorite foods this summer.

Happy summer cooking.

Hardly Homemade

My guest blogger today is Polly Hooper, a member of my memoir writing class and a neighbor. From the goodies that Polly has brought to our class meetings, I know she means what she says aboiut delicious but hardly homemade food.

Semi-homemade may be trademarked by a television personality on the food channel but it could be my mantra.  Don’t get me wrong, I am a decent cook and loved cooking all day to prepare a special meal when I was much younger.  I got my own apartment at nineteen after landing my first decent-paying full time job and decided to have my family over for dinner.  I had never cooked an entire meal in my life, but how hard could it be?  I settled on sweet and sour pork.  I had ordered it at a restaurant recently and was sure it was the meal to impress my guests.  My roommate was from Mexia, Texas—a real farm girl who was raised to cook for her many younger siblings.  She found me distraught in our kitchen when she came home late from a date.  I was attempting to carve a raw pork roast into cubes to dredge in flour and fry.  I had a dull knife and a hunk of meat with some fat and gristle that would not budge.  I had carved some interesting pieces—thankfully Mae caught me just in time.  She took over with a different knife and made short work of cutting nearly perfect cubes.  Heading off to bed, she issued a stern warning about making sure the grease wasn’t too hot and said she had better not find flour and grease all over the kitchen in the morning.  Crisis averted!   The meal turned out fine if not a gourmet wonder, but I learned to be better prepared and start my cooking career with some simpler dishes.

These days although I still love good tasting and beautifully prepared food, I have so many other interests I just can’t spare the time.  So, I take shortcuts like most of us do in the twenty-first century.  Rotisserie chicken from the grocery store?  Check.  Deli prepared sides from Central Market? Check.  Restaurant takeout for the main course of a dinner party?  Check! Check!  Give me easy four or five ingredient recipes and carefully selected items to save me time, and I am a genius in the kitchen.  Well, that may overstate it a bit.

My four sisters and I frequently share recipes in our daily emails, and sometimes we include pictures.  One sister copied this idea from a catered event she hosted and now it is my special appetizer too.  Go to Costco and buy marinated mozzarella balls and some cherry tomatoes, getting the red and the yellow if available.  Stop by the grocery store and pick up some fresh basil and the party store for toothpicks with frilly ends. 

Bite Size Insalata Caprese

Tub of Costco’s marinated mozzarella balls

Fresh basil
Cherry tomatoes
Cut each tomato in half and place one half the toothpick.  Add one mozzarella ball and a folded basil leaf, ending with the other half of the tomato. Be sure to arrange them on your serving dish with all the frilly ends going the same direction.  These should be made right before you plan to serve as they are best served at room temperature and tomatoes don’t fare well when refrigerated.

 So yummy.  Add a bowl of hummus, some pita chips, the adult drink of your choice, and you have a party! 

One of my favorite go-to recipes involves buying prepared Rotisserie Chicken Salad from Costco(again! I wish they would put one on my side of town!).  I also buy a bag of dried cranberries, some celery, and pecans.

Sour Cream Cranberry Chicken Salad with Pecans

Rotisserie Chicken Salad from Costco (1 clear clamshell container)

1 bunch of celery finely chopped
½ cup chopped pecans
1 cup dried cranberries
Sour cream to taste
Mix all ingredients and chill.  Line a platter with lettuce leaves and place the chicken salad on top to serve.

It is a hit every time.  I like to serve it with fruit I buy already cut up and a green salad.  Actually Costco also has a delightful spinach salad kit that gives you no reason to make your own but you should use only use half the dressing they provide.   Voila!  A summertime meal in very little time.  When it is my turn to host Bunco or Pokeno, I am ready!