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.