Summer Lunch Week: Tuna White Bean Salad

Summer Lunch Week: Tuna White Bean Salad

I was evil in an ear­lier life. (If you have known me to be evil in this life, I’m sorry) It’s the only expla­na­tion for the fact that two weeks after return­ing from hol­i­day to find our air con­di­tioner non-functioning, that we still don’t have a/c. Lots of guys com­ing over to look at the unit, tak­ing it apart and mak­ing a mess of the place, a lot of head shak­ing and head scratch­ing, but fix­ing the damn thing? Not so much. And of course it all went down on the hottest days Toronto has seen in about a mil­lion years. I counted no fewer than five a/c repair vans on our street one day last week. I know these are first world prob­lems in the extreme but it was HOT last week. So hot. I couldn’t form another thought other than — My God, it’s so hot — all of last week. This woman became my best friend.

This week is bet­ter (and cooler) and I am allow­ing myself to hope that the fourth main­te­nance appoint­ment I’ve got booked for tomor­row will be the one to save us. Please send any spare good juju you’ve got my way. Mean­while I’m in need of meals that do not require the stove, the oven, or any heat source at all. This salad is per­fect for lunch or din­ner. It’s so sim­ple to make yet cre­ates a really sat­is­fy­ing salad. Esme and Julian are both start­ing to really come around to salad and this is full of many of their favourite ingre­di­ents. I don’t know how much we’ll like to eat this salad in the Arc­tic, where we’ll be mov­ing if our air con­di­tioner does not get fixed tomor­row, but I’ll keep you posted.

tunawhitebeansaladfeature

Photo by Maya Visnyei

Summer Lunch Week: Tuna White Bean Salad

Ingredients

  • 1 x 5 oz can of tuna
  • 1 x 15 oz can of can­nellini beans
  • 1/4 cup red onion, diced fine
  • 4 or 5 radishes, thinly sliced
  • 8 or so cherry toma­toes, cut in half
  • 1 bunch of arugula, washed, dried and trimmed
  • 2 hand­fuls of fresh basil, washed, dried and trimmed
  • 3 Tbsp lemon juice
  • 2 Tbsp olive oil
  • salt and pep­per to taste

Method

In a large-ish bowl, mix together the tuna, beans and onions. Whisk together the lemon juice and olive oil, pour it over your tuna and give every­thing a good mix. You don’t want to lose all the tex­ture of the tuna, so don’t over do it. Taste it and see if you’d like some salt and pep­per. That’s it — now put some cling film on the bowl and pop it in the fridge for a bit. If you don’t have time it’s no big deal but the salad will taste bet­ter if it’s had a chance to mar­i­nate for an hour.

Now it’s just an assem­bly job. You’ve got four plates. Lay out a hand­ful of greens on each plate, a scoop of tuna deli­cious­ness and then scat­ter toma­toes and radishes on top.

And serve with the good feel­ing that you have not turned the stove on.


Orig­i­nally posted July 22, 2013

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