Table & Travel

Canned tuna was a sta­ple in our house when I was grow­ing up and tuna sand­wiches have always been a favorite of mine. We always had cans of Stark­ist, packed in oil, that mom would mix with may­on­naise and spread on white bread for sand­wiches. As the mer­cury prob­lem raised its head, these sand­wiches became more occa­sional and I switched to the tuna packed in water and later the bags that seem to have a fresher tast­ing produce.

 The best, or at least most mem­o­rable tuna sand­wich I ever had, was in 2004 in the Ital­ian vil­lage of Rosia. Vicki and I had been out explor­ing and stopped at a restaurant/bar in this lit­tle town to have a snack. We decided to order a tuna sand­wich, “sand­wich de tonno,” which was pre­pared for us by a very chatty lady behind the bar who enjoyed using her halt­ing Eng­lish on the Amer­i­cans. The results were fan­tas­tic, large pieces of tuna on focac­cia, drip­ping with olive oil and pun­gent with the fla­vor of capers. We still talk about that won­der­ful sandwich.

Recently the Food & Wine sec­tion of the Sun­day San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle had sub­stan­tial arti­cle on tuna salad, which pre­sented var­i­ous styles and recipes. I decided to try the Fen­nel  & White Bean Tuna salad, which was made of of fen­nel, onion, and oil-packed tuna, mixed with may­on­naise, white beans, and a splash of red wine vine­gar. It was really excel­lent, crunchy and creamy at the same time, with a nice blend of fla­vors and a lit­tle kick from the red wine vine­gar and the capers I added. I went well with the slices of Whole Food’s sour dough.

I bought most of the fix­ings for the tuna salad at Whole Foods. I was look­ing for a can of Dave’s Gourmet alba­core, which had led the pack in a tuna-packed-in-oil tast­ing in the Chronicle’s F&W sec­tion last Novem­ber. Unfor­tu­nately, they didn’t have any so I set­tled on a Sicil­ian import, Flott Solid Light Tuna in pure olive oil. I found it a lit­tle heavy and would like to try the same recipe again with Dave’s.

Fen­nel & White Bean Tuna Salad

Serves 2 to 4, or enough for 4 sandwiches

Crunch comes from fen­nel and red onions in this Italian-inspired tuna salad. Serve it on toasted coun­try bread or over a pile of lightly-dressed arugula.

2 (5-ounce) cans oil-packed white tuna
1/3 cup small-diced fen­nel
1/3 cup small-diced red onion
1 table­spoon capers, drained
3 table­spoons minced pars­ley
1/2 cup canneds­mall can­nellini beans, rinsed and drained
1/3 cup may­on­naise
1 table­spoon red wine vine­gar, + more to taste
– Kosher salt and ground black pep­per, to taste

Drain the tuna, and flake lightly with a fork in a bowl. Add the fen­nel, onion, pars­ley, capers, and beans and gen­tly mix. Fold in the may­on­naise and red wine vine­gar until well com­bined, then sea­son to taste with salt and pep­per. Add more vine­gar if desired. Refrig­er­ate until ready to serve.

For about three months now I’ve been mak­ing my own bread. The recipe I’m using is from a book called, Arti­san Bread in Five Min­utes a Day: The Dis­cov­ery that Rev­o­lu­tion­izes Home Bak­ing (St. Martin’s Press, 2007). The clunky title is some­what mis­lead­ing, because it doesn’t really take five min­utes, more like an hour and fif­teen min­utes, but most of this time is inac­tive. The premise of the book is that it’s pos­si­ble to make bread with­out all the knead­ing and ris­ing needed to make a tra­di­tional loaf. You sim­ply stir yeast with warm water,  mix with flour, then let the whole thing rise for 2–3 hours. The dough, which is quite sticky, is stored in a con­tainer in the refrig­er­a­tor. When you’re ready to bake it, you remove a chunk of the dough, sprin­kle flour on the top of it, shape the loaf, and pop it into the oven for thirty min­utes. The orig­i­nal recipe calls for 6 1/2 cups of unbleached flour, but I’ve been mak­ing the “Euro­pean Peas­ant Loaf” by sub­sti­tut­ing a half-cup of both whole wheat and rye flour.

 Being a tra­di­tion­al­ist I must say that I feel I’m some­what cheat­ing, but it makes a good loaf of bread and I’ve been enjoy­ing it. Vicki, who makes bread the tra­di­tional way, thinks it’s pretty good also. The authors of the book, Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François, have just come out with a new book, Healthy Bread in Five Min­utes a Day: 100 New Recipes Fea­tur­ing Whole Grains, Fruits, Veg­eta­bles, and Gluten-Free Ingre­di­ents—they love long titles. There’s also another new book out on no-knead bread, My Bread, by Jim Lahey of the Sul­li­van Bak­ery in Man­hat­tan. His recipe has been quite the rage ever since NY Times food writer Mark Bittman wrote about him in 2006. There’s no knead­ing, but his bread rises for about twenty-four hours before it  is cooked in a heavy pot. Reviews I’ve read about this recipe rave about the qual­ity and tex­ture of bread made this way. Maybe I’ll give it a try one of these days.