I know, I know. It’s not much of a stretch to come up with tuna salad from this, but the key here is that even something as simple as this can be a really great dish as long as a little care is taken with the preparation and using some really good ingredients. The key is the tuna, of course. If you can’t get your hands on any home canned stuff (I’m not sharing!), the next best thing is some very high quality tuna packed in oil preferably or water is alright too. There are a few brands of Italian tuna that can be had at some specialty stores. Also I know that Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s carry some pretty decent stuff. I prefer albacore for this, but yellowtail would be fine too. Whatever you do, stay away from any of the national brands and anything that isn’t labeled “solid white.” Light tuna is basically cat food. I’ve caught the fish that “light tuna” is made from (skipjack) and you can’t pay me to eat tuna fish made from them.

OK, so now that you’ve got your hands on some good tuna, press the oil out (don’t throw it away!) or drain the water (you can throw out the water). Put it in a bowl and very lightly break it up into small to medium sized chunks. You don’t want to completely decimate the tuna by mashing it up. Leaving it in chunks will let it mix with the salad better and give you good bites of tuna throughout. Mashing it into a paste will just give you tuna flavored lettuce. Season the tuna with a bit of salt and pepper then mix in a little mayo, a small splash of rice wine vinegar and just a pinch of celery seed. Tear your romaine lettuce into nice bite size chunks and get rid of the really big ribs. Toss those into the bowl and mix it up just a bit.

Now for the tomato. I prefer roma tomatoes. I think they have more flavor than most of the store bought globe type tomatoes, but go with what you like. Dice them up to about a 1/2 inch dice. Then season the tomatoes with a bit of salt and pepper. Chuck those into the bowl. Grab some green onion (or red onion) if you have it. Slice a bit of onion up (or dice very fine if you are using red onion).  That goes in the bowl. Finally get a couple ribs of celery. Give that a medium dice and put that in for some crunch and flavor.

If you have some of the tuna oil left over, you can put that in the bowl at this point, or just go with the dressing. I like ranch dressing for this, but not too much. I add a tablespoon at a time, toss it, taste it and then determine if I need to add more. Finally another small shot of cracked black pepper and it’s ready to go.

That’s it. Simple, but great. I sometimes am accused of over complicating meals, but here is one that is just super easy to prepare and comes out awesome.