Tuna Melt
Of course, one very good thing to do with homemade english muffins is to make sandwiches. And one very good sandwich to make, in particular, is a tuna melt.
I should explain something here: I’m particular about my tuna melts. I don’t want them to be unbalanced, and I want my cheese to be assertive, yet not overpowering. Overall, as with any other dish, I want the ingredients to harmonize nicely in every bite I take, so that the full-on choral blast echoes throughout my mouth.
I like a good mixture of textures, too. You could, of course, make this with fresh (cooked) tuna, as well. But here’s what I usually like to do…
Tuna Salad
INGREDIENTS
- 1 can of your favorite tuna, drained well. 1
- 1 tbsp sugar
- 2 stalks of celery, chopped fine
- 3 tbsp mayonnaise (reduced fat is fine), plus more as needed; can also substitute 1/2 mayo and 1/2 ricotta cheese if you like, which is also delightful
- Salt and pepper TT
- 1 tbsp fresh parsley, or basil, or other beautiful fresh herbs, chopped fine (optional)
PREPARATION
Stir all ingredients together. Taste. Adjust seasonings as necessary until satisfaction with finished product is reached. Serves two very hungry people with open-faced sandwiches with both halves slathered in salad, or four moderately hungry people. Or two moderately hungry people who want leftovers for tomorrow’s lunch.
To make a tuna melt, slather your muffin halves (or bread) with enough tuna salad to cover. If you like it thick, lay it on thick. If not, don’t. Top with cheese of your choice.2 Lay aluminum foil across your broiler pan and place sandwiches on the foil. Stick under the broiler in your oven and keep an eye on it; the cheese will melt, bubble, and begin to brown quite quickly, and you’ll be very sad if these burn. Remove from oven when the cheese has melted and they’ve browned to your liking. Serve immediately.
- If you don’t have a favorite, choose a good-quality one packed in water. Not oil. I’m not responsible for what may happen if you choose one packed in oil. [↩]
- I like a nice sharp cheddar, or colby jack, or gruyere (which is cheating, as it’s nearly perfect any time). Or smoked gouda. I also like to shred the cheese, but you may just wish to place thin slices on top. Either way will work, but make sure if you do slice it you do it THINLY. [↩]
Day Thirty-Four: Naan
Naan is pleasant enough in itself, and of course it’s a brilliant conveyance for the cuisine with which it’s usually served. And it’s incredibly simple to make. Like many flatbreads, it’s immensely rewarding for relatively little effort, and even when it’s quite brown on the outside, it’s still soft and tender on the inside, which is lovely.
Don’t worry about toasting the cumin before adding it to your dough; the way these are prepared will toast the cumin right inside the bread for you, which is very nice. There’s something incredibly soothing about preparing these, although I couldn’t say what exactly.
You’ll want to use a flat-bottomed pan for this, or one with very, very gradually sloping sides. Do not, under any circumstances, try to use a wok, even a flat-bottomed one. A griddle would also be a good choice for this bread. It will puff up with bubbles as you cook it, in a similar way to pitas and roti. When it starts to bubble, it’s time to flip it over.
At the end, you’ll have a stack that looks somewhat like this. They’ll keep each other warm, and if you have leftovers, they reheat very well in the oven and are best served warm…although they’re really just good in general, so if you can’t wait to eat them, I understand. 
Of course, since I made naan, I had to make naan pizza1. Our favorite toppings for it are usually fresh mozzarella, sliced roma tomatoes (or whatever’s ripe and beautiful), and fresh basil. In this case, the topping differs slightly and is bruschetta-like…but with fresh mozzarella, parsley and cilantro as well. All of it plays off the cumin essence of the naan and it’s quite delicious, I assure you. Stick the naan with its toppings under your broiler for a few minutes (just until the cheese melts) and you’ll have yourself a winner.
- thank you, Nigella! :9 [↩]
Day Nineteen: Pain sur Poolish
We had exciting dinner plans yesterday, so it was of paramount importance that I choose a bread that would go well with them. Floydm’s recipe for pain sur poolish seemed like just the thing. I could have broken it into smaller loaves, but I really wanted one big crusty loaf, so I didn’t.
It’s a simple recipe, really, made tastier by fermentation. María Grever and Stanley Adams probably weren’t considering bread when writing “What a Diff’rence a Day Made,” but it makes all the difference here.
I stuck a couple of glass baking dishes filled with water in my oven along with this loaf as it baked, in an attempt to keep the crust from becoming too hard. It seems to have succeeded, although the bottom crust is still a little harder than perhaps would be optimal. I set the oven for 400F for 20 minutes, increasing to 25 to make sure the top was a nice, golden brown.
No problems with underbaking here, as some people have reported experiencing when they’ve tried to do a batch of this as a larger loaf. Next time, though, I might let it sit a little longer…the flavor is good, but it’s still not as good as that no-knead bread I made a couple of weeks ago. Which, in a way, is kind of frustrating, and yet kind of beautiful…by doing less, you obtain more. Simple really is best.
Which brings me to…dinner! What was this bread accompanying, you ask? You can sort of see it in the background of the photo above. There’s a plate of something that’s on the table behind the bread that’s a bit of a blur. Here’s a clearer shot at it.
Goat cheese ravioli with a roasted red pepper and balsamic vinegar sauce. Homemade pasta is actually very simple—provided you have a good, working pasta machine. You could do it the exceedingly traditional way, of course, using a rolling pin and your hands, but most people are pretty daunted by that idea and/or don’t have time. Once you know what you’re doing with a pasta machine, it’s simple math: 1 large egg for each 100 gr. of flour (with slightly more needed for kneading and dusting as you put it through the various settings on your pasta machine). Make your pasta even better by using tipo 00 flour if you can find it; you’ll definitely notice a difference. From there, the sky is the limit. All the neat shapes you ever dreamt of, all the interesting fillings…you can do it all.
What it all comes down to is this: I didn’t ever give up playing with Play-Doh. I just moved up to something that was not only non-toxic, but actually quite tasty to eat.
Janaki
