Caviar and Codfish

I’ve been eating a lot of tuna salad lately.  Mostly for lunch, though occasionally for breakfast instead.  I’m not sure this is a good thing, given the mercury and the fact that I’ve begun a diet and it’s not exactly a waist-friendly lunch, but I’ve also been working out good and hard at the gym and may even go to a meditation class tonight (to clear my head of this mercury, I hope) so it all evens out.

And it’s really just too good to give up.  In it, there’s a homemade spinach pesto that I made the other night for a mozzarella salad; pesto is one of those ingredients that you forget how valuable it is until you make up a batch, then realize you can make miracles out of any ol’ sandwich, or salad, or egg, or anything for that matter—homemade pesto is what miracles are made of.

And this pesto is so easy, and imprecise, that you don’t need a recipe.  Take a few handfuls of fresh spinach, locally grown if you can find it (and I know you can in New Jersey), zap it in the microwave for about a minute, then squeeq out all the water you can to make it as dry as possible.  Now throw that in the food processor with a small handful of pine nuts, another small handful of roughly chopped parmigiano cheese, and a grating of lemon zest.  Whirl it up and once it’s starting to meld, drizzle in some olive oil until you get a smooth paste.  Season with salt and pepper and ta-da: delicious.

Now that you’ve got the pesto, anything’s possible.  I’ll give you my example of goodness, because I’m quite fond of it—tuna pesto sandwich with radishes and avocado—but please do send me some of yours.

Tuna Pesto Sandwich

serves 2

• 1 can tuna, preferably sustainably-caught and packed in oil
• 1 heaping teaspoon homemade spinach pesto (see above)
• 2 teaspoons mayonnaise
• 1 teaspoon pickle relish
• small handful of radishes, sliced thinly and roughly chopped
• half an avocado
• 4 slices grainy bread

In a medium bowl, combine tuna, peso, mayonnaise, relish, and radishes.  Season to taste with salt and pepper. Mound tuna salad on two slices of bread.

Scoop out the avocado flesh from the peel and mash it into a paste.  Slather avocado on other two slices of bread.  Create two sandwiches with both a tuna and avocado half.  Eat up.