Memories make for happiness, and food is a part of that. I was seated on a plane next to a woman from Louisiana who was flying home to visit her grown children for Mother’s Day. She told me she had put in her order: a tuna sandwich with a side of potato chips. She said it was one of her favorite things and that she preferred it to a rushed lunch at a restaurant on Mother’s Day. It’s one of my mom’s favorite sandwiches too, so for this salad I’ve moved beyond the simple lunch sandwich and added fresh dill. I serve it stuffed in roasted baby sweet peppers to make it the perfect finger food.
Roasted Sweet Peppers
1 pint mini sweet peppers
½ teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil
¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
Tuna Salad
2 (5-ounce) cans tuna in water, drained
4 tablespoons mayonnaise
¾ teaspoon fresh lemon juice
⅜ teaspoon finely chopped fresh dill
⅛ teaspoon cracked black pepper Fine sea salt, to taste
3 tablespoons very finely chopped cucumber
2 large hard-boiled eggs, finely grated
To make the peppers, preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Toss the sweet peppers with the olive oil on a baking sheet until coated. Sprinkle the salt over the peppers. Bake for about 15 minutes, until the peppers are slightly blackened and tender, turning halfway through the baking time. Let cool to room temperature.
To make the salad, in a medium bowl mix together the tuna, mayonnaise, lemon juice, dill, and pepper. Add the salt to taste. Fold in the cucumber and eggs and serve or chill until ready to serve. To serve, stuffed in the peppers, make a slit in the peppers lengthwise. Carefully remove the seeds. Transfer the peppers to a serving plate and spoon some of the salad into each pepper.
Makes 4 servings.