do you ever just want to eat something so deliciously smelly that talking to anyone feels unnatural? and if you do choose to, make it someone who doesn't care you've got tuna face?* i do! all the time. which is why i love a good tuna melt. it's smelly, but its disguised in warmth and cheese, so you forget it's smelly until after you've enjoyed it — at that precious moment when you can't go back. it is at this point in tuna time that you feel satiated and particularly discerning as to who your true friends are i.e. ones who don't care that you've just eaten too much tuna. this is the magic of a tuna sandwich.
a wise friend of mine (hello alex berr) said to me via Instagram Direct Message, "i realized my favorite friends are those who eat canned fish" and attached a lo-fi selfie with an open-faced tuna melt, sweaty cheddar draped overtop, orange and melty. it resonated with me so very very deeply, so very deep in the pungent tunafish sea, that i decided this week's recipe would be a tuna melt.
*tuna face is when you have hot tuna breath and tuna fingers which directly result in tuna bits on your nose/cheek resulting in said tuna face.
not my mom's tuna melt, but still okay!
this recipe is not to be confused with my mom's much better recipe (i'll share it another day!), which incorporates finely diced yellow onion, an ingredient i forgot at the grocery store. this is a different, frankly less delicious approach with a lot more veggie ingredients to keep the tuna mixture interesting. if you like shrimp spring rolls, you'll like this vibe, especially if you want to cut down on the smelliness of tuna and ramp up the elements that are kinder to the sensitive belly and palate (think: cucumber and bell peppers and avocado).
you'll need
your choose of bread (seedy or rye)
2 cans of tuna (i used wild planet — albacore & skipjack.)
sharp cheddar cheese in the color orange, thx
1 heapin' tbsp capers
1 red bell pepper, chopped
3 small persian cucumbers, smashed with the heel of your hand and chopped (they're crispier and seedier and crunchier, which i like in a salad sandwich like this. smashing them breaks it up naturally before you chop it, allowing it to mesh with the tuna nicely.)
1/2 avocado
1 squeeze of lime
two very thick slices of ripe red tomato
Duke's mayo (or splurge with Kensington's —yum— if you're far from Duke's territory.)
a mixture of poppy seeds/sesame seeds/salt/blackpepper/dried onion flakes
on you go
broil cheddar cheese on two slices of your choice bread. do not let it reach the bubbly point or burn your toast, like i did. see above photo for what not to do!
mix two cans of tuna with a heaping tablespoon of mayo. when mixture appears even in color and consistency, stir in salt, pepper, poppy seeds, sesame seeds, and onion flakes to taste. fold in bell pepper, cucumber, and avocado (sliced/cubed and lime juice squeezed over top). fold in capers. you're done, and you'll have some tuna salad leftover!
sandwich together with tomato and melty, cheddar-y bread, and enjoy.
note: this would have been great with butter lettuce and yellow onion, had i had both of these things.
your workhorses
canned tuna | it's so cheap, and it lasts for - ev - er. if you always keep around some cans of tuna, you probably have the ingredients for tuna salad at any given moment. tuna face whenever you want to stave off the h8ers.
sharp orange cheddar | it's important to reserve yellow cheese for things like tuna melts and grilled cheeses, spiritually and aesthetically speaking.
soundbites
nytimes did a story — #thisis18 — on what it's like to be an 18 year old girl in 2018, and perhaps especially since cup of jo included it in her weekend roundup, a lot of ladies are talking about it. i'll warn that it scrolls through like a cut-and-paste collage, and i can't help but think of the "burn book" in mean girls, which is unfortunate. but ultimately there's a lot of tenderness in the questions, answers, and photos. as a 25-year-old adult woman who somehow already feels disconnected from the "younger generation" which isn't really that much younger than me — a strange, percolating affect of social media — it felt important to read. it did force me to remember what it's like to be young and feel ageless, simultaneously unsure and confident in any number of things all at once. it also forced me to feel admiration (rather than a big ole eye roll) for my past-self/past-friends/current roster of young-ish people. it's the same feeling i get from watching big mouth on netflix, which is by my own estimation the most delightfully good thing to come of tv streaming in 2018 (though i haven't yet finished watching samin nosrat's salt fat acid heat.)
the times editors asked each girl to share the last song she listened to. if you, like me, were an 18 year old girl once and can imagine being asked to share something so defining and revealing knowing that your answer was gonna be in the new york freakin' times, then you, like me, know at least 80 percent of these songs were fudged to be WAY cooler than they probably actually were. in any case, it's a great playlist.
and so, in lieu of the usual, a very small sliver of what being an 18 year old on this earth sounds like — or, at least, how this group wants us to imagine it — and isn't that just as significant?
this is 18:
on spotify
piece of power
roxane gay edited this year's best american short stories — here's her introduction.