Studio Living (1 of many)

Hi everyone. 

I've talked about tuna melts a few years ago, but I didn't put in a recipe for tuna salad, so I thought I'd add a supplementary post. Currently, I'm cooking for one, but I think this will scale pretty well. 

Our ingredients:

• 1 5-ounce can of your favorite tuna
• 2 Tablespoons mayonaise (if your tuna is packed in oil, you start with one)
• I Tablespoon finely chopped shallot (I'm going to use more next time. Onion will also work just fine here and I recommend a yellow one)
• 1/4 teaspoon celery seed
• 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
• 1 short fat bell pepper (I have a fondness for yellow or orange ones)
• 1/4 cup shredded or thinly sliced cheese (today's was an Italian blend because it's what I wanted to use up)
• 1/2 teaspoon of olive oil

Drain your tuna well, flake into a small bowl and mash with a fork (I usually use a salad fork for this, I find the shorter, thinner tines to be helpful) to separate the chunks. Add your shallot, spices and mayo, mash together until all the mayo and spices are well mixed. 

Set your oven to broil. If you store things in your oven because you have a tiny kitchen, take them out first. Don't ask. Put olive oil in an oven-safe pan or dish. I used a small Pyrex casserole dish (I was not paid to mention Pyrex, but will happily take money for it.)

Cut your bell pepper in half, scrape out seeds carefully. Don't take off the stem because it will help keep the filling in the pepper. Add your filling, then place on your baking dish or on a cookie sheet. One can of tuna fits pretty well in one pepper. Mash down as necessary. Top the tuna with the cheese. Check your text messages, slip on the wet floor when you go back in the kitchen and knock all the cheese on the counter. Yeah, that's a thing that happened, but I was able to rescue most of the cheese.

Put your dish in the center of the oven. Check after five minutes if you want the cheese gooey, about seven minutes if you want it brown and bubbly.

I served this on a bed of spinach because I'm always looking for ways to get more vegetables (you may be seeing this a lot in upcoming posts) and had a few crackers on the side. If you're making more, you can probably do half a pepper per person if you're serving soup or a full-blown salad, but I find this is a great as the star of the show.