Sevillian Tuna Salad
I told you in my introduction how much I love to travel and taste local food. Some years ago, I had a great holiday in Andalusia with my hubby, and we spent some days in Sevilla.
Just crazy tourists like us, are going to Sevilla in August, because this is the hottest month of the year there. Spanish people try to go somewhere near beach, the city was almost empty. The temperature was about 40°C, but we had a big bottle of water in our hands, and we wore straw hat and enjoyed the atmosphere of this beautiful city without big masses of tourists. We walked a lot and stopped to drink a nice cold Spanish beer sometimes, or to eat a fresh salad. Nobody wants to eat very heavy food in that hot weather and restaurants offer a variety of very nice salads. This is one of them. I share a very easy, fresh, light tuna salad recipe with you. I learnt to make this in one of Sevilla’s small restaurant after a long walk.
Whenever I’m served a very delicious meal at a restaurant, I’m curious to know as much as possible about it so I can reproduce it. I regularly ask the waiters how it is prepared and many times I end up in the kitchen, despite the language barrier we find a common language in food and suddenly we understand each other. I bring home special memories from my trips, these are feelings, flavors, spices and I take lots of pictures of course.
If you make marinated paprika in advance, it will only take you 10 minutes to prepare it before serving. This is my suggestion for lunch on a hot summer day. I use crema balsamico in this recipe, something you can buy at any store but try Kyara’s homemade balsamic reduction, it is so good.
Sevillian Tuna Salad
Ingredients
- 4 bell pepper red or different colors
- 4 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
- 2 tbsp crema balsamico or balsamic reduction + extra to serve bought or homemade
- 1 tbsp honey
- 2 tin tuna in olive oil 140 gram each
- 2 tbsp caper + extra to serve
- 1 tbsp lemon juice + extra to serve freshly squeezed
- 4 little gem
- salt and pepper
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 200°C.
- Cut peppers stalk and stand bell peppers in a deeper ovenproof bowl. Drizzle a bit of olive oil and put them into the oven for 45-50 minutes until their tops are brown.
- Take baked peppers out from the oven, cover them and wait 10 minutes until a bit colder.
- Peel and seed peppers, but save all the juice from the peppers into a deeper bowl. Cut 1 cm wide strips.
- Make the marinade. Put balsamic vinegar, olive oil, crema balsamico, honey and ½ tsp salt and ½ tsp freshly ground pepper with the paprikas’ juice what we saved into the blender.
- Blend it for 40 seconds.
- Put the mixture back to the deeper bowl and add paprika strips into it. (You can use it immediately but its flavor will intensify over the next few days.)
- Pour out unnecessary oil from tuna tin and put the tuna into the bowl.
- Add caper, lemon juice, 2 pinches of salt and mix it.
- Wash and quarter each little gem.
- Place salad onto plates, spoon marinated bell peppers in the middle then place tuna to the top. (I use food ring to form the tuna mixture.)
- Drizzle salad with some drops of crema balsamico, drizzle tuna with a bit of lemon juice and decorate with some caper and lemon slices at the end.