Ladies and Gentlemen, We Have a Winner!

Above you see the Nicoise-Inspired Tuna Salad. It might need a sexier name; it is definitely a sexy salad.

The Details

Dressing:
Make a red wine vinaigrette by mixing dijon mustard and red wine vinegar. Add three times as much oil as vinegar. Add vinaigrette to yogurt. Add more vinegar or oil as needed, chopped dill and garlic cut at a medium chop. Set aside.
Salad:
Roast 2 potatoes, cut into chunks. Pit and roughly chop 5 Kalamata olives, and add to potatoes. Also add 1 can tuna packed in oil, about 2 t. capers, 2 stalks chopped celery, and 1/2 c. crumbled manouri cheese. Toss in dressing.
To Plate:
Mound salad in shallow salad bowl, topping with more manouri and a dill sprig.


The Review:
I really like making what I unattractively call meat salads. As you'll see below they're incredibly adaptable to what's on hand. This particular one generally gets made in some form or the other every couple of months, but thus far this is my favorite rendition. I had most of the ingredients for a nicoise salad on hand, but the olives were Kalamatas, and I had Greek cheese, plus some dill laying around. I could have probably used more of the really flavorful ingredients: the kalamatas, capers, and dill were very tasty, and I limited their use out of economy. The cheese was creamier than I'd expected, so unless I find a big chunk, it's a very minor player. Feta or another sharper cheese could help this out. Tuna and potato do the usual good job of demonstrating why they belong together. Celery was another "I might as well use it" ingredient, but injects a nice "crisp" flavor and texture in an otherwise creamy salad.

What could have been done differently?
First, the aforementioned feta. Chicken could probably have been used, though I like the tuna a lot. Some spicy greens or even a mesclun mix would be very good as well, and red onions would do just fine. A lemon-juice dressing would have been more authentic, and oregano could be added or substituted. You could even add peperoncinis if you felt the need, but I don't have any particular love for them.

About the ingredients:
Oil packed tuna is now available canned from most of the major brands. It's nothing like imported, but it's also about a quarter of the price and still retains its shape. I think the flavor is better too, but my disdain for water-packed tuna stems more from an aversion to eating things that look like cat food. Tuna need not be an expensive ingredient, and it's pretty good for you.
Capers and fresh herbs are expensive however, unless your herb garden in January includes a functional dill plant (doubtful). It drives me nuts the prices charged by major supermarkets for bagged herbs. They're 1/4-1/2 the price at the farmers' market, but that's the farmers' market and that takes effort I'm not willing to expend after a day of class.