A Seat-of-the-Pants Salad

Sometimes life is salad-unfriendly. We manage to make do.

White beans! Artichokes! Tuna! With a lemon-anchovy vinaigrette!

HERE IS THE TRUTH: I’m a bit at sixes and sevens. I’m still in Virginia, attending to some issues that have kept me out of the kitchen and in the car. We’re still having cold snaps here, so the herbs aren’t coming up at a rate I find acceptable. And the boys in the lab are still at indoor pickle ball camp, preparing for another rabidly competitive summer season in Sandy Springs, Georgia, where I live (for now). Plus, they’ve unionized, so apparently that means I have to start paying them in American dollars rather than pink and blue Monopoly money. 

The problem with any of this for the most part is that I’ve been away from my favorite grocery store, Dekalb Farmers Market, which has hot and cold running salad ingredients whenever I want them. It’s my idea of heaven on earth (after a pre-pandemic air-conditioned movie theater in summer with a big popcorn, of course). 

I am aware that as a salad newslettrist, I am every bit as rabid about salad as the boys are about pickle ball, but it’s not like I can’t remember my life before the DOS: going to the grocer with a dish in mind, being unhappy with the produce, and having to completely change my plans for supper. 

For instance, after I moved from New York to Chicago I discovered there was no basil at the grocer near my apartment twice in one week. I asked the produce guy about it and his response was: “People keep asking me why there’s no basil. But we can’t just stock nothing but basil!”

I was so shocked by his response that I wrote something about it.

Me. Not really. (Getty Images)

No Basil: A One Act Play, by William Shakespeare (Not Really)

(Chicago, Treasure Island grocery store, a weeknight)

Emily Nunn: Have you any basil?

Produce Man: No! Please leave us!

 (She exits)

CURTAIN

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Obviously, Chicago has great grocery stores; you have to make an effort in any city and not simply patronize the first one you reach when you roll out of bed. And you can get basil here in Galax, of course. If you have the time, especially in summer, farm-fresh produce and meats are here for you. There used to be a man who parked his truck near the former day-old bread place to sell baskets of gorgeous strawberries. It’s good to keep an eye peeled. But in general, forget sun-dried tomatoes or radicchio or endive. I come here not to drag my hometown, which I love to pieces, but simply to express some recent frustrations. I hope you’re getting the picture.

So! I over-shopped a bit recently when I was in Winston-Salem, N.C., where there was a Harris-Teeter and a Trader Joe’s within a few blocks of where I had to be. 

Me, loading up my bounty from Harris Teeter and Trader Joe’s.

I was careful not to stock up on perishables, since I’m not sure how long I’ll be here. Let’s face it: perishables are delicious. But I wanted salads I could leave on the doorstep of a neighbor who has been especially sweet the last couple of weeks (and when I’m not here, too).

I’ve got a bit of experience in pantry cooking—honestly, I grew up in the seventies so you could say I excel at it—so I grabbed some favorites: white beans, frozen and canned artichokes, capers, anchovies, expensive oil-packed tuna in jars, inexpensive tuna in cans, sun-dried tomatoes. I can’t resist pretty chicories so I bought a small head of radicchio and a trio of small endives, along with lemons, of course. As I have said here before, many times, I don’t feel safe unless I have too many lemons. 

I haven’t been home in a while. When I get back I expect to find that all my security lemons and limes have rotted.

The salad I have for you today is a riff on one of my emotional and physical survival dishes, something I used to eat when I was finishing my book, The Comfort Food Diaries, on a nightmarishly tight deadline, with neither the time nor the will to shop for fresh food.

I’d asked for an extension on my manuscript deadline, but a month before the whole thing was due the editor who bought the book on spec (and told me I was the biggest talent blah blah blah) decided that not only did she no longer even want the book but that I was the worst writer ever born who was not even capable of writing a book at all. Killing my book is what she was talking about, and it meant I’d have to give back my advance, which was mostly spent, and feel the kind of molten-hot writer shame that extinguishes our dignity and our will to write. 

It turned out that, contractually, you can’t kill a book before its deadline, just the writer’s spirit. I had 30 days until the manuscript was due, with only half a book written. I definitely wanted to give up. 

Luckily I have a wonderful agent and friend, Nicole Tourtelot, who reminded me that not only could I not give up but also that she’d murder me if I tried.

Also luckily: I had this crazy pantry salad to eat. 

I’d get up at about six in the morning to write, guzzling coffee until about 2 p.m., and then lunch would very often be a giant bowl of white beans, tuna, lemon juice and a bit of olive oil. Maybe that sounds awful to you, but I’d eat the whole thing, with lots of salt and pepper, and be revived. It was my reward for continuing. I did this every day for a month.

I hit my deadline, fueled by this paltry dish! So it has an extremely special place in my heart. It’s like my magical writing elixir. 

But now, today, I am no longer subject to the whims of book editors! I can spread my pantry-salad wings here. It’s still a pure pantry dish, but rather than a squirt of lemon and a rushed drizzle of olive oil, I’ve bathed my beans and tuna in a lemon anchovy vinaigrette, and added some other baubles that I just did not have time to think about back then. 

It’s such a delicious dish. It’s keeping me going. I hope it fuels something in you, too. 

*RECIPE: White Bean, Tuna, Artichoke, and Olive Salad, with Anchovy Dressing

🎵 These are a few of my favorite things! 🎶 🎼

Serves 4

For the Lemon Anchovy Dressing

• 6 anchovies, roughly chopped

• 1/2 cup olive oil

• 1/4 cup of lemon juice

• 1 clove garlic, grated

• Zest of ½ lemon

• 1 tablespoon capers (optional)

Place all the ingredients except capers in a bullet blender and process until well emulsified. Taste. Adjust lemon; you may want salt or capers or another anchovy. (I did not.) If so, add to blender and re-whizz all of it. If you want to do this dressing by hand, smash the anchovies to smithereens with a mortar and pestle, then whisk in the remaining ingredients. (You could also sub in anchovy paste.)

For the Salad

• 1 15.5-ounce can cannellini (or another white bean), rinsed and well drained

• 1 12-ounce package frozen artichokes, prepared according to instructions, very well drained, and cut into smaller pieces

• 1/3 cup black olives, chopped (I had Kalamatas—if you use stronger-flavored oil-cured olives cut the amount a bit)

• 1 6-ounce jar oil-packed tuna (I used Tonnino olive-oil packed filets), drained, broken into pieces (you’re not completely breaking it down like tuna salad; you want nice little chunks)

• Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

• Handful of chopped parsley, for garnish

• Lemon wedges for serving

Assemble the salad

In a large bowl, very gently toss together the cannellini, artichokes, and olives with about 1/2 of the dressing. Let this marinate for at least an hour, gently stirring once or twice. (You could also marinate it in the fridge overnight then bring it to room temperature before serving.) About 20 minutes before serving, add the tuna and gently toss again. Season with pepper. Serve at room temperature, garnished with chopped parsley and accompanied by lemon wedges, with the remaining dressing on the side.

White Bean, Tuna, Artichoke, And Olive Salad, With Anchovy Dressing

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