DAVE’S FAVORITE RECIPES

HAVE A RECIPE TO SUBMIT? WE WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU!

• 1-7.75oz. can of Dave’s Albacore
• 1 small head butter lettuce
• 1 cup cooked and cooled green beans
• 1 large tomato, cut into wedges
• 1 small red pepper, cored and sliced
• 1/2 cup thinly sliced red onions
• Vinaigrette:
• 3 tablespoon Olive oil
• 3 Tbsp. White wine vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
• 1 clove garlic, minced

Drain the albacore; set aside.
Wash and dry lettuce; arrange leaves on a large serving platter.
Toss together beans, tomato wedges, red pepper and red onion slices.
Arrange albacore on bean mixture.
Drizzle Classic Vinaigrette evenly over salad just before serving.
Makes 4 servings.

• 1-7.75 oz. can of Dave’s Salmon
• 1/4 cup finely chopped onion
• 1/2 cup Whole wheat bread crumbs
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
• 1/2 teaspoon rosemary, crushed
• 1/8 teaspoon pepper
• Vegetable oil
• Drain and flake salmon, reserving 2 Tbsp. of liquid.

  Combine salmon, onion, bread crumbs, egg, reserved liquid, lemon juice, lemon peel, and seasonings, mix well.
  Form into four or five patties.
  Pan fry in lightly oiled skillet for about 5 minutes or until lightly browned; turn halfway through cooking time.
  Makes 4 or 5 servings.
  *Choice of toppings-Sliced tomatoes, pickles, onions, cheese, mustard, catsup, mayonnaise, dressing, etc.

• 1 package soft cream cheese
• 1 6oz can Dave’s Smoked Albacore
• ¼ cup chopped green onion
• Chopped pecans (optional)
• Dill-pinch (optional)

In bowl, mix together cream cheese, 1 can Dave’s Albacore until very smooth. Add dill, green onion, and chopped pecans. Mix.
Spread on crackers or toasted bagels.

This dish is always a favorite at parties!

• 1 package soft cream cheese
• 1 6oz can Dave’s Smoked Salmon
• ¼ cup chopped green onion
• Chopped pecans (optional)
• Dill-pinch (optional)l

In bowl, mix together cream cheese, 1 can Dave’s Albacore or Salmon until very smooth. Add dill, green onion, and chopped pecans. Mix.
Spread on crackers or toasted bagels.

• 2 garlic cloves , minced
• 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
• 2-7.75oz cans Dave’s King Salmon
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 4 large flour tortillas or corn tortillas , whatever you prefer, burrito size is good
• 2 cups mozzarella cheese or Monterey jack cheese or Monterey jack pepper cheese , shredded

Sauté garlic in oil until tender but not brown. Stir in salmon, basil and pepper. Cook over medium heat until warm. (For one less pan to wash I sometimes do this in my microwave in a small glass bowl and it comes out great. Microwaves vary- mine only takes a few minutes- I start with the garlic and oil for about 30 seconds then add the rest.).

Meanwhile spread butter over one side of each tortilla. Place butter side down on griddle. Sprinkle each with 1/2 c cheese. Spread 1/2 cup of mixture over half of the cheese. Fold tortilla in half and cook for 1 to 2 minutes on each side or until golden brown.

Cut into wedges and serve.

Guacamole and sour cream make nice garnishes but these are great as is.

2 cups cooked rice
1 can each; refried beans, corn, Dave’s Albacore or
Salmon
1 medium onion, chopped
½ red bell pepper, chopped
Garlic to taste
½ cup grated cheddar cheese
½ cup grated Monterey Jack cheese
8 to 10 corn tortillas
1 can enchilada sauce
Mix first seven ingredients. Fill corn tortillas with mixture, roll up and place in a baking pan. Pour enchilada sauce over tortillas, sprinkle with cheeses and bake at 350 degrees for 20-30minutes.

Classic From a Can

By JULIA REED

When I was growing up, I knew tuna salad exclusively as that excellent mixture of water-packed white tuna, mayonnaise, hard-boiled eggs, onion, celery and sweet pickle that my mother made and that resided pretty much perpetually in our refrigerator. I ate it in the summers standing at the kitchen counter, in sloppy forkfuls straight out of the bowl. During the school year I toted it in my red plaid metal lunchbox, spread on white bread wrapped tightly in Saran Wrap and accompanied by a Baggie of Lay’s potato chips. I was almost 30 before I realized that tuna salad (the mayonnaise-based variety) existed in many other forms.

By then I’d moved to New York and gone to work at Vogue, where, in the pre-laptop days when I actually went to the office every day, I ate lunch at my desk. Imagine my surprise the first time I ordered tuna salad from Mangia, the upscale carryout and cafe on 48th Street that served as our canteen, when it arrived flecked with shredded carrots and dill. It was (and still is) delicious, and since then I have come to realize that Manhattan is a tuna salad lover’s paradise. There is the rather dry version containing nothing but capers at my neighborhood market, Butterfield, and the wet version with red onion at the stupendously wonderful Eli’s. I’ve had the lemon-and-dill tuna salad at Whole Foods, where even a version with cranberries (they must have had a lot left over after Thanksgiving one year) is growing on me. There is the one with light mayonnaise favored by the thin and gorgeous Vogue assistants at the Frank Gehry-designed Conde Nast cafeteria (since my office days, we’ve moved to Times Square), and the salad of canned smoked tuna that is one of no less than three versions offered in the cafeteria of this very newspaper.

Some versions are not so successful, however. I found a particularly revolting-sounding one in the cookbook published by the Assistance League of Omaha (inexplicably on my mother’s bookshelf) containing shredded zucchini, apples, Swiss cheese and chopped pecans. And the other day, in New Orleans, I bought a container with hidden chunks of cheddar, which is, I can now say with certainty, a disgusting idea (as opposed to melted cheddar on top of an open-faced tuna salad sandwich, which is a good idea and which makes it a tuna melt, but I’ll get to that in a minute).

Proof that Southern Junior League cookbooks are superior (and that Southerners like to put gelatin in almost everything) is furnished by the very good congealed tuna salads I have recently found in at least three of them. I can especially recommend the tuna salad mold topped with cucumber mayonnaise from ”Southern Sideboards” (Jackson, Miss.). If I were the kind of person who gave ladies’ luncheons, I would serve it, with homemade melba toast and maybe a fresh fruit salad on the side.

With the cheesy exceptions above, I am open to tuna salad in almost any form, but some people have extremely strong views on the subject. David Rosengarten, in ”It’s All American Food,” says the only tuna salad that really does it for him contains tuna, mayonnaise and occasionally some finely chopped celery, a mixture that is then ”beaten to a pulp,” in the style of old-fashioned New York delis (where, he correctly points out, the tuna salad resembles ”smooth tuna pate”). Also, it must be on soft supermarket white bread and, if possible, made a few hours ahead of time and wrapped in foil, ”so as to simulate the conditions of the sandwich that I carried to school in my lunchbox.”

I am fairly sure I won’t make Rosengarten’s version — he says he wants to eat it every time he returns from a foreign trip — but I understand his nostalgia. (His book, after all, is subtitled ”The Foods We Really Eat, the Dishes We Will Always Love.”) He is also nostalgic about the quality of canned tuna, a product that he says he feels is on a major decline. Among the mass-produced varieties, Rosengarten insists that albacore packed in oil has by far the most flavor and the best texture and further that the oil doesn’t alter the taste of the tuna salad. He says the brand closest to the canned stuff of his youth is Progresso tuna in olive oil. This will come as a big surprise to water-packed fans everywhere, including my mother. Perhaps they should try tuna packed in its own juices, a relatively new product from boutique canneries that have sprung up on the coast of Northern California and in the Pacific Northwest. Two brands Rosengarten recommends in his book are the Great American Smokehouse and Seafood Company’s Deluxe Albacore Tuna from Harbor, Ore. (www.smokehouse-salmon.com; [800] 828-3474) and Dave’s Homestyle Albacore Fillets from Santa Cruz, Calif. (www.davesalbacore.com; [888] 454-8862). He finds it ”too dry” to eat by itself. ”But when you whip it up with a whole lotta mayo, you get the best-textured, best-tasting tuna salad ever.”

Of course, you can go one better and make tuna salad from fresh tuna. This radical idea never occurred to me until I ate the amazing tuna club sandwich at the Union Square Cafe. This sandwich, on sourdough bread with arugula and crisp thick slices of bacon, is so incredibly good that it is now the only thing I order at the restaurant. The menu is full of many other fabulous offerings, but I can’t be tempted, and no wonder.

The tuna is cooked in a court bouillon until it is well done and flaky, so as to resemble an ultra-version of the stuff from a can. It is then mixed with a sort of ultra-mayonnaise (in the form of lemon-pepper aioli), along with onion, red and yellow peppers and herbs and spices. The result is not fussy and not overly ”gourmet,” and no single flavor overpowers the thing. Before I looked up the recipe in the restaurant’s cookbook, I couldn’t even isolate what made it so good. It simply tastes like the best old-fashioned tuna salad sandwich you’ve ever tasted, and certainly takes the ”I’ll-have-tuna-for-lunch” habit to new, highly satisfying heights.

Another great tuna sandwich is Rosengarten’s tuna melt on rye. He makes the salad with Hellmann’s, red onion, celery and lemon juice, updates the concept by adding thin-sliced avocado between the bread and the salad, and tops the whole thing with good quality grated sharp cheddar before running it under the broiler. If the Union Square’s sandwich is my new favorite lunch, Rosengarten’s melt is my favorite soothing supper. And of course, my mother’s tuna salad remains my favorite all the time.