Tuna and Chickpea Salad

Here’s a quick and easy recipe that’s perfect for a summer weekday lunch – and you can probably make it with ingredients you already have on hand in your pantry! I also show you how to make a wonderfully light, delicious dressing using olive oil and lemon juice. Buon Gusto!
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Tuna and Chickpea Salad with Boiled Eggs

Watch me prepare Cannellini and Pancetta Bruschetta here – https://youtu.be/2fb-lWrM94s

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Tuna and chickpea salad. Here I am in my garden under the wine trestle. It’s a beautiful day and I don’t feel like cooking, but we have to eat lunch. So, a nice salad from the pantry. You know, sometimes recipes from the pantry could be as good or even better than cooked recipes. So, today we’re going to do chickpeas, some tuna, some celery, some olives, some eggs, and voila, some good wine, and we’re all set. So, let’s begin by making the dressing. Oil, of course. And some [Music] lemon juice. And I’m going to put some salt in here. Now, the dressing is ready. So, here we are. Let’s move on to the celery. Now a wonderful vegetable year round crunchy and the leaves you know I like to use the leaves too you see. So when I especially when I make a salad like that just wash it well and start from the top and go all the way down and just chopped red onion is great for salad sweet. It adds some color. And I like kind of half moons, you know. I don’t like it chopped fine. Uh just thin half moons like that. So it sort of spreads throughout the whole salad. Let’s see. So I think that’s enough of that. Scrape. Great when you’re chopping things to get them all together at once so you don’t spill them all over the kitchen like that. Okay, so that goes in there. Mhm. There we go. The chi. Now we have the chy beans. They’re cooked. These are canned chesches beans. I drained them. If you want to, you can soak them the night before and cook them. The canned ones are just as good. You know, this is a great recipe. Canned things work just fine. Canned tuna, canned chickpeas make a great salad. You’ll see. Olives. These are cherinola olives. The big olives. I kind of like to cut the meat, slice the meat right off the olive, the pit. I like them because they’re more tasty there that way. If you have olives, canned olives or whatever. Okay. But these are the best. Let’s put the whole thing in there. I put a little bit of salt. Some salt. So, I like a little bit, you know. I like it a little spicy. Let’s And this is a great salad as as is. I’m breaking up the onions. It looks inviting as it is. And here I’m going to add some tuna. And I like the Italian tuna. Uh not this the super white uh in water. I like it in oil. And I throw kind of chunks. you you kind of just break it up in chunks. You don’t want it the tuna to completely break up just like that. You know, Italians use a lot of tuna. Uh tuna comes into the uh uh Mediterranean through the straits of Gibraltara. They come to mate and so they pass Sicily. So Sicily has a great tuna fishing culture. They call them the tonare. So here we go. Mhm. I like chunks like that. All right. And now we’re ready to plate. Can you imagine how delicious this is going to be? A nice platter is good for this. I have the eggs. And I think the eggs sometimes you can just kind of throw them in there and toss them or you can decorate with them. I think I’m going to decorate this time uh with the eggs. Then I’m just going to cut them should I in half? Everybody can take half an egg and they’re fine. Just like that. Okie dokie. Just a little bit of salt on the eggs. And now [Music] m Oh, the bees. The bees. The bees know what’s good. They come and join us for lunch. You’re going to you’re going to get included in the salad if you don’t leave. Come on. Come on. Be are you leaving or what? Let’s go. Let’s go. I don’t want to cover it with it. Let’s go. Okay. Now, I wonder if she’s going to come back. I better start. Be quick about it. Oh, Lia’s playing. Oh, yeah. Okay, I’m looking for some tuna. Here is some tuna, some chickpeas. So, here we are. Oh, let’s put just the eggs. I’ll sew them in. [Music] Okay, let me taste this. M refreshing, crunchy, the celery, the olives, the sweetness of the onions, and of course the complexity of the tuna, and then the mellowess of the cheshi. It’s just so wonderful. But maybe, you know, what can I tell you? Just a little drizzle of oil on my eggs. Okay, well, we’re ready to bring it to the table and have lunch. So, Nona, Sunday, I remember in the courtyard by grandma, a good meal, a little bit of wine, and then people would sing. [Music] and under the shades here with a nice glass of white wine. I want you to join me and as we always say, as I always say, let’s go all and eat. Nice glass of white wine. Chin chin. And I’m waiting for you. Buseler was a small town. One road, houses on each side, 30, 40 houses. We were on the left side, the last house on the left side. And there was an entrance, a little stron to our little complex. You first went in. To the right was the garden that we shared. Further up, there was the porton, the entrance to our courtyard. And our courtyard with the big malbury tree in the middle and fig trees on the side shading all the houses was a row of little houses, one-story houses, uh, rocks and cement. And to the left there was the entrance to my grandfather’s house. Right, making a 90 degree angle was the house to his sisters, Sto. La Maria. To the left was Mateo’s house, and that was my grandfather’s brother. And on the right side there was the cantina. Of course, the water was outside so you can wash the vegetables. Then there was the kazetanera. And up a few steps was all the animals, all the coupe, the chicken coupe, the barn for the goats for the pigs, for the rabbits, and it was like a little zoo up there. I loved it. I used to go in the morning and uh feed them, feed the animal, feed the chicken. They would all come around and the ducks and the geese, everybody. It was like a big feast. They make a big feast around you. H and it was fun. early in the morning. First of all, you had to feed the animals and then we milk the goats. I had my cafe with the goat milk. It was uh a lot happening in that little square, at least for me at 10 years old. Canalini and panchetta brusqueta. [Music] Tuna and chickpea salad. [Music] The food from this series is all about reflecting and reconnecting. The recipes can be found in Lydia’s latest cookbooks, Feldyia, recipes from my flagship restaurant, a collection of restaurant inspired dishes for the home cook, available for $35. Lydia’s Mastering the Art of Italian Cuisine is available for $40. And Lydia’s Celebrate Like an Italian is available for $35. To purchase any of these cookbooks or order additional products, call 800play PBS or visit shop.pbs.org/ydia. To learn more about Lydia, access to videos, and to get recipes, tips, techniques, and much more, visit us online at lydasitilly.com. Follow Lydia on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram at Lydia Bastion.