The weekend meals: Cold Tuna Pasta

While spring-cleaning the kitchen pantry this weekend, I found a can of tuna and thought it would be quite a waste not to use it and also "Hmmm what can I make with this?" because Puppy doesn't like fish as much... as I do (duh).

Since we do have quite a bit of raw veggies stocked up, I was looking for a no-cook, no-brainer kind of food, I decided to make cold tuna pasta salad. This recipe is inspired from here, of course as usual, I modified it (to what I have in the kitchen and to my taste).

Since it's a cold (and can be warmed up) salad, not only is it a tasty snack, it's a great dish to make to bring to work as a healthy lunch too!

Ingredients are:-

• 6 cherry tomatoes
• 2-3 sticks of celery
• 1 carrot
• 1/4 green bell pepper
• 1 can of tuna
• Juice from half a lemon
• About 3 hands full of pasta
• Salt & Pepper to taste
• 1/2 cup of plain yoghurt (the one I have here in the pic is 135g so it's about 60g or so?)

Dice the cherry tomatoes, celery, carrot and bell pepper into cute little squares. Pop in the canned tuna - make sure you drain it properly though because the oil can make the dish a bit fishy. If you don't mind it by all means pour the whole can in! :)

Mix it up well and make sure you mash the tuna chunks up.

Squeeze in the juice of half a lemon. This helps to make it less fishy and gives it a nice tangy fresh taste!

While you're at it, boil a pot of water for the pasta. Add a small dash of olive oil and about 2 pinches of salt to it and follow the directions to cook the pasta.

I like using freshly ground black pepper. It really tastes better. This one from McCormick is pretty good but isn't refillable... still looking out for a good pepper and salt mill... If you do know of any, do drop me a note :)

Add some salt in. Don't pour in a lot. Sprinkle a little in, stir it up and taste. You don't want to end up with a super salty dish! Oh and it's better to use fine salt for this. I usually use chunky sea salt bits but since this is almost a no cook dish, you'll end up with salty chunks hidden somewhere in your salad and trust me... it's NOT a good surprise.

By the time you're done taste testing, your pasta should be pretty much done. Mine takes 10 mins to cook. When it's done, drain it and pour in into the tuna mix.

For most dishes like these, I like to use pastas like shells or spirals because then the yummy mix gets trapped in the pasta :P

Mix it well. I like to mix it while it's fresh off the stove because then the heat from the pasta kinda cooks the tuna mix a bit.

I used the spoon from the yoghurt cup and put in about 5 spoonfuls. That's roughly half a cup of yoghurt there. Most other recipes I saw online called for mayo instead but since I didn't have any mayo and thought that I should eat more healthy, I opted for yoghurt instead.

Mix well. You can add some more salt and pepper if you need.

p/s: Yeah I know the yoghurt looks kinda disgusting here :P

Pack it up into a container, seal tight and chuck in the fridge to cool!

It's as easy as that!

Happy cooking :)

xxx

Bunny