Yummy Easy Tuna Thing

I made an easy yummy tuna pasta thing!

General Recipe Stuff

Preparation time – Approximately 25 minutes
Serves – 1 very hungry adult, or 2 as a goodly-sized snack

Ingredients

Yummy easy tuna thing - ingredients

+/-100g small pasta shapes (I used Gancetti Rigati [ridged hooks macaroni])

+/-185g tin of tuna (I prefer tuna in oil, but brine is fine too)

1 medium pickled gherkin or cucumber, diced (I used Polish ones)

Sweet red pepper, diced (I used half of a long pointy tasty Moroccan one I got at the Temple Bar Food Market)

Mayonnaise to taste (I used approx 2 tablespoons)

Optional – Ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce

Method

Boil pasta shapes until cooked (I find this usually takes 15-20 minutes)
Whilst the pasta is cooking, open and drain the tuna, empty into a large bowl and mush with a fork until it’s in tiny bits
Dice the gherkin and pepper and add to the bowl
Add a heaping tablespoon of mayonnaise – enough to cover tuna, diced pickle and pepper, and future pasta addingness
Mix well til everything’s all gloopy
If using, add a gludge of ketchup, a goodly slosh or two of Worcestershire sauce, and a dash or three of Tabasco sauce to taste
Mix til well blended (I like just enough ketchup to make the mayonnaise ever-so-slightly pink, about a rounded teaspoon’s worth)
When the pasta is done, drain and rinse well with cold water until cool
Add to the bowl and mix well (if you’ve been having a bad day, a vigorous stirfest can feel cathartic at this point)
Add more mayonnaise if needed and stir some more til desired gloop quotient is reached

Eat! :)

Creative Variativeness

Fennel (sort of anise-tasting celery)

The gherkins and pepper can be substituted or supplemented with any or all of the following:

Fennel
Celery
Parsnip
Sliced stoned olives (black and green are both equally good)
Fresh or roasted peppers of any colour

Daikon (a sort of mild radish)

Jalapeño peppers (pickled or not)
Blanched broccoli, carrots
Tinned or cooked-from-frozen sweetcorn
Tinned or cooked-from-frozen peas
Bits of cooked bacon (I prefer the smoky kind but unsmoked is good too – cheap ends of cooking bacon are perfect for this)
Thinly shredded daikon or radishes

This recipe is extremely versatile and can easily be modified anywhere from slightly to radically according to preference. The ingredients are cheap enough to experiment with, so feel free to try stuff out and be creative!