The World Table

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Oregon · Main

Oregon Albacore Tuna Melt

  • Easy
  • 30 min
  • roughly 3 of 4 for cost

rich · briny · tangy-ferment Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a briny, maritime salinity, with a lingering ferment tang.

Ingredients

  • 400g cooked Oregon albacore tuna, flaked
  • 150g mayonnaise
  • 2 celery ribs, minced
  • 2 tbsp red onion, minced
  • 1 tbsp lemon juice
  • 1 tbsp capers
  • 8 slices sourdough bread
  • 8 slices sharp cheddar
  • Butter for the griddle
  • Salt and pepper

The skills inside

Griddle & plancha work

Allergen screen

Found: gluten · dairy · egg · fish · celery

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Fold the flaked tuna with the mayonnaise, celery, onion, lemon, and capers and season well.
  2. Butter one side of each bread slice.
  3. Build with cheese, the tuna salad, and more cheese: cheese on both sides glues the sandwich shut.
  4. Griddle over medium heat 4 min a side, pressing gently, until deep gold and the cheese has melted through. 4 min
  5. Cut on the diagonal and serve hot.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Griddle & plancha work 45 recipes

  • Full contact with the metal: the food lies flat, with no dome in the middle and no curled edge lifting it away, so browning reaches the entire face rather than a ring of it.
  • Contact is immediate and audible, and the food stays where it is put rather than sliding around in a slick of its own released liquid.
  • The cooked face is an unbroken sheet of even colour: the whole surface browned, not a pattern of marks with pale ground between them, and not a dark centre with pale corners.
  • The metal around the food is dry: no spreading wet patch steaming out from under it, nothing weeping onto the surface and boiling there.
  • Turned once or twice and no more, and lifted while the crust is still brown: a piece flipped repeatedly never holds heat long enough to build one.

Where it goes wrong The surface was crowded and its temperature crashed, so everything gave up its water at once and stewed on the metal: pale, damp, grey at the edges, and stuck fast where the crust never got the chance to form.

At the Table

The Pour
Pinot Noir (Willamette or Burgundy)
Also Right
Chilled Gamay (cru Beaujolais)
From the Taps
Saison
Zero-Proof
Hibiscus iced tea

The fatty fish that cross the red line: silk-textured, low-tannin reds meet their oils without a metallic clash.

Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.

Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Oregon Albacore Tuna Melt Search YouTube: J. Kenji López-Alt on Oregon Albacore Tuna Melt A YouTube search for J. Kenji López-Alt and this dish. No affiliation.