Cooking For Joy
When a Tuna Melt Feels About Right
It’s comfort food and sustenance
Editor’s Note: Heated has asked contributors to write about a dish they’re cooking that cuts through bleak headlines, forced isolation, and limited ingredients to bring them joy; we’ll be running at least one contribution a day through this social-distancing stretch.
The first lunch that I fixed my husband and myself in self-quarantine was a tuna melt. In normal times, I often eat for comfort, choosing indulgence over health if I feel it will feed me emotionally. Now that we’re eating for strength and stamina, too, my food choices are a bit more considered.
Tuna melts are a comfort classic, to be sure, but to me, they still qualify as sustenance. I toasted four thin slices of whole-grain Pullman bread, topped each with tuna that I’d doctored with whole grain mustard, mayonnaise, and a squeeze of lemon, then added a heap of lacto-fermented sauerkraut (probiotics!) and a flurry of grated Unexpected Cheddar from my pre-apocalyptic grocer of choice, Trader Joe’s.
It was a humble arrangement — four open-faced sandwiches on a piece of foil, placed in the toaster on the broil setting until the cheese melted. The cheddar turned crunchy in spots, the toast was crisp and soft in the right places, and the tangy aggregate of tuna, sauerkraut, and cheese was both nourishing and deeply satisfying. On the side was a quartered carrot from our dwindling winter CSA share that looked a bit gnarly, but tasted snappy and sweet. It’s not a meal that most immediately would qualify as healthy, but to me, it felt wholesome, and that’s enough.
