Recipe of the Month – Gene Tierney’s Tuna Salad Royal

The food I crave more than any other is TUNA so I am always looking for interesting things to do with it. This tower of loveliness absolutely fits the bill!

I was thrilled to discover a whole heap of celebrity tuna recipes on the internet recently. Star-Kist Tuna had a great campaign involving movies stars such as John Wayne, Bob Hope and Maureen O’Hara extolling the virtues of the brand.

I have made many frantic google efforts to try and find the “handy packet” of star recipes offered for FREE by Star-Kist in return for a name and address to no avail. If you have this, please get in touch, I will probably offer you HARD CASH for this.

Some of the recipes in the magazine ads look delicious, some – not so much…

Gene Tierney’s tuna dish, however, is the bomb. A big tomato bomb. With tuna in it! Here’s the recipe, easy peasy but lovely to look at. I am dreaming about having someone over for lunch and saying, “oh, you just relax in the living room and I’ll rustle something up for us.” Then prancing in proudly producing two of these – haha!

It reminds me a bit of Anna Sten’s Russian Sandwich which was a tower of ever decreasing circles of bread with different fillings. Those were the days before I took photos of the dishes I made, I’ll have to do that one again!

For my one person version of Gene’s dish I used an 80g tin of tuna but I’m guessing Star-Kist tins of tuna are bigger than this…

Gene Tierney’s Tuna Salad Royal

In a salad bowl combine 1 can Star-Kist Tuna, 2 tablespoons sweet pickle, 1/2 cup chopped celery.

Add 1 tablespoon lemon juice to 1/4 cup Kraft Mayonnaise and toss together with tuna mixture, season to taste.

For each portion, place lettuce on a salad plate and cut a peeled tomato into three crosswise slices.

Starting with a slice of tomato placed on the lettuce, alternate tuna salad with remaining slices.

Garnish with mayonnaise and watercress as shown.

Note: I didn’t have watercress so I freestyled with a slice of gherkin. This was a fabulous Spinster Saturday lunch! This recipe is definitely going on my “because you’re worth it slightly bonkers things to make for singletons” list along with Vincent Price’s Chicken in Pineapple.

Thanks, Gene for your fab recipe! Or actually, it’s probably more, “thanks to someone in the publicity department of 20th Century Fox for allowing you to be assigned to this fab recipe dreamed up by Star-Kist Tuna!”