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Prep time
1 hour 20 minutes
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makes
4 servings
Test Kitchen Notes
This recipe comes from Emily Nunn’s delightful newsletter, The Department of Salad, a niche Substack with a massive following. Her wry sense of humor is part of the newsletter's appeal, along with her expertise: She is foremost a scholar of the salad arts and a proselytizer of fresh salad recipes. Some are gleaned from chefs and cooks she adores, some come from her own recipe box.
This salad is an Emily Nunn original, “a riff,” she says, “on one of my emotional and physical survival dishes, something I used to eat when I was finishing my book, The Comfort Food Diaries, on a nightmarishly tight deadline, with neither the time nor the will to shop for fresh food.”
It’s still very much a delicious jumble of pantry staples—canned white beans, fancy jarred tuna, black olives, frozen artichoke hearts—but now a knock-your-socks-off lemon anchovy dressing joins them. (“I don’t feel safe unless I have too many lemons,” she says.) Briny, bright, and pungent, it’s right up my alley.
The recipe title is a bit of a misnomer, though. In order to make this on the fly, you’ll need to do a little upfront work. First you make the dressing, then you marinate the salad’s components at room temperature for an hour (a great trick you can apply to other salad situations). Or take Emily's suggestion and make it in advance and let it marinate in the fridge, so this salad becomes a true seat-of-the-pants meal. Feel free to layer the ingredients on top of torn radicchio or any chicory or lettuce you like. It helps to mellow out and stretch this salad further, so you can enjoy it for days.—Nicole Davis
—The Editors
Ingredients
- For the Lemon Anchovy Dressing:
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6
anchovies, roughly chopped
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1/2 cup
olive oil
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1/2
lemon, zested
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1/4 cup
fresh lemon juice
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1
clove garlic, grated
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1 tablespoon
capers (optional)
- For the Salad:
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1
15.5-ounce can cannellini (or another white bean), rinsed and well drained
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1
12-ounce package frozen artichokes hearts, prepared according to instructions, very well drained, and cut into smaller pieces
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1/3 cup
black olives, chopped (I had Kalamatas—if you use stronger-flavored oil-cured olives cut the amount a bit)
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1
6-ounce jar oil-packed tuna (I used Tonnino olive-oil packed filets), drained, broken into pieces (you’re not completely breaking it down like tuna salad; you want nice little chunks)
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Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
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Handful of chopped parsley, for garnish
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Lemon wedges, for serving
Directions
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Make the dressing. Place all the ingredients except capers in a bullet blender and process until well emulsified. Taste. Adjust lemon; you may want salt or capers or another anchovy. (I did not.) If so, add to blender and re-whizz all of it. If you want to do this dressing by hand, smash the anchovies to smithereens with a mortar and pestle, then whisk in the remaining ingredients. (You could also sub in anchovy paste.)
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Assemble the salad. In a large bowl, very gently toss together the cannellini, artichokes, and olives with about 1/2 of the dressing. Let this marinate for at least an hour, gently stirring once or twice. (You could also marinate it in the fridge overnight then bring it to room temperature before serving.) About 20 minutes before serving, add the tuna and gently toss again. Season with pepper. Serve at room temperature, garnished with chopped parsley and accompanied by lemon wedges, with the remaining dressing on the side.
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