Tuna paste

Tuna paste, one of the Portuguese goodies. (Pasta de Atum) It is an appetizer, a side dish, a lunch, or a whole family meal. The Portuguese do not exist without their tuna paste. They make it in a whole massive quantity of varieties but the plain tuna paste that you normally get in the Pastelaria is based on tuna from a can, mayonnaise and chopped onion. Now this is the start, the base for a more exquisite paste, all depending your taste and creativity. In some restaurants they serve tuna as an appetizer with small square toast. Others do not use mayonnaise, instead they use the oil from the can to fry the chopped onion, sometimes adding boiled green peas or carrot. You can also replace the mayo with advocado dip from the blender, whatever you do, the tuna must be king. At least half of the paste should consist of tuna and the other half a mixture of all the other ingredients. Here is our recipe:

• 2 cans of tuna, drain the oil
• 2 table spoons mayonnaise
• 1 finely chopped onion
• fresh dill, cut fine, 1 table spoon
• grated zest of 1 biological lemon
• 2 table spoons of capers, roughly chopped
• 1 teaspoon of tomate concentrated tomato paste
• fresh black pepper
• Mix it all together with a fork, ready.

Now, what to do with it? Invite friends or family to let them enjoy your little gastronomic adventure. Of course, you can serve it as an appetizer with some homemade toast before serving the dinner that you have been working on for three hours. Tip: do not serve too much because they will finish whatever you put on the table and you will be stuck with the main course. Take some wraps, heat them a little bit in a frying pan and spread the tuna paste on top and make a roll, let it cool down so that the wrap is more rigid again and cut it in pieces of 3 to 5 cm. Serve with a bit a wasabi mayonnaise, although it does not really need it. Just that the green colour is nice. To make the family size meal, you will need homemade bread from Monchique or the Alentejo. This bread is baked in a wood oven and each slice has the size of a quarter square meter; it is huge. Its crust is crisp and the inside is soft and elastic. Now take 2 slices, on the first you spread lots of tuna paste, next on top, sliced onion, tomato and cucumber slices, lettuce, grated carrots. Next put the 2nd slice of bread on top of this all and push it gently down with two hands. Cut into four quarters and serve with a cool beer or even coffee. You will never forget this.