White Bean & Tuna Salad

This recipe comes from Giada de Laurentiis' cookbook, Everyday Italian. It is a really simple salad to put together, and most of the ingredients may already be in your pantry. Once you try this salad, you'll be sure to stock the ingredients anyway.

I've served this salad several times, most recently with our Gourmet Burgers. It is fresh and tangy and delicious. Red onions really add something to this salad, but I have substituted yellow or white in a pinch. While the resulting salad lacks the color the red onions give, the taste is still quite good.

White Bean and Tuna Salad
Throw these pantry ingredients together and you've got a terrific salad. You could add other ingredients to jazz it up, like 1/2 cup capers, 1 cup cherry tomatoes and some fresh basil leaves, and you could even serve it over 2 cups fresh arugula.

4 main-course servings

2 (6-ounce) cans dark meat tuna, packed in olive oil (I just had tuna in water, so I drained it and added a couple tablespoons olive oil to the salad)
1/2 teaspoon sea salt, plus more to taste
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more to taste
2 (15-ounce) cans cannellini (white kidney) beans, drained and rinsed
1 medium red onion, thinly sliced
6 tablespoons red wine vinegar

In a large bowl, add the tuna with its olive oil and 1/2 teaspoon each of salt and pepper. Using a fork, break up the tuna into bite-size pieces, then gently toss in the beans and onions. Drizzle with the red wine vinegar and season with more salt and pepper, if needed, to taste. Transfer the salad to plates and serve.

I garnished mine with some fresh chopped flat parsley for a bit more color.