Whip It Up week 1: Tuna melt with sprouts & avocado

For 2 people:

Your favorite bread or roll (ciabatta, or in this case I used sourdough bread)
Your favorite cheese (I used white extra-sharp cheddar; provolone or swiss would also be delightful)
2 cans of solid white albacore tuna (the normal size - about 6 oz each)
2 spoonfuls of sour cream
1 spoonful of mayo
squirt of deli-style mustard (the grainy-looking kind, not boring plain yellow)
pepper to taste
sprouts (I used a mixed container of broccoli, clover, and mustard sprouts)
1 avocado

Make tuna salad:
- Drain tuna and empty into a bowl
- Add sour cream, mayo, and mustard, just enough to coat everything - you can always add more, so be frugal to start!
- Mix & mash until tuna is all shredded and coated (add more sour cream/mayo/mustard if you like)
- Add pepper to taste; stir it in

Make tuna melt:
- Turn on your toaster oven (or regular oven if you don't have a toaster oven) and set it to "broil"

- Lightly toast your bread (if using a toaster oven, do this by popping the bread in there while the toaster oven heats up; if this is the method you use, it will be more toasted on the top, so put that side down before adding the tuna)

- Spread tuna salad on bread, pressing it down so you have a flat-ish top
- Place a slice or three of cheese on top of the tuna
- Put the whole shebang into your oven (I used my toaster oven, much smaller, quicker, and easier)
- Keep it in there for a few minutes until the cheese is all melted

- Pop it out and let cool for a few minutes
- Pile sprouts and sliced avocado on top
- Take a huge bite and enjoy!
(Depending on your preference and how sturdy your bread is, you might need to use a knife & fork to eat. The ciabatta at the cafe let me pick it up to eat it, but the sourdough I used at home was too brittle so I had to use a fork!)

From Whip It Up! ...

This recipe was easy for me to follow because I was making it up...I had roughly the same thing in a little cafe a couple weeks ago, and had been thinking to myself how I could duplicate it, so it was all well-formed inside my head. I wrote it down here after I made it, pretty much exactly as I did it!

Some tweaks to make to suit your own taste, style, and timeframe: You could use store-bought tuna salad, or a different ratio of sour cream to mayo to mustard (low-fat, anyone?), or add some onion or other veggies to the tuna; use a different type of cheese if you prefer, say, swiss or provolone to cheddar; and definitely just use your fav bread on the bottom. The restaurant used ciabatta, which was also great, but I happened to get some fresh sourdough from the farmer's market this week, so I used that.

When I make this again, I won't go overboard on the cheese - my slices of cheddar were rather thick, and you can see it melted all the way down over the sides so you can't even see the tuna and bread! Still delicious, but it would be nice to taste the tuna a bit more, plus less cheese would mean less fat.

The nice thing about this recipe was that it was very simple and quick - and it could have been even quicker if I had made the tuna salad the day before, or bought pre-made tuna salad, and if I had pre-sliced cheese and bread. Melting the cheese in the toaster oven took no more than 10 minutes, and all that's left after that is to pile the sprouts and avocado on top! Super fast and easy.

We discovered from making this that my hubby doesn't particularly care for sprouts, so while I would definitely make this meal again, I might do it for company when he wasn't around, or as part of a few options at a picnic, or else just put some lettuce and avocado on his and only use the sprouts on mine! I am newly in love with sprouts, so more sprouts for me would be peachy.

Please comment if you have questions, or if you try it out!! Now I'm all hungry from typing this up...


Whip It Up blog
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My Whip It Up goal: to publish a new recipe every Monday, starting with this one. Luckily blogger has an auto-publish feature, so I can type this all up ahead of time and set it to publish on Monday - how nice. Oops, now I've given away my secret.