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| Best Tuna Melt EVER. And delicious homemade tomato soup. |
So yeah, we're kind of on a greens kick lately. Dante's been making up lots of greens. He uses a mix of collard greens, turnip greens, kale, and rainbow chard and cooks them down with some sauteed onions, garlic, bacon (if we have it), and other spices and they're AMAZING. Very tasty. The only other collard greens I'd had before he cooked these were from a can and were basically just salt. lots of salt.
As a result of all the greens-cooking going on, we have leftover greens in the fridge quite often, and have been playing with different things to do with them. This is probably the biggest success yet. After we made some DELICIOUS greens/cheddar/bacon/cheese sauce potato skins for brunch, Dante suggested that it could be good to make a tuna melt with greens in it. I definitely agreed. We both thought it could use something to dress it up a bit, so after watching a couple hours of The Chew (we have been recording it on the DVR and are currently playing catch-up), were inspired and decided on caramelized onions with balsamic vinegar. That was a good choice........ a very good choice. I was afraid they might overpower the other flavors of the sandwich, but no such problem. They were flavorful but not overly potent. We made the sandwiches on wheat bread and I put provolone cheese on mine. Dante put Smoked Cheddar on his, and we cooked em up on the electric griddle. They were FAN-TAS-TIC! For reals, if you're looking for a good sandwich, this is definitely the way to go.
To go with our awesome sandwiches, we made Clinton's Creamy Tomato Soup from the Chew. We did use red onion in place of the white, and fat free half and half in place of the heavy cream. It turned out super fresh and tasty, and I'm not even usually a tomato soup fan! I like to dip my grilled cheese in it, but I rarely eat more than a couple spoonfuls of Campbell's plain (seriously, I'll put mine in an espresso cup when we have sandwiches because that's enough to dip, but I don't have to feel wasteful when I don't want to eat it). This, I cleaned my bowl. My big, real people sized bowl.
So next cool day, or just if you're feeling like some pure awesomeness for dinner, I highly recommend you try both of these.
Tuna Melt with Mixed Greens
Cooked Mixed Greens (recipe will be in next post)
Tuna Salad, seasoned to taste (I used miracle whip, garlic, onion, thyme, salt, pepper, and italian seasoning)
1 Red Onion
1 T Olive Oil
2 T Balsamic Vinegar
Provolone or Smoked Cheddar Cheese
Wheat Bread
Butter or Margarine
Caramelized Onions:
1. Slice red onion into thin half-moons.
2. Sautee onion in a medium pan with olive oil until onions soften and start to brown.
3. Once onions start to brown, add Balsamic vinegar and stir.
4. Cook another 2 minutes, stirring often.
Sandwiches: (Note: all quantities are approximate. I didn't measure. Just eyeball it and adjust based on your tastes! After all, it's your sandwich...)
1. For each sandwich, butter two slices of bread. Tip: Put the two pieces of bread butter sides together and put your sandwich fillings on top, then when you're ready to cook them, lift the top piece of bread (with fillings) onto the griddle, butter side down, and top with the remaining piece of bread (butter side up). This keeps you from somehow getting butter all over the kitchen during the sandwich prep. I learned this from my mom, who's a genius. :-D
2. Drain/press as much liquid from the greens as possible. Put 1/4-1/2 cup greens on one slice of bread, on the non-buttered side.
3. Add 1/2 c tuna salad on top of the greens and spread to cover evenly.
4. Add 2-4 T caramelized onions on top of the tuna and again, spread to cover evenly.
5. Top with cheese and transfer to hot griddle (I had ours at 350 and it worked beautifully). Add second slice of bread, butter side up.
6. Cook until golden brown and delicious. Flip and repeat.
7. Cut in half and serve with Clinton's Creamy Tomato Soup. Enjoy!
