Tuna Melt (Open Face)

Tuna melts are served warm, which distinguishes them from regular tuna sandwiches. 

For those not familiar with the term "open-faced sandwich," it is a sandwich where the toppings are put onto ONE slice of bread, rather than the far more commonly used two slices of bread for a true sandwich.* Sandwich with one slice is actually something of a misnomer, as the word sandwich came to mean "some type of filling to go between two slices of bread;" that is, "a filling sandwiched between two slices of bread."

You want to use tuna packed in olive oil that totals to like 24 to 25 ounces. Tuna comes in various size cans, so you'll likely need at least two cans, or 3 to 5 smaller size cans. I use niçoise olives, which are small dark olives from the Provence region of southeastern France and one of its main cities, Nice, but you can use whatever olives you have or like. You can chop the capers or you can leave them whole, which is what I usually do. "Traditionally" served with potato chips (I don't know who makes up these rules).

Ingredients (4 open-faced sandwiches):

24 to 25 ounces canned tuna packed in olive oil

1/2 cup chopped green onions (scallions), including much of the green

1/4 cup pitted niçoise olives, sliced or chopped (or other olives, dark or green, use what you have)

1 heaping tablespoon capers, whole or chopped

1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon sambal oelek**

1 cup mayonnaise

1 heaping teaspoon Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice 

1teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon salt 

sweet paprika to top each sandwich

sharp cheddar or sharp American cheese (white or yellow, sliced or shredded)

sliced bread (thickly or thinly sliced)

garlic for seasoning the toast

In a bowl, add the tuna, along with the olive oil from the cans; break up and mash the pieces of tuna. Add the chopped green onions (scallions), olives, capers, sambal oelek, mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, lemon juice, ground black pepper and salt; mix together well, then set it aside briefly. Toast the bread slices, then use a clove of garlic to rub onto each slice of bread (the side you will use for the tuna). Put the slices of toasted bread onto a foil lined baking sheet. Add tuna to each slice of toast, and then add a slice or two of cheese, and a sprinkling of paprika to each sandwich. Place the open face sandwiches so that they are about 10 to 12 inches from the broiler. Broil until the cheese is melted (you can let the cheese brown a little or a lot, if you like it that way).         

* "Sandwich" seemingly dates back to the 1700s. The common story is that the 4th Earl of Sandwich, John Montagu, loved gambling so much, that he put pieces of meat between bread slices so that he could remain at the gambling table and not move off to a table to sit down for a meal. "Sandwich," the name, was taken from the English town of that name in Kent. In Old English it was "Sandwicæ," meaning "sandy settlement or port."  

 

** Sambal oelek is a paste/relish/sauce of hot chopped chili peppers that originated in Indonesia, but with versions produced outside of Indonesia, including in the U.S. It is easily found in supermarkets or Asian stores in the U.S., and likely, in some other countries too, although finding the Indonesian version may be difficult, but it is available online. I've found the "Kokita" brand of Indonesian sambal oelek to be totally amazing, but if you don't like much "heat," it's not for you.

 

 

 

 

WORD HISTORY:

Laugh-"Laugh" goes back to Indo European "klegh," which meant "to laugh, to chuckle," seemingly in imitation of a laugh. This gave Old Germanic "hlakhjan(an)," meaning "to laugh," and this gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "hliehhan/hlæhan" (dialectal forms), meaning "to laugh, to laugh at (with scorn or derision)." The form later became "laghen," then "laughen," before the modern version, but while the spelling became "laugh," the 'gh' came to be pronounced as "f," as the guttural 'gh' sound died out in English, and the spelling has remained right up until today, although I'll watch the 11 o'clock news to see if anything has changed. haha In the past, the 'gh' spellings were pronounced much in the same way as cousin German 'ch' is pronounced; that is, from the back of the throat. "Laughter'' is from the same Indo European source, which gave Old Germanic "hlahtraz," which meant "the action or process of laughing, the sound of laughing, the collective sound of people laughing." This gave Old English "hleahtor," with the same meaning, and it then became "laghter," then "laughter." The 1500s saw the development of the word "laugh" as a noun, which is interesting, considering that it came well after the noun ''laughter.'' The other Germanic languages have: German has the verb and the noun "lachen" (noun=Lachen, as all German nouns are capitalized), and the noun "Gelächter" (laughter), Low German has the verb "lachen," West Frisian has the verb "laitsje" and the noun "laits," and "gelaak/gelaits" (laughter), Dutch has the verb "lachen" and the noun "lach," as well as "gelach" (laughter), Danish, Norwegian and Swedish have the heavily contracted "le" (to laugh) and Danish and Norwegian have "latter" (laughter), Icelandic has "hlæja" (to laugh).