Pasta Salad With Lemon, Tuna, and Mint

Life is a challenge. Growing up in a relatively safe time, with economic stability, and facing what the world is experiencing now, adaptation is the key to a happy life.

As if what was happening in the world wasn’t enough, I decided to live in multiple countries. All of this is really exciting, but it adds even more headaches to an already challenging moment in history. Hence, my IBS flares like crazy.

Little things and habits are what make our lives comfortable and adorably predictable.
In Italy, we have plenty of traditions, and most of them converge around food, and mostly, lunch. We usually sit down -EVERY DAY- at the family table. We have 1/2 hours break, we have a full meal, coffee, and off back to work.

Rushing through meals

I soon realized that it doesn’t work in the same way in other countries, and now, in the Netherlands, I have 20 minutes to eat my lunch. Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of being able to finish work earlier, but I had to adapt and give up on that little safety net that is considered lunch in Italy.

As an Italian, I vowed to not eat reheated pasta. As a result, when I make pasta to take to work, it is a pasta salad. When I cook pasta for this purpose, I tend to undercook it a little, usually 1 minute less than required on the instructions.

Doing it with gluten-free pasta can become challenging because this substitute tends to stick. My advice is always to try different brands and find your own Holy Grail.

A salad that is easy on the stomach

The reason why I love this pasta is that it's super fast to make, it's a life-saving solution for summer, it's delicious and most of all, IBS friendly. I started accepting the fact that we don't need to eat veggies at every meal, so I would balance it out at dinner. The vegetable parenthesis is already tough enough for us with IBS.

This dish is incredible and the ingredients are adjustable to your own taste.

Buon appetito!

Makes: 2 servings
Serving Size: a plate each
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: cooking time of the pasta

Ingredients for the pasta salad with lemon, tuna, and mint:

• 6 oz of gluten-free short pasta
• 10 leaves of mint
• 3 oz of tuna in olive oil
• 1 organic lemon
• 4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 tablespoon of coarse salt

Directions for pasta salad with lemon, tuna, and mint:

1. Put a pot of water to boil.
2. Put 1 tbsp of coarse salt.
3. Once boiling, put the pasta to cook in the pot, and add a timer for a minute less than the cooking time written on the box of the pasta.
4. Wash and thinly chop the mint.
5. Grate some lemon zest and add it to the mint (only use the yellow part of the skin, the white one is bitter).
6. Squeeze the lemon juice and add it to the other ingredients.
7. Add salt, pepper, the extra virgin olive oil, and whisk all the ingredients together, I tend to be more generous with the olive oil in this kind of recipe, to avoid the pasta sticking.
8. Once the pasta is cooked, drain it and lay it to cool down on a surface (if you leave it altogether, the heat will stay trapped and overcook the pasta).
9. When the pasta has cool down, add the broken-down tuna to it and the rest of the ingredients.
10. Mix all together and serve.
11. You can store it in the fridge for 2 days.