 Hi guys, I'm Laura Vitale. Today I want to show you a recipe that my nona is kind of known for throughout the summer. It's her potato and tuna salad and it's also one of my brother's salads all time favorite summer dishes. We love it and we eat it literally all summer and I posted a picture a couple of weeks ago on Instagram. I made it for lunch for Joe and I and we were eating it outside and so many of you like everyone asked for the recipe. So I'm throwing the share with you because it's simple and easy. It doesn't require a whole lot of stuff but all together just makes it amazing. Alright, the ingredients list of course. Of course, you need potatoes. These are regular baking potatoes. These are about a pound and a half or so. I want you to need some tomatoes. These were grown right next to where we live so they're really beautiful and they're nice and firm but sweet and it'll be called these tomatoes for salads. So they're perfect for that. Parsley, red onion, lemon. This is some tuna that's been canned in olive oil that I've drained. It's my favorite kind so that's what I always go to. These are some castella, cocaça, verrano, whatever you want to call it. Green olives. These are some Italian green olives. Oh buddy, that I've just rinsed a little to get rid of some of the salt. Do you remember when I shared these with you? We're right around holiday season. These are the marinated or pickled eggplant that we make at night jarred. I make a lot of them and I jarred them and I keep them in the pantry for a long time. They're great to eat with an anti-pasto or thrown in salads or just as a sandwich. I have some of these and I always add some in so I'm going to add some here today. You need olive oil and some salt. Additionally, you can add cooked green beans. You can add different kinds of lettuce. You could add baby artichokes that have been steamed, whatever your heart desires. These are the base so these are what I'm going with. Okay, let's cut up the potatoes. These have been peeled of course. I'm going to just cut these into chunks about about that big. Not too small but not too big. What I have here is a saucepan with some water. When it comes to cooking potatoes, you want to cook them with, you know, of course in water with a good pinch of salt kind of like you would pasta. Except you start the potatoes in cold water. You never want to cook your potatoes in boiling water because if you add cold potatoes to boiling water, they kind of like seize up and they don't cook all the way through evenly. So by cooking them in cold water and meaning in the water to a temperature with the potatoes at the same time, it allows for them to cook nicely evenly. I'm going to finish chopping up the rest of my potatoes and then we'll get cooking. Add my potatoes right in along with a good pinch of salt. Turn my stove on. Oh, ready, ready. And I'm going to just let that cook until the potatoes are nice and tender but they're not super tender and falling apart. We're not making mashed potatoes here. So I'm going to let that go. In the meantime, I'm just going to chop up my veggies. And I'm not going to do anything crazy. Look at these tomatoes. Look how cool these are. These look like they're going to be really unripe and bitter but they're not. They're actually really, really sweet and they're fabulous but they are still somewhat firm. So it's really weird. It's not. When I saw them first, I thought they were going to be like a regular room of tomatoes but they're not and they're lovely for salad. So I'm just going to chop up my tomatoes. I'm going to slice my onion into half moon, chop up my parsley and then we'll get tossing and cooking and eating. Yum, yum, yum. So I've got pretty much all of my ingredients in here. My potatoes are cooked. I drained them. You want them to be tender but like I said, you don't want them to fall apart. You want them to cool slightly but you don't want your potatoes to be fully cold before you add them to your salad because otherwise when the potatoes are cold, they create almost like a shell on the outside and the very outside layer will taste great but the inside, like no flavor will actually penetrate on the inside. That's why you want to do this when it's warm and then leave it in the fridge to cool and set. Okay, to this beautiful mixture, you need a pinch of salt. It looks like a lot of salt but it really isn't plus potatoes need salt, a good drizzle of good quality extra virgin olive oil. And one of my favorite things in the entire world are my little pickled marinated eggplant whatever you want to call them. And if a little bit of the marinade goes in there, that vinegar tastes fantastic except don't make this for my uncle Tony with my eggplant in it because he is not a fan of vinegar. Okay, so you've got that. And you need a good squeeze of lemon, not too much. Give everything a good toss, break up the tuna a bit, add the potatoes and then just really carefully and with patience, you just mix everything together. You can add a drizzle more of olive oil if you want to which I think this will need because potatoes really drink up oil. You don't want it to be dry, you know. Plus, this is going to feed a lot of people. So you want to make sure every bite is fantastic. Look how gorgeous. Oh, this is the sight of this makes me happier than you could possibly imagine. That is pretty much it. Now all this needs is a quick cleanup. Cover it. Wrap it in the fridge to cool. Let it set for about an hour or so until it cools and then you write it again. I'm just going to dig in now because I'm so impatient and I love all these flavors. So I'm just going to give it a taste so that I can also tell you about seasoning it one not. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. It's easy. It's a fantastic dinner. It could be a great lunch, great leftovers. You have to make this this summer. It's one of the easiest things in the world but I promise you it will become one of your go-to's. Go to LAR in the Kitchen.com to get the written recipe. Hope you enjoy playing with me and I'll see you next time. Bye!