I found this easy and convenient and cheap technique described in a tweet. Here's my take on it. If you like tuna sandwiches then you'll probably like this.
The Belgium dish pêche au thon is supposed to be a mixture of tuna and mayonnaise served on half peaches. Both the tuna and peaches are of the canned variety as far as I can tell. Here's what it's supposed to look like according to the French Wikipedia article:
I thought I'd write up my version of this because there seems to be almost nothing about this recipe available that's not in French. There's no English Wikipedia article for example. I'm also adapting it because the halves of peaches are not the ones I see in the supermarket here in the UK. We get peach slices, which you can't heap things on.
The version that inspired me to try this was from this tweet by Chris Kendall (@ottocrat), because it's so simple, uses ingredients I usually have in the cupboard anyway, and with the bread is a bit more balanced I think:
This discussion made me so hungry for thon peche that I’m having it for my tea 😋 pic.twitter.com/9ljphEQ5pL
— Chris Kendall 🇪🇺🇺🇦 (@ottocrat) May 20, 2020
The only other English language recipe I could find was this short YouTube video (2 mins). That has capers and hot sauce, so I thought I'd put those in as well.
Ingredients
- A tin of tuna. You should probably use the tuna flakes in brine and drain the brine off.
- A tin of peaches. I use the cheap slices in syrup.
- Ready made mayonnaise.
- Capers in brine (optional).
- Hot sauce (optional).
- Bread of some kind.
This isn't something you measure, but I go for one tin of tuna with maybe ½ to ⅔ of the peaches (leaving a little left as a snack). The other ingredients are just however much seems right.
Technique
Dump the drained tuna in a bowl and add a generous dollop/squirt of mayo. Chop up the peach slices and add those, with a little of the syrup if you like. Mix it all up.
If you're adding capers, then chop some up fine and mix them in.
Add hot sauce if you want. The video above uses Tabasco, but that's really expensive. You can get a bigger bottle of something similar much cheaper, like (here in the UK) ‘Tropical Sun Caribbean Hot Pepper Sauce’, or ‘East End West Indian Original Hot Pepper Sauce’.
Spread the mixture on slices of bread, or halved bread rolls.
Here's what my first attempt looked like. Not exactly the most attractive meal, but it tasted great.
Variations
Capers: you could try replacing these with a pickled gherkin or two (aka small cucumber, or dill pickle if you're American). I haven't tried that, but chopped up small in place of capers I think it would work.
I like to put a bit of butter on the bread and microwave it for a minute so that the butter melts in, before adding the mixture.
I also tried using the tuna in oil instead of brine. I added the oil in, since that's got lots of flavour. It ended up a bit greasy as you'd expect, but still really good.