Gourmet cooking doesn’t have to entail hours of cooking with a list of ingredients longer than your normal grocery list. Create meals bursting with complex flavors that will please every food snob in your life, easily.

And less is definitely what I had. No one had been to the grocery store since we got back from vacation, and it was the lunchtime before our weekly trip to the CSA farm. All I had was pretty much a can of tuna and my creativity.

I remembered reading a recipe a couple of months back for a tuna salad that used tahini instead of mayonnaise (that’s right, fellow mayonnaise-haters: put your gag reflex in check because this one’s mayo-free), but since I was far too lazy — and hungry — to look it up, I improvised.

I’m not professing this to be a gourmet meal, as the intro might imply, but it was a delicious, nutritious lunch that we can tweak to be servable as a luncheon or even a light dinner.

Tuna Salad with Tahini and Chives

Ingredients:

• 1 can tuna
• 2 tablespoons tahini
• 2 teaspoons lemon juice
• 3 tablespoons (very approximate) chopped fresh chives
• freshly ground black pepper

Mix in a bowl and serve, as I did, on a really stale rice cake. Or, try something more scrumptious:

• Serve over a bed of mixed greens.
• Melt onto your favorite bread (I’m thinking flatbread or focaccia) with a smooth cheese (Manchego? Gouda?).
• Serve it like a dip and scoop it onto your favorite crackers.
• Arrange a small scoop inside each carefully prepared lettuce cup… awwww.

Now, had I actually had anything in the house, I may have added some of these ingredients:

• chopped Kalamata olives
• fresh cilantro
• red onion
• diced cucumber

What do you think — decent lunch or embarrassing hack?