Perhaps it was the slant of late afternoon sunlight filtering through
the vine-laced pergola, gracing the plank of organic crudités. Maybe
it was the large grape leaves serving as blotters and platters for the
abundant array of fresh foods presented that perfect June day.
Of course, it also had to be the occasion. It was 1984. Northern
California was still new to Manhattanite me. We were celebrating the
opening of my girlfriend Jessel’s Gallery, birthed in an abandoned
granary building on Atlas Peak Road down the hill from the Silverado
Country Club in Napa. Diane Jessel, an artist, author, impresario,
was a patron of other female artists, and had a gallery full of gifted
gals’ tantalizing take away ceramics, California impressionist
canvases, and funny, functional, folk art pieces.
But I had NEVER seen a tuna salad quite like that one...
Perhaps it was the slant of late afternoon sunlight filtering through the vine-laced pergola, gracing the plank of organic crudités. Maybe it was the large grape leaves serving as blotters and platters for the abundant array of fresh foods presented that perfect June day.
Of course, it also had to be the occasion. It was 1984. Northern California was still new to Manhattanite me. We were celebrating the opening of my girlfriend Jessel’s Gallery, birthed in an abandoned granary building on Atlas Peak Road down the hill from the Silverado Country Club in Napa. 
Diane Jessel, an artist, author, impresario, was a patron of other female artists, and had a gallery full of gifted gals’ tantalizing take away ceramics, California impressionist canvases, and funny, functional, folk art pieces.
But I had NEVER seen a tuna salad quite like that one. It tantalized, served in a cascading mound of moist lemony chunks, studded with chunks of huge black olives, fresh basil leaves, garlic and the best extra virgin olive oil over which I have ever smacked my lips audibly. I had helpings and helpings on torn bread, on homemade crackers (who knew you could bake crackers!), on celery stalks, on my bare hand, from which I fed others. It. Blew. My. Mind.
You see, I had been reared, raised, maybe even breastfed on quotidian, uncontroversial tuna in those food safe times. It was a staple in my lunch box, in my life in the Monopoly board of conformity that constituted the West Haven, Connecticut suburbs. Everybody in High School smelled like Hellman’s and Starkist in those days, even the Jewish kids, and were littered with crumbs of Wonderbread building our bodies twelve ways taller than our parents. At dinner, we had tuna casseroles, baked with Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup, topped with Durkee’s Onion Rings in the can. At parties we had tuna dips, mixed with sour cream and onion mixes from envelopes. Reconstituting and cooking dried things from envelopes, boxes or pouches was all the rage in those days. Poverty cuisine, it now seems in retrospect, when compared to the epicurean classiness of the Napa Tuna Salad.
Much like my first visit to Nepenthe in Big Sur in the 80’s, experiencing my artist friend Jessel’s beautiful way to live and eat profoundly impacted my own home and garden design, down to how the hammock is hung. Her paintings, (including two watercolor portraits of egocentric me) still grace my home. They aren’t just paintings, they are environments, windows into the beauty-infested point of view to which she introduced impressionable me, fresh from my two rent-controlled, shitty little apartments in New York and Hollywood.
Her gallery is still standing and expanding (she’s opened a clothing store there), as is our friendship. I share her and her recipe with you. Try this tuna for special occasions. Do visit the virtual jesselgallery.com, and the gallery’s actuality, too. And if you can only have tuna once in a blue moon, try it this way:
NAPA TUNA SALAD
1 12 oz can of chunk light tuna in oil
½ C. pitted black olives, cut in pieces
5 T extra virgin olive oil
5 leaves fresh basil
1 t. minced garlic
juice of 1 lemon to taste
Sprigs of parsley for garnish
Tear the basil and parsley into the other ingredients. Mix and mash in a large wooden bowl with a big wooden spoon til well blended, yet with ingredients retaining individuality. Serve rustically with crudité and crusty breads.
