WHAT’S COOKING: Tuna salad with asparagus, pear, green olives, gherkins and feta balls

Sometimes something special can be right under our noses and ignored for who knows how long. Like the little tubs of pristine white balls of cheese that look just like bocconcini. But aren’t. This is a feta product.

I’ve never paid much attention to products from The Mediterranean Kitchen, but I was looking for feta to include in a tuna salad recipe I was in the process of “inventing”, and my eye settled on the little clear-plastic tubs containing neatly formed small balls of cheese. 

I sneaked a taste of one of these tiny balls of white wonder. (When I got home! Not in the shop.) Creamy, soft, so delicious. They would top this salad of many green things. 

First into the trolley were slim spears of green asparagus, followed by “salad onions”, or spring onions by another name. But that was all I chose from the fresh section, as I wanted flavour contrast in this salad.

I popped a Williams pear in the basket, then headed for the gherkins and olives. I wanted acidity, and depth of flavour. And a little bitterness, which always emphasises and offsets sweetness. The former were sweet-and-sour gherkins, while the olives were Spanish and stuffed with pimento paste. The gherkins would bring sweet and sour, the latter that pleasant bitter bite a green olive has.

There’d need to be lemon juice to negate potential discolouring of the pear when sliced. And the various juices – salt water brine, olive oil from the canned tuna, and vinegar from the gherkin jar – would combine to form a dressing stirred into mayonnaise.

The tuna was Forage and Feast yellowfin tuna chunks in olive oil. For the rest, a bed of cos lettuce on which everything could laze, and a sprinkling of microgreens “for pretty”.

Tony’s tuna salad with asparagus, pear, green olives, gherkins and feta balls

(Serves 2 as a meal)

Ingredients

2 x 150g cans of yellowfin tuna chunks in olive oil (Checkers Forest and Feast)

180g feta balls (Mediterranean Kitchen) (retain their brine)

170g slim green asparagus spears (“steam in the bag” — No!)

1 x Williams/Bon Chrétien green pear, sliced into slim wedges

Juice of half a lemon, for setting the sliced pear’s colour

195g (80g when drained) brined green olives stuffed with pimento paste (retain their saltwater brine)

6 to 8 slices of sliced sweet and sour gherkins (and some of their vinegar solution)

4 to 6 slim spring (salad) onions, sliced on the diagonal

6 to 8 cos lettuce leaves

Salt and black pepper

Dressing:

2 Tbsp of the olive oil brine from the tuna, strained through a fine sieve

1 Tbsp of the feta vegetable oil from the feta balls

1 Tbsp of the salted water brine from the green olives

2 heaped Tbsp decent quality mayonnaise

A sprinkling of microgreens for garnish

Method

First, rinse the cos lettuce leaves in cold water, shake them off, and pat them dry with kitchen paper or a clean towel.

Trim away the scales of the asparagus spears, and discard them.

Now, blanch the asparagus. Bring a pan of water to a boil, drop the spears in, and let them simmer gently for no more than 2 minutes. Drain into a colander over the sink, and gently run cold water through them. Leave to drain.

Choose an attractive, wide-surfaced platter and arrange cos lettuce around. 

Lay asparagus spears within the curls of lettuce, or between them.

Take slices of gherkin and lay them around, visibly. The point is for everything in the salad to be seen once it’s done, with nothing obscured. This isn’t random – there’s design involved.

Peel the pear, slice it in half, and cut away the core using a small, sharp knife. I used a paring knife. Slice each half into slim wedges. Put them in a small bowl, squeeze lemon juice over (of about half a lemon) and toss them to be sure the lemon touches them all over.

Place the pear wedges around and drop the green olives here and there, also visibly.

Drain 2 Tbsp of the olive oil from the cans of tuna into a small bowl such as a ramekin, through a tea strainer, and discard the remainder. Keep an eye on this little bowl, you’re coming back to it in a minute.

Place chunks of tuna in the centre of the salad bowl.

Open the tub of feta balls and place them on top of the mound of tuna.

Slice the salad/spring onions on the diagonal, 3 or 4 times per onion, and scatter them around.

Return to that little bowl and pour in about 1 Tbsp each of the vegetable oil from the feta balls, the salted water brine from the green olives, and stir in 2 heaped Tbsp of whatever mayonnaise you have in the fridge. I’m not going to lecture you on which mayo you like or can afford.

Grind salt and black pepper over, spoon the dressing all over, and finish with a sprinkling of microgreens for a garnish. DM

Reprint! Tony Jackman’s Retro Karoo Food (Penguin Random House) is off to the printers for its second reprint since being published in March 2026. To purchase a copy signed by the author, send an email to him at tony@dailymaverick.co.za
Or buy it through the Daily Maverick shop.

Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the Year award.

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.