Tasty Tunafish Cakes

Ingredients

2 6-oz. cans tuna in water

2 tsp. Dijon mustard

1 c. bread crumbs

2 tsp. lemon zest

juice of 1/2 lemon

1 Tbsp. water (or liquid from tuna)

2 Tbsp. fresh chopped parsley or 2 tsp. dry parsley flakes

2 Tbsp. fresh chopped chives or 2 tsp. dry chives

1 minced shallot (which I forgot to picture)

Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

1 Tbsp. Old Bay Seasoning

1 raw egg

3 Tbsp. good quality olive oil (divided 1 T. and 2 T.)

1 Tbsp. butter

Stir all but last 3 ingredients together in a bowl or with a dough blade in your food processor. Add egg and 1 Tbsp. olive oil, and combine well.

Divide mixture in half and in half again, and so on, until you have 8 similarly sized pieces. Form each piece into a ball and then form a patty. Place each patty gently onto a cookie sheet covered in wax paper. Refrigerate several hours. Chilling the patties will help them stay together better when cooking. You can also freeze them (putting them in Ziplocs after thorough freezing) and then mostly defrost when you are ready to cook them.

Heat 2 Tbsp. olive oil and 1 Tbsp. butter in cast iron or non-stick skillet on medium-high heat. Gently place patties in the pan and cook until nicely browned, about 5 minutes on each side.

I served it with lemon Basmati rice and asparagus in lemon butter. Next time I'll make a nice remoulade to spoon over the fish cakes too.

These were FANTASTIC!!! We all LOVED them! I doubled the recipe and put half in the freezer for another time.

*I would like to note that I typically use chunk light tuna in the house (as it has a lower concentration of mercury). Albacore (which Nick bought because I didn't specifiy chunk light on the list) has a much milder flavor, and I suspect these will be even tastier with the chunk light.