Tuna taco salad bowls

Not that you'd know it right now this minute, but the weather has been quite salady of late. Sunny, longer evenings, quite warm. All things that make a woman feel like eating sprightly vegetables with zingy dressings. Which is good, because it means something to send Deb for her Souper (soup, salad & sammy) Sunday roundup.

My two favourite salads in the world are the lettuce and herb salad at Hawksmoor and the Sonora salad from Wahaca. The Sonora salad is a delicious crisp taco bowl filled with a changing but always delicious array of grains, seeds, leaves and avocado, tossed in a delicious dressing and topped with a protein. I always get it with grilled steak strips.

The Hawksmoor salad is unimaginably delicious, but definitely a side dish, so I decided to have a look at ways of making something akin to the Sonora salad. It didn't take long for me to recognise that deep-frying my own taco bowl was not really an option, but it turns out that a baked bowl is almost as delicious and considerably easier.

What I did was take the labels off a couple of cans (one ex-chickpea, one ex-tomato) and run them through the dishwasher. Then I brushed one side of each large flour tortilla with a little pork dripping leftover from a roast (obviously not everyone has such a thing, so oil is the other possibility) and draped them, greased side up, over the cans, and pressed down a little to give them a basket shape. I baked them at 180C for about 10 minutes, watching like a hawk, until they looked toasty and brown and felt crisp.

I was sort of expecting them to open out a bit as they baked, but they didn't, so make sure you don't press down on them too much or you won't have room for your salad.

I filled the bowls with a layer of refried beans, then a big pile of leaves, avocado cubes, sliced red onion and tomatoes, dressed in a vinaigrette flavoured with a little mayonnaise and chipotle paste. Then I scattered on some pumpkin seeds and topped each bowl with a lightly fried tuna steak. I have been encouraged to make this meal again.