Instructions: The two key elements are tomatoes and canned tuna. For this salad, you shouldnt mind using store-bought tomatoes. Slightly under-ripe tomatoes, the kind shoppers find in most supermarket produce departments, may not be the tastiest, but they work well as containers for cold tuna salad.

The firm tomatoes are easy to carve and hollow out and will hold their shape even when stuffed with the creamy filling.

The quality of the canned tuna is important. Dont buy chunk light or the less expensive tuna. Buy the albacore tuna. The taste and texture difference in the albacore tuna will distinguish the salad.

The chunk light tuna is too finely flaked and will create a mushy tuna salad: fine as a sandwich filling, but unacceptable as a stuffing for tomatoes.

For best results, make the tuna salad filling a couple of hours before serving so it will thoroughly chill. However, it is not necessary to make the salad the night before; in fact, its better not to, because the flakes of tuna hold moisture and can make the filling watery the second day. If that happens, remix to blend the juices back into the mayonnaise binder.

TIP: An experienced chef once showed me how to make tuna salad that would never have a fishy or metallic taste from the can ... When you drain the tuna, put it in a fine-meshed colander; dont just drain it from the can. She rinsed the tuna in a colander with cold water and while rinsing, she broke up the chunks with her fingers so that the flakes of tuna were uniform in size. After rinsing, she would put the colander of tuna in the refrigerator for 30 minutes while it drained some more.

Cooks with clever knife skills can cut tomatoes in many attractive ways.

Cooks with basic tools and dexterity might stick to hollowing out whole tomatoes.

Cut off the tomatos stem end and work from that position because the blossom end of the tomato is generally flatter and will sit better on a plate or platter.

Its no longer necessary to skin or peel tomatoes, because the newer varieties have thinner skins already. After hollowing out the tomato (reserve the tomato insides for sauces or salsas), turn it upside down to drain for 20 minutes.

If you wont be stuffing the tomato shells within a half hour, put the upside-down tomato shells on a paper towel in the refrigerator until ready to fill.

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