Avocado Tuna Chickpea Salad

July heat wave. Hartford hit a hundred degrees on Tuesday and the city melted. The hospital kitchen was an oven inside an oven and my staff looked like they were cooking themselves along with the food. I brought in extra fans. I adjusted the menu — more cold plates, more salads, gazpacho instead of hot soup. You have to adapt, mi amor. The kitchen is not a fixed thing. The kitchen responds to the weather, to the season, to the people eating. A hundred degrees in July means nobody wants hot soup. Nobody wants pernil at noon in a heat wave. They want something cold and light and merciful, and it is my job to provide mercy in food form.

At home, I made ensalada de pulpo — octopus salad, cold, with olive oil and vinegar and onion and cilantro. I made ceviche with shrimp — raw shrimp cured in lime juice with onion and avocado and aji dulce. Cold food. Ocean food. The kind of food that makes you feel the beach even when the nearest beach is two hours away in Rhode Island. Eduardo sat at the table with the ceviche and he closed his eyes and he was in Ponce. I could see it on his face — the boardwalk, the malecones, the salt air. Food is the cheapest transportation. A bowl of ceviche costs five dollars. A plane ticket to Ponce costs three hundred. The ceviche works better.

Sofia has been reading about nursing programs. She sits at the kitchen table with her laptop and asks me questions about the hospital — what does a nurse actually do all day, Mami? I tell her. I tell her about the long shifts, the difficult patients, the moments when you hold someone hand because nobody else will. I tell her about the dietary aides who bring trays and become the only friendly face in a patient day. I tell her that healthcare is not glamorous. It is hard and exhausting and it breaks your heart every week. But it is the most important work in the world, next to cooking, and cooking and nursing are closer than people think — both are about sustaining life, one bite at a time, one heartbeat at a time.

Called Mami. She said it is ninety-five in Bayamon. I said it is a hundred in Hartford. She said, See? You left Puerto Rico and the heat followed you. You cannot escape who you are, Carmen. I said, Mami, I have never tried to escape who I am. She said, I know. That is why you are my favorite. I said, Mami, you have seven children, you cannot have a favorite. She said, I have five children, Carmen, and you are my favorite. Five. Because Hector is gone and we do not say six. We say five and we carry the sixth in the silence between numbers.

That bowl of ceviche I described — the one that sent Eduardo to Ponce without a plane ticket — made me think about how often I reach for cold seafood when the world feels too hot to handle. This avocado tuna chickpea salad is my weeknight answer to the same impulse: no stove, no heat, just ocean protein and good fat and something that makes you exhale. I started making it on the hospital kitchen days when I came home too tired to cook but too hungry to eat nothing, and it has become one of those quiet recipes I keep coming back to, the kind that sustains without demanding anything from you.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 10 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

2 cans (5 oz each) solid white albacore tuna in water, drained
1 can (15 oz) chickpeas, drained and rinsed
2 ripe avocados, diced
1/2 red onion, finely diced
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice (about 2 limes)
1 teaspoon kosher salt, or to taste
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)
4 cups baby arugula or mixed greens, for serving

Instructions

Prep the base. In a large bowl, combine the drained tuna and chickpeas. Break the tuna into large flakes with a fork — you want texture, not paste.
Add the vegetables. Add the red onion, cherry tomatoes, and cilantro to the bowl and toss gently to distribute.
Dress it. Drizzle the olive oil and lime juice over everything. Season with salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes if using. Toss to coat.
Fold in the avocado. Add the diced avocado last and fold in carefully so the pieces stay intact. Taste and adjust lime juice or salt as needed.
Serve. Spoon over a bed of baby arugula or greens. Serve immediately, or refrigerate the tuna-chickpea mixture (without avocado) for up to 2 days and add fresh avocado just before serving.

Nutrition (per serving)

Avocado Tuna Chickpea Salad — Cold Food, Ocean Food, Mercy in a Bowl