Julia Busuttil Nishimura emerged from 2020 as one of Australia’s favourite cooks. The author of two acclaimed cookbooks, Ostro, published in 2018, and 2020’s A Year of Simple Family Food, Busuttil Nishimura calls on a range of influences in her cooking, including her Maltese heritage, her exposure to Japanese cuisine via her husband, chef Nori Nishimura, and time spent living in Italy. The result is simple yet considered food that pays homage to generations of cooks that preceded her.
It’s that kind of knowledge that also sees Busuttil Nishimura able to spin simple ingredients – like tuna – into multiple delicious options. We asked her for her take on a a midweek meal, a dish for entertaining, and a classic using the tasty fish.
Midweek: Tuna and chickpea salad
A quick, easy and healthy midweek meal calls for a nourishing salad. Busuttil Nishimura’s go-to uses a jar of Sirena’s whole tuna fillets, which deliver both a hit of flavour and a vital dose of protein, as well as cherry tomatoes, thinly sliced fennel and a staple to add bulk. “I use chickpeas, but you can swap it out with whatever you’ve got on hand,” says Busuttil Nishimura. She suggests using lentils, borlotti beans or cannellini beans if chickpeas aren’t your thing.
Busuttil Nishimura serves the salad with salsa verde, an Italian green sauce with garlic, lemon zest, olive oil and handfuls of herbs. Blitz it up and it makes a beautiful dressing. “It’s really zingy,” she says. “It’s fresh and bright, and it’s really filling. Have it with some crusty bread and it’s a meal in five minutes.”
Entertaining: Hobz biz-zejt
While other kids were eating Vegemite sandwiches for lunch, a young Busuttil Nishimura was more likely to find hobz biz-zejt in her lunchbox – a classic Maltese sandwich. “Hobz biz-zejt literally means bread with oil,” says Busuttil Nishimura, whose father emigrated to Australia from Malta in the 1960s, while her mother’s parents arrived after the Second World War.
Hobz biz-zejt is traditionally served as a layered sandwich with tomato paste, olive oil and tuna. “We used to always have it with olive and capers, and chopped red onion and parsley,” says Busuttil Nishimura. “You can have it with anchovies but when I grew up it was always with tuna.”
These days, Busuttil Nishimura loves serving the classic dish to friends who drop by. “It uses pantry ingredients so it’s something you can whip up when people arrive unexpectedly,” she says. “I like to lay out the ingredients and get people to make their own. Add chopped parsley or basil, or rocket to it if you want to make it more substantial.”
Classic: Salad niçoise
Salad niçoise is a dish with a long history. Its first iteration, popular among the peasantry in 19th century France, comprised tomatoes, anchovies and olive oil. Legendary French chef Auguste Escoffier, often credited as being the founder of modern cuisine, adding potatoes and green beans in the early 1900s, much to the chagrin of purists. In 1970, Julia Child chimed in with the addition of tuna and anchovies in her much-loved television show, The French Chef.
Busuttil Nishimura’s version calls for “some really nice potatoes, half-cut eggs, green and yellow string beans and beautiful tuna fillets”, served on a platter. “It looks so vibrant,” she says. “It’s visually really beautiful and something you can prepare in advance.”
A simple vinaigrette serves as a dressing. Combine olive oil, mustard and lemon juice in a jar and give it a good shake before drizzling over the salad, suggests Busuttil Nishimura. She sometimes adds shallots to the dressing, to cut through the richness of the potatoes.
See Julias' lunchtime tuna spaghetti here.
This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Sirena Premium Tuna.
