Marianne's French Green Bean & Tuna Salad

3 ingredients! 🐟✨ 🍋

I’m required by Jewish law to share one canned‑tuna recipe a year — it’s my tradition!! 😄 🐟✨🍽️

This Green Bean and Tuna Salad comes from my friend Marianne, whom I met at our synagogue in Paris. She brought it to a Shabbat potluck, and it quickly became my favorite dish of the night. It’s fresh, healthy, and features just three main ingredients—green beans, white tuna, and a simple olive oil and lemon dressing.

I’m obsessed with simple recipes. Few ingredients, clear steps, big flavor—that’s my cooking philosophy.

• Focus on whole foods — centers meals on vegetables, protein, and healthy fat.

• Encourages home cooking — fewer barriers mean you cook more and avoid processed foods.

• Less decision fatigue — quicker meal choices, less stress

In France, green beans (haricots verts) are a common everyday vegetable. While Americans enjoy green beans too in France they’re much more central to daily cooking. I’ve always loved canned fish (tuna and sardines are my favorites). Canned tuna is high in protein, and because this salad doesn’t rely on mayonnaise, it stays light and bright. I appreciate recipes that use simple, everyday ingredients; this one has just a few.

About Marianne

Marianne comes from an Ashkenazi Jewish family. Her mother was born in France, her father in Poland, and Marianne grew up in Germany, dividing her time between Germany and France and traveling often to Israel. She studied at an interpreting school, spent periods in New York City, and completed a six-month ulpan in Israel after her studies. Languages have always helped her understand a country’s culture, history, and culinary traditions. She eventually settled in France, where she felt at home and raised a family.

Food was how culinary knowledge was passed down in Marianne’s family. She remembers watching her grandmother prepare Shabbat dishes like marinated herring with onions, chopped liver, and hard‑boiled eggs with onions, while the main course might be a very French dish such as pot‑au‑feu. Her maternal grandmother taught her desserts—cheesecake, poppy‑seed roll, strudel—always with a personal French touch.

Kitchen memories include the aromas of chicken broth with matzo balls at Passover, olive‑oil fritters, salted pickles, and fruit preserves. For holidays they made latkes, kneidlach, stuffed carp, hamantaschen, and more.

Favorite recipes and cookbooks

The five recipes Marianne cooks most often because her family loves them:

• Cheesecake

• Pepper salad

• Chopped liver (Gehackte Leber)

• Breaded cutlets with white horseradish sauce

• Salmon en papillote and roasted spiced vegetables

Her three favorite cookbooks:

• Jewish Cooking — Elizabeth Wolf‑Cohen (great for diverse Jewish specialties)

  

• The Cooking of Goldenberg — Sylvie Jouffa (a classic)

  

  Sylvia outdid herself — she followed up with the greatest Jewish cookbook title ever: 😂 The Non-Fattening Jewish Cookery Book

  

• Uri Buri — by an Israeli chef (excellent for fish lovers)

  

  

What inspired the recipe

Marianne wanted a starter that was easy to prepare, easy to transport, and that everyone could share at a potluck. Fresh green beans and red onion are staples in her cooking; she often serves them alongside meat or fish. Sometimes she substitutes cherry tomatoes for tuna. The salad’s simplicity, portability, and freshness made it perfect for Shabbat meals and communal tables.

Origin of the recipe

This salad fits squarely in a French/Mediterranean tradition: simple, dressed vegetables paired with preserved fish (think of the same family of ideas as salade niçoise or other tuna-and-vegetable salads). It’s also practical for Jewish communal meals—kosher‑friendly, make‑ahead, and easy to share. Rather than a single historic origin, it’s a family-and-regionally informed recipe born from everyday ingredients and potluck practicality.

Green Bean and Tuna Salad

Ingredients

• 500 g fresh fine green beans (haricots verts)

• 1 medium red onion

• 160–200 g can white tuna (drained)

• Olive oil and lemon (for the dressing)

• Fresh chives, chopped

• Salt and pepper

Preparation

1. Trim the beans. Cook in boiling water for about 8 minutes until tender‑crisp. Drain and cool.

2. Thinly slice the red onion.

3. Whisk olive oil and lemon; season with salt and pepper and stir in chopped chives.

4. Toss the cooled beans, sliced onion, and drained tuna with the dressing. Adjust seasoning to taste.

Serving suggestion
Serve as a starter or alongside a vegetable quiche. Sometimes Marianne swaps cherry tomatoes for tuna for a vegetarian version.

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This salad is a great summer recipe because it's light, bright, and served cool with fresh beans, lemony dressing, and protein-packed tuna—perfect for warm days.

To Tuna: the forever Jewish friend who always shows up.

Kenden