SC - Tuna Recipe?

[Philip & Susan Troy]

THLRenata at aol.com wrote:
> 
> Ahoy the List!
> 
> Does anyone out there know of a good, preferably period recipe for fresh tuna?

I believe Chiquart's 15th-century recipe for Parmesan Pies (Tourtes of
Parma, etc.), the fish-day version, recommends tuna as one possible fish
to use. It's a long recipe, although I believe HG Cariadoc has his lady
wife's, Mistress Elizabeth's, translation webbed. Basically it is a
large pie with layers of dried fruit and fish, possibly some custard;
I'd have to check on the details. 
 
> I was in my local Costco now long ago and, lo!, they had fresh tuna for sale
> at a reasonable price.  So home I came with 2 gorgeous tuna steaks.  I
> prepared one in my usual fish-cooking method (season, wrap in foil, bake) and
> it was absolutely terrible!

How terrible? Why terrible? Terrible, or just tasting like canned tuna
which should run roughly $2.49/lb? I think the biggest pitfall for
people cooking fresh tuna is overcooking, which, while not necessarily
producing such an awful product, doesn't really meet people's
expectations as something divine, as opposed to merely tasting like
canned tuna. Personally I'd recommend marinating a couple of hours in
salt water, then patting dry and switching to a marinade of olive oil,
fresh thyme and possibly some garlic. Then you can either grill rare or
medium rare, depending on squeamishness levels, or braise in more (or
the same) olive oil, white wine, perhaps orange or lemon juice, maybe
some tomato dice thrown in at the end. Again, you don't need to cook it
to death. If you like it like that, you are as well, or better off,
using canned. Rare tuna steak, on the other hand, kinda resembles beef. 
 
 
> So here I have one steak left in solitary splendor in the freezer and I just
> read in "The Original Mediterranean Cuisine" that tuna was a popular fish
> back then -- but the author did not include any tuna recipes!
> 
> Help, please -- that tuna's gonna stay in the freezer until I can do
> something tasty to it.

Absolutely my favorite fresh tuna dish is the tuna tartare we served at
one of the more insane work environments of my experience. As I recall
it was the tuna, raw, carefully cut with a sharp knife into 1/4-inch
dice, marinated/dressed in the usual suspects: good olive oil, coarse
salt, coarse black pepper, fresh thyme, and Nicoise olive puree, with
one or two tomato dice (real concasse garniture, peeled, seeded tomato
"fillet") cut to the same size as the tuna, on top, served in teeny tiny
little pastry cups ~1 1/2 inches across. The cups were a commercially
prepared item; you could presumably experiment with different ideas
there. I'm fairly sure, though, that tuna that's been frozen wouldn't be
nearly as good as fresh in this presentation.    

Other considerations might be whether the fish was properly trimmed in
the store: the "blood meat" or dark muscle tissue along the lateral line
of the fish, and along the back, should be trimmed somewhat, as it has a
much stronger "fish" flavor than the rest. If your steak is round (which
I doubt, but bear with me for theoretical stuff here), and it's lying
flat with the visceral cavity facing you (at six o'clock, if you follow
me), the bloodmeat will be visible at 9 o'clock, 12 o'clock, and 3
o'clock. The purpose of the brine marinade is to clean out some of the
"fishiness" from what you leave in of that meat. 

HTH,

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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