[Sca-cooks] Tuna, tuna, tuna

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach AEllin Olafs dotter:
>OK, I don't normally do this on this list, but... 
>One of the several things I do for a living is food sampling. A few 
>months ago, I did one of my most successful ones ever - a "new" 
>product from Bumble Bee, called "Prime Fillet Tuna." It was a solid 
>pack albacore, which was indeed solid and lovely to look at, and 
>which actually tasted like something! I've, personally, never used 
>the "white" because I thought I might as well be eating cardboard, 
>but the chunk is getting less chunky and more mushy every day, and 
>therefore less appetizing, at least to me. This was a canned product 
>I could actually envision presenting in a Salade Nicoise without 
>apology for either looks or taste.

I've seen the Prime Fillet product, actually a couple of different 
brands; to be honest it looks to me like solid-pack tuna used to look 
years ago. I agree on the mysterious decrease in the chunkiness of 
Puree Light Style Tuna, the artist formerly known as Chunk Light, but 
what is really getting to me is the... I hope nobody is eating when 
they read this... the... ummm... what appear to be... visitors... in 
the allegedly solid white tuna. I think they seem to turn up, in my 
experience, mostly in StarKist tuna. Sort of like veins of clearish 
jelly, which, if it were fresh raw tuna, would be easy to identify as 
roundworms of some kind. I've seen 'em raw, and I've seen 'em cooked 
(in tuna), and that's what they look like. I hope I'm not guilty of 
libel or anything, but it's extremely unattractive and it's a great 
coincidence if it just resembles parasitic infestation to that 
extent, but is not... I'm sure it's not dangerous at this point, but 
still, quite unpleasant to think about. Maybe I'm wrong and the FDA 
and such regulates the bejaysus out of these people and such a thing 
is impossible. Let's hope.

>I don't think it's hit every market yet, but nationwide brands never 
>start products in New York, too big to experiment, so I'm sure it's 
>in many places, though perhaps the more upscale stores. (My local 
>grocery doesn't have it...)  And a few other brands seemed to have a 
>similar product. It is more expensive than the regular, so I'd only 
>use it where nice big pieces made a difference.
>
>They didn't give us any information about how this was achieved, 
>but, looking at Adamantius's post... I had already been wondering it 
>it was a different type of fish, and that now seems even more likely.
>
>Anyhow... this might give several people another option for some dishes...

FWIW, in the South of France, even (or especially) in Nice, a Salade 
Nicoise almost invariably contains either canned or jar-packed tuna, 
and almost never fresh. Maybe it's like getting a real Idaho potato 
in Idaho, or else it's simply that the kind of concentrated fish 
flavor that is appropriate for such a salad is better achieved using 
canned tuna.

Adamantius