Tuna

[poliphilo]

Why- when tinned tuna is so very, very fishy- does fresh tuna taste of nothing?

I was visiting Honfleur once and the tuna fleet was in- and these huge, fat , blue-black fishes- frozen solid-  were lying all over the dock  like unexploded bombs.  

Comments

[aellia.livejournal.com]

And why,when you buy tuna sandwich fillings,or ask for a sandwich,does it always have to have sweetcorn with it???

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm very fond of sweetcorn, but goodness knows why it's considered the ideal accompaniment to tuna.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Never ever heard of corn plus tuna!

Here we use apples, pecans, grapes, celery--

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think something is needed to alleviate the fishiness.

I only ever eat tuna- fresh or canned- when i'm forced into a corner.

[four-thorns.livejournal.com]

you brits put corn on everything! even pizza! i've never seen corn offered as a pizza topping in the us. or with tuna, for that matter.

another thing i noticed was the need to put mayonnaise on every sandwich. the only sandwiches in the grocery store i could find without mayo also had no other condiments. because if you dont like mayo in your sandwich, clearly you dont like tomato or lettuce or mustard or anything else either. oh, and sometimes they trick you by saying "mustard" when they really mean "mustard-flavored mayonnaise". that's rather low, i think.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

So what would you use instead of mayo?

Butter?

Actually I'm a little taken aback. I was thinking the mayo habit was something we caught off you guys. When I was a kid there was no such thing as mayo. Instead, we used a cheap vinegary concoction (still available) called salad cream.

[four-thorns.livejournal.com]

i like mustard on my sandwiches. the only sandwich that i'll eat with mayo is a tuna fish sandwich, or the occasional club sandwich. otherwise, it's just mustard of various sorts.

perhaps we introduced mayonnaise to england, and you (that's the collective "you") were just so taken with it that you went a bit overboard?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I favour mayo with any savoury sandwich.

Though I'm quite taken with the Spanish idea of using oil and tomato.

English mustard is pretty disgusting (or was when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s) and I never really developed a taste for it.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

It's not there in the states. Onion, celery, pickle - those are the typical things we mix into our tuna salad.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You go for things with a bit more bite; I think that's sensible.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

I love raw tuna, but even more than raw tuna I love raw yellowtail. Or bluefish.

The flavor isn't strong, and frankly, I think of it as being completely unrelated to canned tuna.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure we can get yellow/blue tail.

Ailz and I eat quite a lot of fresh salmon

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

But there's a difference between fresh salmon and raw salmon. Raw salmon doesn't have as nearly as fishy a taste as cooked salmon, no matter how fresh.

[mummm.livejournal.com]

Good question.

Preservatives?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

More than likely.

Most of the canned tuna we get is preserved in either oil or brine.

[four-thorns.livejournal.com]

do they have any that's packed in water? that's the kind i get, and i've never thought it smelled or tasted particularly fishy

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We do. Tuna in spring water. I'm not sure how it tastes because I don't think I've ever knowingly eaten any.

[silversmoke.livejournal.com]

Most canned tuna has vegetable broth mixed in as a "flavour enhancer," and that's the taste most people associate with canned tuna. If you prefer the milder, less fishy flavour, you should always get tins of tuna packaged in olive oil. The downside is that olive oil is ovbiously more fattening.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't think the veggie broth option is available in Britain. Or if it is, it's a minority taste. Our tuna comes packed in either oil or brine.

[kinderheldin.livejournal.com]

these huge, fat , blue-black fishes- frozen solid- were lying all over the dock like unexploded bombs.

I like the sound & sight imagery of this sentence.

You're right, though. Good question! :>

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks. It was one of the most surreal things I've ever seen.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I find that canned tuna is a roll of the dice: sometimes it is horrible and rank, and sometimes it is light and delicate.

Well: there is my thought for the day, to add to yours.

[baritonejeff.livejournal.com]

I have pretty good luck if I stick to albacore, preferably solid, packed in spring water. Mixed with finely diced celery, chives and sweet pickle. Throw in enough good mayonnaise to moisten, and you have a good batch of tuna. An unhealthy, but yummy, southern idea is to butter the bread before you spread the tuna on.

Question of my day: Why do so many people call tuna, "tuna fish"? Do they eat "trout fish" or "salmon fish" or "shark fish"?

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

They are the people who talk about the Sahara desert.

[baritonejeff.livejournal.com]

Now, to be fair, they might just not want you to think they're referring to the (defunct?) hotel in Vegas! Yeah, right!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

As opposed to the sahara forest.

But there was a time- thousands rather than millions of years ago- when the sahara was sub-tropical and had rivers and lakes and supported giraffe and hippopotami and things like that.

It's sacry to contemplate climate change on that sort of scale

[four-thorns.livejournal.com]

to be fair, in arizona we talk about the sonoran desert. "sonoran" is an adjective, so it's not quite the same. but nobody calls it "the sonora".

language is odd. i'd feel odd referring to a tuna fish sandwich as a "tuna sandwich"... to me, the addition of "fish" somehow denotes canned tuna mixed with mayonnaise. a "tuna sandwich" makes me think of a tuna steak in a sandwich.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Tuna fish? I really don't know.

But I seem to remember a time when tuna was known through the English speaking world as "tunny".

[manfalling.livejournal.com]

i've been pretty much living off tuna fish sandwiches recently. tuna packed in brine. the stuff packed in oil is just gross. squeezing out the juice is gross and gets oil all over you. and like- there's not enough oil in the mayo already? plus some ground pepper. then some big tomato slabs.

without the tomatoes, it's not half as good. sweet corn or cucumber are ok. onions aren't such a good idea, i think. tomatoes good and juicy though totally rock.

as for tuna being really fishy- i don't much notice it. perhaps i never have? or perhaps i'm just buying tuna now that doesn't.

also- about sweetcorn on food, and mayo- i'll say they do it much more in japan than they do in the uk. did somebody mention mayo on a pizza in the uk? i never noticed that. but it's pretty standard here. even traditional japanese foods like okonimiyaki (egg and seafood pancake things) have mayo over the top.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Mayo on a pizza- no, I've never come across that in the U.K.

I've never liked tuna all that much- in any shape or form. It doesn't gross me out, but I'd rather eat almost anything else.

Do you eat sushi? I love sushi!