Passport & Plate - Olden days tuna recipe
New Zealand | Friday, February 7, 2014 | 1 photos
Ingredients
1 kg of tuna / white tuna if possible
750 g of pork mince
plenty of parsley
5 or 6 shallots
2 onions
salt and pepper
How to prepare this recipeCut the tuna in small cubes.
Mix with the minced pork meat, the herbs and the shallots.
Put the mix in the dish and press the mix so it is tight fitting.
Put the lid on the dish. Preheat oven to 180/200 C and cook for 1 hour and 1/2.
Check it is fully cooked by poking a knife through it. When the blade is clean the pate is cooked. Let it cool.
Cut and serve with toasted bread, a salad or just a baguette and eat as sandwiches as it was done on the boats.
The story behind this recipeThis recipe is from the fishermen of Brittany who were fishing for tuna in the high seas. When the first tuna was caught they would skin it and prepare the dish cooking it with lard and baking it in its own skin.
It was a way to enjoy the first tuna and also an omen that the fishing season would be plentiful.
This is a rustic no frills recipe but it really enhances the fish and allows the tuna to stay moist cooked in minced pork.
When I was a child, with my grandfather we would go to Etel, in Southern Brittany where the boats would come back from their fishing campaign. We would look at all the tunas staring at us. But what I remember the most was the colour of their skin glistening with the early sun.
We would buy the tuna and go back home. Then it was a feast in the kitchen. My grandfather would prepare the fish and we were the little hands mixing the pork meat and the tuna. It was so much fun! Then adding the shallots and onions and my grand father would do the last touch – seasoning the dish.
The dish would go in the big wooden stove for hours.
For dinner we would have a treat!
I have such great memories of this time. I try to keep the tradition and I will be the next generation after my Dad.
My recipe went from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean where I now cook it in New Zealand. My sailing forefathers would have loved it.
