Thursday 21 May 2015

Healthy lunch: Tuna pittas





The Legatus has a positive team of medical advisors attempting to keep him alive for a few more years and at a recent review one of these doctors was urging me, again, to eat more oily fish.  Now, I can't bear fish - it's either rank and disgustingly smelly or completely tasteless which, as a food, makes it pointless for anything other than nutritional purposes.  The point of food is not nutrition but sensual enjoyment, of course.  Fish is the least sensual food there is.  Back in the stone age there were two sorts of humans (no, not Neanderthals and Cro Magnons); those who lived on the coast and primarily fished and eventually evolved (if that is the right term in their case) into the people who now inhabit Iceland, Norway, Portugal Japan and other fishy loving places and those who hunted mammoth and woolly rhinos and got all the best cavegirls as a result.  Yes, fish is girls' food (like fruit - well girls and monkeys for that).  So you can imagine my horror when Dr really-rather-gorgeous at the surgery urged me to eat more fish, especially oily fish.




Regular readers (all six of them) will know that I occasionally make smoked mackerel pate but my mini blender has packed up so I decided to do something with tuna today as it has recently been on offer in the supermarket.  Now from a health point of view the amount of Omega 3 in tinned tuna is considerably less than in fresh mackerel (isn't it awful that I even know this) but its better than nothing.  So I mixed some tinned tuna (which looks and smells like catfood -although not as much as Gentlemen's Relish) with some super low fat mayonnaise and plenty of black pepper to help take the taste of the tuna away somewhat.  Put it in some toasted brown pittas with some cucumber and I feel very virtuous!

9 comments:

  1. Capers make a decent addition to a tuna dish if you're getting desperate for some variety - admittedly that is assuming you like capers in the first place.

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  2. You were doing fine until you added cucumber - cucumber must rank as the most pointless vegetable there is. It's mostly water and it just spoils any other sandwich ingredient with it's disgusting flavour (although strangely I don't mind it so much when it is one of the botanicals in a good gin).

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    1. I like cucumber! I like very few other vegetables!

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  3. Is there anything more pointless than low fat mayonnaise though... surely the whole point is that it has to be luscious, and oily, and full of egg yolk.... :o)

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    1. Very true but unfortunately my cholesterol level is 7.9, which basically mean they expect me to drop dead any day! So I eat low fat whenever I can, so I can occasionally not worry about it!

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  4. I suppose that if one has to eat fish then tuna isn't quite as slimy, bleakly translucent and pointless as some of the alternatives.

    I'm wondering if gherkins (i.e. pickling the cucumber) might add some flavour; IIRC the French sometimes use cornichons in sauce tartare.

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    1. Ah yes! I'm very partial to cornichons (only the French bottled ones) so will try that! Good idea!

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