Green and brown splodge
Another non-gourmet dish (can anything that involves a can be considered gourmet fare?), but quick to prepare and usually tastes excellent. Tropical comfort food.
Oil-packed skipjack in cans is the preferred base. Fresh tuna would possibly taste even better, but would need to be cooked a long time to get it to flake finely and get the right texture.
Ingredients
2 cans tuna steak in oil
1 onion, chopped finely (but not grated)
200g frozen or canned peas (or fresh if you can get them)
100ml or half a can of tomatoes (usually better than fresh tomatoes anyway)
100ml or half a can of coconut cream (less trouble than grating and squeezing it yourself)
50g chopped spinach
2-3 cloves garlic (finely grated)
1 knob of fresh ginger (about the size of your thumb, grated (not your thumb))
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
fresh coriander or fenugreek leaves (or possibly mint)
dash soy sauce
dash worcester sauce
chili according to taste
Drain the oil off the cans of tuna, but put nearly half the oil from one can into a large frying pan. Heat the pan. Grate the garlic and ginger and add to the hot frying pan, then add the mustard and cumin seeds straight after. When the garlic starts to brown, add the chopped onion and fry the lot until the onion starts to brown. You need to get a slightly caramelised flavour from the onions, but keep moving them around - if some of them get too burned the resulting bitterness will flavour the whole dish.
When the onions are almost ready throw in a teaspoon of turmeric, and then add the main ingredients: the tomatoes, the coconut milk, the tuna and the peas (and some chopped spinach if you want - it adds richness to the final mix). Add a dash of Worcester and soy sauce, salt and chili according to taste (not too much at this stage - more can always be added later).
Then put a lid on the pan (if you have a lid big enough to fit over a large frying pan - sometimes a plate will do) and just simmer slowly. 15-30 minutes should do the trick. The simmering should be long enough for the ingredients (particularly the coconut and tomato) to infuse, but not so long that the coconut cream splits. If you find this happening regularly, then add the coconut cream later in the cooking process, but an undercooked sauce can also be a bit ordinary.
Towards the end of the simmering, throw in a small handful of of chopped coriander (or fenugreek) (or mint) leaves (and stems - these have even more flavour, as well as a useful texture, provided they are not too old and stringy), and adjust the salt and chili to taste. The final texture should not be too runny, but should still be noticeably liquid.
Eat with rice, or roti (if the latter, then you will want to simmer off more of the liquid, so the result can be picked up in a piece of roti without running up your elbow).
The most significant ingredient of this curry is the coconut cream, which makes it taste quite different from the other recipe for tinned fish curry elsewhere on the site. The acidity of the tomato is also important, but it could be substituted by tamarind (although a much smaller quantity of tamarind pulp would be needed).
Tim Adams
2005
Adapted from Blind Freddie's Guide to Fishery Management (Tim Adams: in prep)
