let's talk omega-3 fatty acids

[fahye]

Just a reminder that help_japan bids close on March 31st, so you can still bid for the honour of having me as your writing-monkey. The thread is here.

Today has been largely uneventful in the way of Sundays, except that we had a plumbing crisis and had to call the clinical school admin officer and beg her to send us the emergency maintenance guy. He stopped the deluge (hurrah!) and has promised to return tomorrow and replace the washer that was broken.

I thought I'd share with you two of my favourite fish-based recipes. This is unusual in that I am really, really not the kind of person who eats much fish. Certainly if I were a terrible houseguest and you wanted to scare me away, all you'd have to do would be start serving trout or salmon at every meal, and I would run for the hills.

However!



Mel's tuna dip

This recipe really belongs to ryokophoenix, at whose house I first ate it, many many years ago. All you need for the basic version is: tinned tuna (the kind in springwater). Tomato sauce (KETCHUP, Americans). Mayonnaise. Carrots. However, the list of things you CAN throw into it is limitless, and every time I make it I end up trying something new.

First, drain your tin of tuna and dump it into a bowl and break it up with a fork. If you are making it for yourself, a single-serve tin is fine; if you are making it for a party, use whatever fuckoff big tin you want. But make sure it is chunks in springwater, not oil.

If you have lemon juice in a bottle, throw a little bit in at this point. Not too much. If you don't have lemon juice in a bottle, it is really not worth squeezing the damn things by hand to get a teaspoon's worth for this recipe, so skip it.

Pick up your tomato sauce. You can use whatever brand you like, but note that if you use anything other than the gorgeous dark Heinz variety I will be silently judging you. Squeeze out a big gloop onto the tuna. Now pick up your mayonnaise, and do the same thing. Both gloops should be approximately equal. Now MIX MIX MIX until the tuna is more moist than before.

Continue adding equal gloops, and mixing, until you have something that is of dip consistency. No, not something flaky that you might put in a sandwhich. MORE GLOOPS.

When it's all nice and smooth, you can start adding exciting extras. I like freshly ground black pepper or hot cayenne pepper (or, often, both). A sprinkling of dried herbs of any variety is great. I am pretty sure garlic flakes would be awesome too. As would whole cumin seeds. Honestly, just raid the dry-stuff-in-tiny-boxes part of your pantry and throw in whatever you like.

Now peel your carrot (or carrots, if making in party quantities) and chop into sticks. If you can be arsed, arrange them on plate around the bowl; if you plan to take this into your room and consume it in front of the computer, just throw the carrot sticks on top of the dip and go.

This is a great light meal, although if you are the kind of person who needs carbs for something to be a meal, I say to you: use half carrot sticks and half crackers. Or spread some of it on toast.


Kedgeree

I was quite confused as a child when nobody I met had ever heard of this dish. Like a nightly gin-and-tonic, it appears to be one of those beastly colonial dishes eaten by English people hanging around in India and trying not to contract malaria; apparently it's a mutated version of an Indian dish.

ALSO apparently, it's a breakfast dish, but you would have to be really keen to make this first thing in the morning. (Or, I suppose, have servants.) This recipe makes enough for two serves, which in my case means enough for Sunday dinner and enough to take to hospital for Monday lunch.

First things first: start cooking half a cup of rice in your rice cooker. Or cook it in a saucepan, I suppose, but my Orange household is very reliant upon our rice cooker. It is our One True Appliance.

Slice up half an onion (or a whole one, if you are into onions). In a medium saucepan, melt as much butter as your arteries think is reasonable, add some minced garlic, and cook the onions as slowly as you can be arsed. The slower they cook, the more delicious they will be. At some point, shake in some turmeric and some ground cumin, until the onions go a nice bright yellow. You could also add minced chilli or cayenne pepper at this point, but ONLY DO THIS if you don't have Tabasco sauce.

While the onions are cooking you need to boil some water and cook two hard-boiled eggs. They are best-best if you can get them to the point where the yolks aren't quite hard, but that can take a bit of guesswork.

Now you need a tin of smoked herring fillets in tomato sauce. (There are other possible fish options here, like salmon or cod or haddock, but personally herrings are the only one for me. Plus you need the tomatoey-ness of the sauce.) Empty this into the onion saucepan and break up the herrings with a wooden spoon, and let them heat through. Splash in some lemon juice -- yes, you definitely need it, this time.

When your rice is cooked, dump it on top of the fish and onions and stir until everything is mixed through. Serve it with a hard-boiled egg roughly chopped on top, some chopped fresh parsley, and Tabasco sauce. This dish is the one thing on which Tabasco is PERFECT and I am very very sad that I am going to have to use an inferior subsitute tonight.

Comments

[pushingmetaphor.livejournal.com]

Your last recipe makes me very hungry for this (http://www.thefoodpornographer.com/2010/02/17/dinner-and-recipe-sardines-in-tomato-sauce-with-onion/), which my father used to make for breakfast all the time. *________* (Tangentially it also made me realize that the Vietnamese word I've thought was the name of the dish for... my entire life is probably just the word for... sardines. OH SELF)

rachat de credit immobilier simulation

[(Anonymous)]

You got great points there, that's why I always love checking out your blog.

My blog:
le credit aussi simulation rachat de credit (http://www.rachatdecredit.net) au meilleur taux