Christmas cooking part 3, the fishy bit

Now there are a couple of things you need to know; first of all; I’ve only very recently discovered that a good fish is not a fishy fish… At my parents home we never ate any fish and to be quite honest my mom wasn’t the best of cooks. She never liked cooking and would not go far beyond the traditional cooking of that time and age which – in Holland – was very much vegetables, potatoes and a piece of meat.

The only fish we ever got to eat was on a saturday lunch where we always had herring in tomato sauce. You know the type that comes in a tin. O and sometimes the sour variety which we call “Rolmops”. No idea if there is an english word for that so if anyone knows it, let me know.

So I did not grow up thinking I might actually like fish. In fact I have thought for the majority of my life that fish stinks terribly and tastes equally disgusting.

I am not sure when it slowly started changing, but I believe we were on holiday in Greece when we sat at a little restaurant by the harbour and they were preparing fresh fish at the BBQ. It tasted delicious so I – very bravely – decided to give it a try. And I was so pleasantly surprised that I found it delicious that from there on I slowly but surely started to eat more fish. I am still a bit cautious as there are still a few fish I really don’t like to eat but in general I can now safely say that I love to eat fish.

Tuna is another matter. Not that I don’t like it, but there seems to be very little sustainable tuna available so in general I try to not eat any tuna, as I try and eat only the sustainable ones such as tilapia and salmon. Ofcourse I am no expert on the matter so if the fishman tells me it is sustainable I can only believe him right?

Anyway, to make a long story short; we selected a tuna dish for christmas. Part of the reason being that I know that one of our friends who come for dinner loves tuna and in general doesn’t like most other food. (can you believe that by the way??? She eats macaroni, that is what she likes and some fish. That’s about it. Hates cooking too… I love her dearly but can’t understand why she doesn’t like to eat!! I can understand people that don’t like to cook, but how can you not like soooo many things that are soooo good? Well, I did end up with a boyfriend who doesn’t like cheese…. )

I’m getting a bit sidetracked here; so tuna… Now as for tuna. I am not a big fan of the raw tuna as it just doesn’t have enough taste for me.

Which is probably weird and maybe something to do with how it looks more then how it tastes. I just don’t think it looks appetizing. It has this weird dark red color which almost looks like regular meat. Regular raw meat that is.

Anyway, we picked the recipe and Tom prepared this one as he loves it and I don’t. But I was a bit disappointed by the flat taste of it. Now we had all of our little dishes one after the other so that might have been the problem. We had the salmon first which has a very distinct taste and then the tuna which tasted – well – like nothing much really. Maybe it needs more seasoning (the recipe called for soysauce, chili, chives and limejuice. Nothing more. So I am still not convinced we should be having that for dinner. I will try some other things tomorrow. I am thinking about having little filled cherry tomatoes with shrimpcocktail.

Anyway, here is the recipe for the tuna tartar

And that’s it; you can hardly call it a recipe right?