Tonight’s main dish: Salade Nicoise, which by my definition includes tuna. (I pretty much follow the Julia Child Salade Nicoise model.)
The dilemma: What tuna?
Life is so much simpler (in the short run) if we just eat what grocers put in front of us, but I know that a lot of fish isn’t good to eat for health or environmental reasons—or both. So I was happy to discover Environmental Defense’s Oceans Alive website and its page on the best and worst seafood selections. Besides the handy best-and-worst lists, the left sidebar of the page has a Seafood Selector box, wherein you can select the type of fish you’re interested in and learn more about it.
Tuna, I knew, usually has some mercury, a very bad thing, but tuna is plentiful and wild, and if you choose yellowfin tuna (aka “light”), you get a third less mercury than you would with albacore. So, yellowfin in olive oil it is, and anchovies, it turns out, are an “eco best” selection.
I can’t claim that the resulting salad is a local concoction. No tuna swims in Kansas, and the greens and green beans I wanted aren’t available on farms around here when the thermometer hits Scorching, so I cheated on those, too. But the most beautiful parts are the local ones: the fabulous tomatoes, the thin-skinned little potatoes (including some purple ones), the gorgeous and tasty eggs. It was a great combination.
Somehow the photo looks fake, but it’s the real deal. Obviously, I have a lot to learn in the food styling department…
This looks so good. I just purchased more canned tuna yesterday in hopes that we could eat fish more at home. (we’re giving a lot of support to the local sushi joints lately!) My other quick cooking fish suggestion are Salmon burgers. I bought them in our local grocery’s store’s newly expanded organic refrigerated section. They are wild caught Pacific salmon, processed in Eugene. Very nice dinner!
Hey, Joanne! Glad it’s useful. I’m assuming salmon burgers are pretty much like what I know as salmon croquettes. As I grew up eating (and later making) them, salmon croquettes (also known as salmon patties and salmon cakes) were made from canned salmon, and, amazingly, all canned salmon is from wild-caught salmon. Maybe I’ll post a recipe one of these days!