Big red fish

PalmWe had located the great fish; it circled our little boat, chasing the mackerel that served as our seat. The morning passed quickly, amidst the excitement of seeing it and the uncertainty of whether we could catch it. We played cat and mouse for a while until it won and left us alone in the middle of the calm sea. Then I breathed a sigh of relief because deep down I would have been upset to see it end up lying on the deck, its glassy eyes fixed on the sky and yearning for the blue of the water.

Tuna has been fished since ancient times for human consumption. The Greeks often depicted it on pottery, and the Romans caught it in almadrabas (traditional tuna traps) to later salt it and produce garum, the fermented fish sauce that flavored the cuisine of the empire. Apici recorded the consumption of this species in chapters IX ('The Sea') and X ('The Fisherman') of Book I.Art of cookingThese are recipes for sauces suitable to accompany it, made with ingredients such as garum, sesali, vinegar, honey, nuts, wine, and various spices. The Arabs inherited and perfected the fishing techniques, and during the Middle Ages, the almadrabas (tuna traps) flourished again in Sicily, Sardinia, the Maghreb, Andalusia, and the Balearic Islands.

Big Fish

In Mallorca, tuna is mentioned in the 14th century, in the Chapters on the rights of the fishThis is one of the most valuable documents due to the information it contains, detailing how fishermen and fishmongers on the island could sell their fish. Medieval cuisine was quite prevalent, and it turns out there was a clear preference for large fish, which were eaten in thick slices. Francisco Eiximenis states that wealthy men should never eat small fish. The author, very concerned with good table manners, believed that the bones of small fish were an impediment to eating carefully, as well as being dangerous because they could choke whoever ingested them. He recommended eating a roughly chewed piece of bread afterward to help dislodge any embedded bones. Some things come from elsewhere and don't change much.

In medieval cuisine, tuna was seasoned with salt, spices, sour orange juice, oil, and herbs. It was eaten as a filling for bread rolls and was cooked boiled with a sauce made from a broth cooked with the head, tail, and liver, along with almonds, hazelnuts, breadcrumbs, spices, and herbs. It was also fried and served with a sauce of toasted bread, honey, broth, and vinegar, or a casserole was made with the belly and eyes, cooked with sour orange juice, mint, and sea lavender.

In our cookbooks, tuna is one of the most frequently mentioned fish, especially in Mallorcan and Ibizan recipe books. The first written recipe for tuna in Mallorca appears in the compilation by Friar Jaume Martí (18th century), a tuna dish called "melocotonera" where the fish is first toasted in the embers. While it's over the embers, it's basted with a mixture of chopped fennel seeds, lemon juice, and oil. Once cooked, it's placed in a roasting pan and simmered with the desired sauce. Many of the recipes found in 19th and 20th-century cookbooks follow this method. I imagine the cuts were generous to prevent the fish from drying out during the double cooking process. One of the richest manuscripts regarding our fish of today is the Llabrés cookbook (19th century). Besides greixoneres and cazuelas, we find it used in more sophisticated dishes like tuna in béchamel sauce, where fried slices are layered with croquette dough, tuna steak, scrambled egg white, and breadcrumbs, before finishing cooking in the roasting pan.

Popular Mallorcan cuisine (Sóller, 1931) presents five different ways of preparing tuna, one in mayonnaise (fried and accompanied by mayonnaise sauce) and another in the Ibizan style, our recipe for today, which was also written in Enjoy your meal! By Juan Castelló Guasch (1967)A staple of Ibizan cuisine. You'll see that it's a delicious recipe that lets you enjoy tuna in the simplest way. I hope you like it.