I have to admit that like the urban kid who thought milk came out of cartons, my introduction to the tuna was courtesy a tin. Those days when the concept of packaged fish was alien to Delhi, tuna only came oiled in cans. There were two varieties — the expensive imported one and the lot cheaper Indian variety from the Andamans.

The Andaman tuna — yellow fin and dog tooth — is a healthy fish to eat. It is nowhere near as dear as the blue fin tuna, and not as fatty either. The Andaman tuna is also easily available — if your local fish seller doesn’t keep it, you can order it over the Internet.

Not surprisingly, chefs — such as Nishant Choubey of Dusit Devarana New Delhi — have been cooking tuna in various ways. “People like it because it doesn’t have a very fishy taste,” chef Chaubey explains. “And it is our own.”

Well, I am not going to get all nationalistic about the Andamanese tuna, but I must say his tuna salad with cannellini beans with black garlic dust is a nice way to get to know the fish. For the black garlic dust, he slow cooks garlic in a rice cooker till it is completely caramelised. He then dries it and flavours the tuna with the dust.

Since tuna figures prominently in Japanese cuisine, it is often used with eastern flavours. Chef Choubey’s sesame crusted tuna comes with a wasabi and yuzu emulsion. “Yuzu is a bit like the Gondhoraj lemon,” he says.

Citrus fruits go well with tuna, agrees Madhumita Mohanta, executive chef at The Lalit Great Eastern in Calcutta. Chef Madhumita, who puts tuna in salads and sometimes makes a pate out of it, often uses kaffir lime to give it a tang.

“Salads can be served with a sweet-and-sour mango salsa,” she adds.

The tangy kumquat is another interesting ingredient for tuna, chef Choubey points out. He does a kumquat reduction which he serves with olive oil poached tuna with quail eggs.

For his escabeche of tuna with crisp fennel, red pepper and grape gastrique, he refrigerates overnight tuna mixed with olive oil, white wine vinegar, sea salt and orange zest. The salsa is prepared by mixing chopped tomatoes, olives and capers. In hot oil, garlic is added, followed by red pepper flakes, sugar and then the tomato mix and fennel. He brushes the tuna with olive oil and adds salt and pepper. He grills it — rare or medium — and then serves it with the tomato mix and grape reduction.

What surprises me is that the fish is not celebrated in local regional cuisines.

Of course, sea fish is not a part of the diet of many fish-eating regions of India such as Bengal. In Kerala, however, it is eaten in regular homes, says consultant chef Arun Kumar T.R.

“It is often cooked in the Alleppey style, with a coconut based curry,” he says.

But it’s a fact that tuna loses its taste if it’s cooked in the Indian style — deep fried, in curries, with masala and spices and so on. Chef Choubey believes it’s best eaten rare. “It’s a dry fish, so there is every chance it will get ruined if you overcook it,” he says.

Don’t fry it, warns chef Madhumita. “If you do that, it turns into a bharta. Treat it the way you would a steak — sear it.”

And if you have to fry it (I know people who can’t eat their fish unless it is deep fried), fry it well, suggests chef Arun. “Then it becomes crispy like the anchovies that you get in small roadside shops in Kerala,” he says.

All in all, the tuna can be cooked in many ways. And to honour the fish, I’ve written this new slogan — East or West, our tuna is the best.

Photographs by Jagan Negi;
Location courtesy: Dusit Devarana, New Delhi