Customer Reviews

The Tuna Fish Gourmet

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for those who eat tuna!! I turn to this cookbook several times a month when minutes matter.. we always have canned tuna in the pantry, and the other ingredients are usually on hand as well. A wonderful answer to the dinner dilemma, this little book has never failed me. It's a great book to come home to after a busy day when no meal is planned.

Surely a staple in every pantry and a favorite of every family, tuna fish has been recognized as an economic and healthful food. Now, "The Tuna Fish Gourmet" dresses up that rather commonplace commodity and touts tuna for the connoisseur.

Among the 75 recipes are Tuna Latkes, potato pancakes combined with white tuna, Herbed Tuna Salad flavored with fresh dill and heaped in avocado halves, and Linguini with Red Tuna Sauce. There are also tuna sandwiches that mother never dreamed of but would adore.

Engagingly illustrated with cartoons by Victoria Roberts, this small book offers recipes that are not only convenient and flavorful but also low in calories.

I got my copy of The Tuna Fish Gourmet free 15 years ago by redeeming labels from a brand of canned tuna. The paperback cover is sturdy and slick and the binding tight, so it still looks new. The recipes hold remarkably well up, too.

Although the theme, using canned tuna, obviously limits what can be done, the range is broader than expected, more upscale, too. Considering the era in which this book was born, most of the recipes are surprisingly fresh, dovetailing with current nutritional wisdom, food trends and equipment. There's a Vietnamese inspired lettuce wrap, a nifty tapenade (dresses up a poached chicken breast or white fish fillet nicely), and a tuna burger that while a little soft for a burger bun made a perfect layer in a stack with rice and sautéed matchstick vegetables. It also goes well with a salsa topping instead of tartar sauce. The white bean, tuna and tomato salad is good (though the very best, most nuanced recipe for that is in Martha Rose Shulman's Mediterranean Light cookbook). There are lots of easy salad, entree and appetizer recipes. I haven't tried the tuna pan bagna yet, but it looks wonderful.

One of the pluses is, it has a number of recipes traditionally made with shellfish and tuna makes a good stand in, good news for households with a shellfish allergy under the roof.

The book also has recipes for tuna noodle casserole and tuna a la king, if you must go there, but fortunately the rest of the recipes are more sophisticated (though easy to execute).