I don’t know in your country but in Spain, fresh tuna and in particular, canned tuna is extremely popular and consumed regularly.
Before becoming vegan, way back before 2011, one of my favourite “tapa” was a tuna and potato salad smothered in loads of mayo called “ensaladilla rusa” (Russian salad).
You may be wondering “why Russian” if it’s made in Spain, right? It turns out this recipe was first discovered by a French chef callen Lucien Olivier who had a restaurant called L’hermitage based in St.Petersburg, hence the name. In russia, at his restaurant, the salad is called “Olivier salad”.
I guess later, the Spanish just copied it at a later stage!
Anyway, enough about history, the truth is, I still love this salad so I had to come up with a way of “veganize ” to be able to still enjoy it and voila…vegan “Russian”salad is here without killing any tuna, without the heavy metal load and nano-plastics .
First, I used a very common ingredient that most vegan recipe developers used to substitute tuna, which is artichoke, from which I share this recipe below, but then I discovered a vegan version of tuna at the supermarket.
At first I was pretty sceptic of giving it a try because I didn’t believe tuna was easy to turn vegan with the same taste and consistency. Each time I would do my grocery shopping, I would see the jar of “vuna” (vegan tuna) staring at me and would never buy it also because the price, like many fancy vegan products, it was quite expensive, a small 200gr jar would cost about 6 euros.
But finally my curiosity couldn’t wait any longer and I gave in to buy it.
When I opened the jar to look at it to see the consistency, it was already a good feeling, it really had this flaky texture you expect from tuna…then came the taste, OMG.
Could that have been true? I really thought I was eating real canned tuna, this was truly an amazing discovery for me, I thought to myself “yesss! I can finally eat tuna again without harming animals and fish stocks!”
And this takes me to answer some of the questions I hear from people like “if you like the taste of meat and fish, why the hell do you go vegan? Or, why do you go looking for products that resemble meat and fish instead of eating the actual animal product?”
My answer? “For two BIG reasons, for my health, because I know for a fact (as a veterinary scientist and food safety specialist) that large fish like tuna are loaded with heavy metals and other harmful chemicals stored in their fat and because of the animals health as well as the environment.
Heavy metals are known to have a predilection for fatty tissue, they are what we call “lipophilic”, big fish like tuna are high in fat content, one of the reason why they are so valuable, because this means high quantities of omega 3’s (which you can easily substitute by eating seaweed and flax seeds).
The size of these fish also play a role, as the bigger the fish the bigger the amount of harmful chemicals present, as these tend to bio-accumulate throughout the food chain (little fish are eaten by bigger fish and so on).
Plastics are another big reason and issue, it is estimated that by 2048 their will be more plastic in the ocean than fish, we have literally massively polluted the oceans with this one time use plastic material, that unfortunately does not disappear but breaks down under the influence of salt water and sun light to small pieces until it becomes so small that it can be seen by the naked eye, called nano-plastic.
Fish consume this thinking its food ending up in our bodies when we consume these fish. The effects of plastics in the human body are not yet understood but we know for a fact that introducing foreign material into it will cause some kind of negative effect, specially the chemicals found within these plastics are of great concern as they are hormone-disrupting chemicals that cause massive hormonal imbalances and it is thought that the increase in hormonal related cancers like prostate cancer and specially breast cancer have a lot to do with this.
Fish stocks are being massively depleted by large ships specially from countries like Japan and china. Japanese fish mainly the large adult females because the flesh seems to taste the best for sashimi, leaving no females in reproductive state to reproduce and contributing to further reduction in numbers. At the same time, during fishing they take a lot of “bycatch” that is later thrown back into the ocean, this means a lot of other marine life caught into the nets like sharks, dolphins , whales, sea turtles and other fish that die and are thrown back into the ocean”.
I do NOT want to part of that despite me liking the taste of tuna or meat, I am a conscious being, that does not need to eat these animals to survive therefore I leave them alone to do their thing.
I feel good eating a plant-based diet knowing that my eating habits are not harming nor torturing sentient beings and I promoting my health by not ingesting these chemicals and plastics.
I think it is clear now why eating fish should be something to eliminate, right?
That said, here is the first recipe I mentioned before, the one made with an artichoke based “tuna”salad”
RECIPE N.1:
For this recipe you will need:
- A small jar of artichokes
- 1 large ripe tomato
- 4 tbs of Sriracha sauce
- 1tbs of smoked paprika powder
- 2 tbs of vegan mayo
- 2 Spring onions
- Juice of 1/2 lemon
- A pinch of black sesame seed
In a large bowl, break down the artichokes in small pieces, cut the tomato in small squares and ad it in, cut the spring onions and ad them as well together with the smoked paprika, mayo and sriracha and the juice.
Combine all ingredients well and plate. You can eat this delicious salad with some nice rye crackers or with some romaine lettuce making like a taco to put the salad in. Super delicious!!!
RECIPE.N2:
For this recipe you will need:
- 1 jar of “vuna” (to be found in large supermarkets from the brand garden gourmet”
- 3 tbs capers
- 3 gherkings cut into small pieces
- 3/4 white onions cut into very small size pieces
- 2 tbs of vegan mayo
- Small amount of dill and parsley
- Juice of 1/2 lemon
- 1/2 avocado
Combine all ingredients well into a bowl without the avocado, assemble nicely and add the avocado cut into slices on top.
Enjoy with fresh bread, crackers or like before, with some lettuce wraps.
With this last recipe, you will never have to miss your canned tuna ever again, it’s so delicious and tasty!!!
We can finally leave tuna alone, to thrive in the ocean where it should.
If you try these recipes, which I hope you do, let me know how it went and what you think about “Vuna”!
Love,
Eleonore