Gourmet Tuna Noodle Cassarole with Grape Leaves and Olives

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There you have it my lovelies. A photo remnant of the last tuna I will be consuming for a long, long time.

(Insert heaving sigh.)

The last vestiges of the meal are heating in the oven now...ready to be consumed. (With a bit of trepidation if you must know.) Savored, savory, satiation.

Yup.

Tuna is off the menu.

Pity really. It's delicious stuff.

But peaches! It is just about time that we must all face the facts that it's also heinously over fished (and badly fished at that) and way up there on the "for-goodness-sake-people! Really? Please-stop-demanding-this" list. Right?

Right.

So as my one-small-person act of the week, I have chosen to avoid it from here on out.

Oh tuna, I will miss you, but I cannot consume you. No, no, not at the cost of the oceans, the earth and my general health.

From now on, I will focus my pesce-energies on mackerel and sardines and all the mid-range sea creatures that aren't a danger to myself and my pretty planet.

I promise to be a good, eco-friendly girl.

So with this dish, (recipe lifted almost entirely from The Hostess, who served it to me last week, and then repeated for your pleasure) I say adieu and close my eyes and hope and hope and hope that others will stop eating tuna too. At least long enough for you to rebound and for fishermen to find a less wasteful/more humane way to ensnare you.

Swim on great tuna.

For you my peaches, try this (not entirely summery, but entirely delicious and fantastically satisfying) dish and taste the (bittersweet) joy.

And thank you for indulging me in my lil' bitty soap-box moment. Sometimes a girl just can't help but say something that weighs heavy...ya know?

2 ounces seared tuna (I brought mine home from a lovely and abundant dinner out), diced
1/2 pound whole wheat noodles, cooked and cooled
1/2 cup whole cream
2 teaspoons capers
2 tablespoons minced scallion
1/4 cup kalamata olives, sliced
1 cup assorted wild mushrooms (I reconstituted dried)
1 teaspoon minced fresh savory or thyme
1 tomato, sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup panko breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
Enough rinsed grape leaves to line your baking dish
Salt and pepper

Preheat your oven to 325F.

Toss together the noodles, cream, capers, scallions, olives, mushrooms and savory. Season with salt and pepper.

In another bowl, toss together the olive oil, panko and Parmesan.

Lightly oil a medium sized (you'll have to eyeball this) oven-safe baking dish. Line with overlapping grape leaves (gaps are fine). Fill with the noodles. Top with sliced tomato then panko.

Bake until golden brown on top. About 30 minutes.

Slice in to wedges and serve.

© 2008 Fresh Approach Cooking

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© 2008 Rachael at "Fresh Approach Cooking" www.freshcatering.blogspot.com This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, or at the aforementioned url, the site you are looking at is guilty of infringing upon terms of copyright. And generally cheesing me off.

Yes, I did just read Bottomfeeder: How To Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood. I urge you to check it out.

New data released in 2006 by the WWF, the global conservation organization, revealed that bluefin tuna has almost been fished out of some of the Mediterranean’s oldest fishing grounds.Catches around Spain’s Balearic Islands in the western Mediterranean, for example, were down to just 15 per cent of what they were just a decade ago. Only 2,270 tonnes have been caught there in 2006, compared with 14,699 tonnes in 1995. - WWF

What's the difference between a fish and a piano? You can't tuna fish!