You might have just heard about tuna dry fish since this food is not
very popular at the moment. But now, people are starting to take notice of this
seafood alternative especially when they are bored eating canned tuna all the
time. When first seeing this processed food, you might not even know that it is
in fact a food since it has wood like appearance. The tuna turned into wood
like appearance because it has been dried completely through long processed.
How to Make Mojama Tuna Dry Fish?
Popular tuna
dry fish dish in the western country is the Mojama, although there are
other varieties of tuna dried fish from other parts of the world, but Mojama
gain most popularity since it comes from Spain. The Mojama itself has been
Spain culture for centuries. In the Spanish culture, their fishermen will cured
or dry the tuna in warm climate. With this method they will be able to preserve
their harvest for longer time. As we know, at that time there is no
refrigerator to preserve food as we have today, thus this method is one of the
methods that they use to be able to preserve the food that they catch.
To make the Mojama, Spanish fishermen will use
knife to fillet rear tuna meat to be long loin strips. They will use fresh tuna
fish in the process and take unnecessary part off such as the head and tail. The
next step is to wash it from dirt with water then curing it using sea salt so
it will be mature. This will take at least two days to complete. Afterwards the
salt will be removed from the loin strips. Next step is to wash the tuna meat,
so the salt will be completely removed from the meat.
Then the meat will be hung outside in dry
and airy place so it will be dried by the breeze and sun heat. The drying
process will be slow and long, you can see that the tuna meat will start to
shrink in size and the color will also get darker and darker. In the end they
will have red dark brown color and the consistency will be very firm thus it
will have wood like appearance. When tuna dry fish
is made using traditional method, it will take around fifteen to around twenty
days to completely dry it. This is when you see a lot of dried tuna hung
outside in the Ayamonte, Barbate and Huelva towns.
Actually Mojama itself can be made using
any type of tuna fish even mackerel can be used. Sometimes small type of tuna
such as bonito is also used in the process, however large blue fin type of tuna
is the most suitable to be made into Mojama since you can make large fillet
from its meat. And of course there should be right climate which allow a lot of
sun heat to make the mojama so it can dry completely.
This tuna dry
fish has very distinctive taste, texture and aroma which make it very
different from fresh tuna meat. This processed food has strong scent and flavor
with dominant salty taste because of the making procedure. Because of the
process that the tuna meat going through, it has unique flavor which can make
your dish become more special. Another note is that because of the process that
the tuna meat going through, it also modified the nutrition and properties of
the tuna meat. Aside from having higher salt content other nutrition has also
become higher because the meat has lost a lot of water using the making process.
Therefore mojama will have high content of fat and protein because the making
process made all of its content become more concentrated.
In spain and Italy, mojama is considered as
appetizer, before serving it will be cut in very thin slice until you can
almost see through it. Then it will be marinate inside olive oil to make the
meat moist for around one hour. Afterwards you can serve this dish with toasted
almonds or chopped tomato as appetizer. This tuna dry fish is also very popular mid afternoon snack or tapa in
Madrid which will be served alongside olive and short beer.
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