Provençal recipe

Tuna bonne femme

Recipe no. 120 Reboul, 1909 Fish

Recipe no. 120 from Jean-Baptiste Reboul's La Cuisinière provençale (1909), page 64.

Ingredients

Preparation

  1. Blanching and browningBlanch your tuna steak, then, having drained and patted it dry, put it in a small pot with a few spoonfuls of oil, brown it on both sides and take it out onto a plate.
  2. SaucePut a finely chopped onion in the pot; let it brown lightly, add a spoonful of flour, let it turn twice over the heat, then add liquid with the water needed to obtain a lightly thickened sauce; add a glass of white wine, half a glass of vinegar, a bay leaf, a crushed clove of garlic, a spoonful of tomato puree, salt and pepper, add the tuna, and let it cook over a low heat about 20 minutes.
  3. ServingThen serve the tuna on the dish, the sauce poured over, and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

Reboul's text

Blanch your tuna steak, then, having drained and patted it dry, put it in a small pot with a few spoonfuls of oil, brown it on both sides and take it out onto a plate.

Put a finely chopped onion in the pot; let it brown lightly, add a spoonful of flour, let it turn twice over the heat, then add liquid with the water needed to obtain a lightly thickened sauce; add a glass of white wine, half a glass of vinegar, a bay leaf, a crushed clove of garlic, a spoonful of tomato puree, salt and pepper, add the tuna, and let it cook over a low heat about 20 minutes.

Then serve the tuna on the dish, the sauce poured over, and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

Small Provençal glossary for this recipe

Reboul writes in French: no Provençal word appears in this recipe, apart from the dish's name itself. The table below gives the Provençal equivalents of the words used, in mistralian spelling, translated by Lingua Nostra. Each form is attested in our Provençal-English dictionary; click to open the entry.

ProvençalEnglish
roudellosteak
blanquejato blanch
cassetosmall pot
besusclato brown
farinoflour
bagnato add liquid
vinwhite wine
vinaigrevinegar
toumàtitomatoes
juvertparsley

Source: Jean-Baptiste Reboul, La Cuisinière provençale, Marseille, 1909, recipe no. 120, page 64. Public domain. Transcription, formatting and Provençal glossary by Lingua Nostra.