John and Marianne Shine know the good stuff. They have a simple objective they want to achieve every time you buy a jar of a tin of Shines Irish Tuna: “Buying our fish is not a lottery.”
So, how do they do that? Simple: they know the business of fishing inside out, and they have the eyes and the ears working for them out at sea: catching the best albacore tuna, fish that is fresh, that is caught only a few hours out of port, on the shortest tow, with a modest catch brought on board before the boat heads back to port.
The result of this meticulous attention to detail is superb fish. The result is Irish albacore tuna that bears no comparison to the tins of rubbish that are on offer in the supermarkets, tuna that comes from as far away as the Indian and Pacific oceans.
I made a Diana Henry recipe of Chicken Messina to road-test the Shines tuna, which is basically a riff on the Italian veal classic, vitello tonnato. Whilst the chicken was poaching, I made the sauce with a tin of tuna, mayonnaise, lemon zest, capers, anchovies, and cream. The dish was beyond delicious, and you could serve it with anything from baked potatoes, to poached veal.
John Shine plans to post photos and video clips from two boats that are landing the albacore, the Rachel Jay and the Eternal Dawn, so we will be able first of all to get a taste of what it is like to land the tuna, before we get the taste of the tuna itself. This is one of the best import substitution solutions you can find: we get to eat our own Irish tuna, of impeccable quality, and get to avoid the imported rubbish. Win, win.
Shines tuna
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