Hot Tuna

So today I made an awesome Tuna sandwich. This adventure was driven by the near-Clive-Owen pretty piece of Sushi Grade Tuna that I found at Guido’s yesterday.


I decided this piece was a great excuse to try something different since usually I like to serve something like this with a light sear and nice Asian sauce. It was also a good excuse to make something I’ve never tried before: aioli.

The recipe for aioli is Martha’s:
Blend 1 egg with 1 teaspoon salt in a food processor until foamy. With the machine running slowly add ½ cup safflower oil and then ¼ cup extra-virgin Olive Oil in a slow steady stream. Add juice of half a lemon and the zest of 1 lemon. Blend briefly. Season with salt and pepper. (P.S. it tastes very heavily of the safflower oil until you add salt and pepper so don’t panic like I did)

Then I lightly toasted halved French bread with a sprinkle of Olive Oil to give it a little bit of crunch. Heated a pan on high, then added about a tablespoon of Olive Oil (ps, you should always add your oil after the pan has had a little time to heat. This keeps things from sticking. See note below). Pat dry the Tuna, and rub on pepper, salt and lemon zest. Sear in the pan for about a minute each side. Remove from the heat and cut on the diagonal.

To assemble: take lightly toasted bread and add a fairly generous amount of the aioli (I used about two tablespoons). Then I put some washed Boston Lettuce (I like the more buttery, less crunchy texture of this kind versus a romaine but that’s a question of taste) and topped with the tuna. Finally, I squeezed just a touch of lemon juice on top so my sandwich wouldn’t want for acid.



Marilou tried this with me and gave it a Marilou rating of 10 out of 10. I am basically a seafood Jesus.

This was an overall success, though I will note that our $8 piece of fish makes this a less then affordable choice for company. The only way I would do it as maybe an appetizer, or a special date dinner with a nice side (maybe something sweeter like similar to the salad I made the other day with warm roasted sweet potatoes)



Note about when to add oil to a pan:
From the New York Times writer Harold McGee:
“It is indeed better to heat the pan first, then add the oil or butter. The longer the oil spends in contact with the hot surface, especially metal, the more time it has to be broken down by the extreme conditions and exposure to oxygen. Broken-down oil gets viscous and gummy, and even a slight degree of this can contribute to sticking and residues on the food. This happens more slowly with saturated fats like butter, but unclarified butter has milk solids that can scorch with excessive heat.”