Pan-seared tuna with avocado

This recipe shamelessly stolen from Eat This Book: Cooking with Global Fresh Flavours by Tyler Florence - a book of recent discovery (by chance) in this house, with excellent recipes on just about every page. It’s quick to prepare (about 30-40 minutes), darned tasty and looks good too - so ideal for dinner parties or for impressing people, although I think it makes a pretty good Friday night dinner too.

INGREDIENTS:

For the sauce/dressing:

• 2 fl oz (60ml) extra virgin olive oil
• 2 fl oz (60ml) soy sauce
• Juice of 4 limes
• 2 good handfuls of fresh coriander leaves, finely chopped (use kitchen scissors unless you have amazing knife skills)
• 1 Jalapeno chilli (or other medium hot chilli), sliced complete with seeds (actually, I think this looks prettier with a red chilli, not a green Jalapeno)
• 1 crushed garlic clove
• 1 teaspoon crushed fresh ginger (I peeled a piece and then crushed it in a garlic press over the mixing bowl, so as to catch all the juice)
• Half teaspoon sugar
• Salt and pepper

For the main dish:

• good quality fresh tuna steaks (there is enough dressing/sauce for four steaks in this recipe or, do as we do, and use this quantity of dressing/sauce with just two steaks)
• 2 avocados, peeled, pitted and sliced
• extra virgin olive oil
• a bag of rocket (or fresh from the garden/allotment if you have it - how we miss summer! Our own rocket was miles better than any we have bought anywhere, ever. Period.)
• cherry tomatoes (allow around 6 per person)

METHOD:

First, make the sauce/dressing. This is easy. Shove everything in a bowl. Stir. Got it?

Next, scoot your tomatoes around a griddle pan in a little oil until they are slightly seared and split. Plate them up with a portion of the rocket on each plate.

Then, add a little more oil if necessary and, over a medium-high heat, sear the tuna for a minute or so on each side. Then spoon over roughly a quarter of the sauce and cook for another minute or two. Turn the steaks over and add another quarter of the sauce (or one-third of what remains, if you follow my maths).

Plate up the tuna. Arrange the avocado pieces artfully around the plate and then spoon over the rest of the dressing in a tasteful fashion. Serve with a long cold drink (gin and tonic, good Belgian beer, whatever - you need something long, as the sauce/dressing has quite a kick to it, particularly if (as we did) you make the dressing an hour or so in advance and let the chilli get to work on the other sauce ingredients).

Definitely the best new recipe I’ve tried for a while. Not that I’ve tried many new recipes lately. With everything else going on around here (I’ll write about it somewhen), the cooking mojo hasn’t been what it was. We need to get that back.

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