Seared Tuna With Salmoriglio Sauce

Seared tuna is a delicious meal that takes only a couple of minutes to cook. Serve it with this salmoriglio sauce and you've got a real winner, for company or for any night. But first you need to be sure of getting really fresh tuna. We were fortunate to receive this gift of fresh tuna last week from our friend Lou, who had just returned from an overnight fishing trip, where he and friends travel 60 miles offshore in search of the prized catch. It doesn't get much fresher than this, unless you cook it onboard the boat.

These are the pieces I cooked. One is thicker than the other, so you need to factor the thickness into your cooking time. Cooking time depends on not just the thickness, but how rare you like your tuna. I don't like it raw, but I didn't want to overcook the fish where no pink was showing. I first smeared the fish with a little olive oil, then pressed some "everything seasoning" into the flesh. In the past I've used a combination of white and black sesame seeds and served it with an Asian-inspired sauce (see that recipe here), but I wanted to use some of my fresh herbs, so I decided to make salmoriglio, a commonly used sauce in Sicily and Calabria. We loved the combination of flavors.

One mistake I would caution you not to make is not to have the pan "screaming hot." It burned most of the seeds and I had to scrape them off. I would cook it at medium heat, and just flip it once, with about three to five minutes per side for a thick piece (1 inch or so), and just a minute per side on a thinner piece.

This will give you a pink interior, but a bit more cooked flesh near the surface. If you want it even more rare, then adjust and cook it less. I served it with baked eggplant fries (recipe coming soon).

Salmoriglio sauce is traditionally made with parsley and oregano, but my parsley seemed to have fizzled out mid-summer, so I grabbed a few other herbs, like marjoram, chives and oregano, that were still going strong. There are no rules, so use what makes your taste buds happy. This was definitely a happy marriage of flavors.

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Seared Tuna with Salmoriglio Sauce

about 1 pound of fresh tuna

a little olive oil to smear over the fish

1/4 cup of "everything seasoning" or a mixture of white and black sesame seeds

for the salmoriglio sauce:

zest of one lemon

3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 tablespoon water

1/2 cup- 3/4 cup fresh herbs (use parsley, oregano, marjoram or chives or a combination of them)

2 cloves garlic

salt, pepper to taste

1/3 cup olive oil

Remove the fish from the refrigerator and let it sit at room temperature for 1/2 hour. 

Meanwhile make the sauce. Place all ingredients into a blender and whir until almost smooth. It's ok if there are tiny bits of herbs showing. Set it aside while you cook the fish. 

Pat the tuna dry and smear with a little olive oil on both sides, then press the everything seasoning or sesame seeds into the flesh. Sear the fish in skillet (I used cast iron) on medium heat, flipping it once after a couple of minutes. If you like your tuna cooked more, sear it longer. If you want it rare, cook it less. A lot depends on the thickness of the tuna.

Serve with the salmoriglio sauce.

Spaghetti with Tuna Fish

I don’t know about you, but if you’re trying to avoid contracting the dreaded Coronavirus, you’re taking far fewer jaunts to the supermarket these days.  I’m trying to stretch out my trips to every ten days or more, (and I enter the store donned in a mask and gloves) and that’s mostly to stock up on fresh fruits and vegetables. I’m sure that even before this health scare, I had enough provisions in my pantry to keep us fed for a couple of weeks — dry beans, pastas, canned tomatoes, rice, canned sardines, tuna and even some canned artichokes are all staples I normally have on hand. I decided to put some of the tuna and pasta to work and make a meatless meal on a Lenten Friday. It’s a recipe that I learned from my Abruzzese mother-in-law decades ago but I hadn’t made in ages. Now seemed just the right time to dust it off, with a few additions of my own. It comes together in the amount of time it takes to boil the pasta, so it’s a great time saver and kids generally love it too. I added scallions and capers to mine, which my mother-in-law never did, but they amp up the flavor quite a bit. You could even add some anchovy if you like, as I saw in a recent New York Times recipe. The recipe is very adaptive to what you have on hand, so don’t make a special trip to the store for anything. If you haven’t got scallions, use minced onion or shallot, or leave them out altogether. I also used a fair amount of parsley and chives that seem to have sprung up overnight in my deck planter. Feel free to substitute and improvise with other herbs if you don’t have those handy. Even dried herbs will work in a pinch.

Mix all the ingredients together while the pasta is boiling, then add the cooked pasta to the pan just before it reaches the al dente stage, along with some pasta water. Stir everything together for another minute or two, adding more water if necessary, to finish the cooking to the al dente stage.

Sprinkle with more fresh herbs just before serving and dig in. Stay healthy readers. And wear a mask if you must go out in public.

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Spaghetti with Tuna

Author: Ciao Chow Linda

printable recipe here

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 large cloves garlic
• 6 small scallions (or three large ones)
• 1 5 oz. can tuna fish, drained
• two tablespoons capers
• 3/4 cup pasta water, more or less
• freshly minced chives and parsley
• a sprinkle of red pepper flakes
• 1/2 pound spaghetti or linguini

Instructions

1. Place the oil in a saucepan and add the garlic and scallions.
2. Meanwhile, start cooking the pasta.
3. Sauté until soft, then add the tuna, breaking it up with a fork.
4. Add the capers, red pepper flakes, half the herbs and about 1/4 cup of the pasta water.
5. Finish cooking the pasta until almost al dente and add the drained pasta nto the pan with the tuna.
6. It’s fine if a little water comes with the pasta since you’ll want to add more water anyway.
7. Add some of the pasta water and swish the pasta thoroughly through the sauce, adding more water if necessary to finish cooking the pasta.
8. Add the other half of the herbs and serve immediately.

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