The Safeway by my house sometimes pulls its head out of its ass and puts a few decent things in the seafood department. I don’t count on it. I use my Safeway for produce, braising meats on the cheap, and household stuff. So i was duly surprised on Tuesday when I found some halfway decent tuna steaks at a good price (Hawaiian Yellow Fin Tuna, frozen unfortunately, but well cared for none the less). I bought six of them. What other choice did I have?
So for dinner last night I decided it was time to play with the tuna and see what might happen.
I rubbed them with salt, pepper, garlic powder and a touch of wasabi powder. Then I drenched them in sesame oil and dredged the steaks in a mixture of nori and panko. It was about three-to-one nori, by the way. I had chopped the nori up, but roughly so you could still see some flakes in the crust and mixed in with the bread crumbs. The panko was there purely for textural reasons.
In a deep, straight-sided saute pan I heated up some grapeseed oil. The oil was about a half inch deep in the pan, but I’m not sure of the exact measurement. Incidentally, I used grapeseed oil because of the high smoke point and the mild flavor.
Remember, the oil has to be crazy hot for this to work correctly. You want the tuna mid-rare at most, so all you’re really trying to do is crispy up the outside as quickly as possible. Using your tongs, cook the edges of the tuna first. Finish by crisping the sides.
I served this with a parsnip puree, because I like the sweetness as an offset for the ocean quality of the fish, and a saute of mixed wild mushrooms for an earthy note.
So yeah. It’s kind of “chicken fried,” I suppose. I love the nori flavor here with the tuna, and when you fry it you get a wonderful crispyness. DFresh posted the recipe for Nori Crusted Filets that I adapted for this. Since reading that recipe I’ve bought myself a big-ass container of nori flakes. As I crust more things with them, I’ll let you know.