Peppered Tuna and Hoisin Dipping Sauce with Asian Cucumber Salad

Alex and I made a trip out to Costco today and stumbled upon some thick cut amazing tuna steaks.  They were beautiful.  So we decided to pick some tuna steaks up and make them for dinner!  This has been a very seafood week for us - striped bass one night, then shrimp, then salmon last night and now tuna.  Up until now the shrimp was my favorite dish, but this tuna has supplanted it as my favorite.  Everything about the dish just works.  The recipe was supposed to come with Asian guacamole instead of an Asian cucumber salad, but it is foul outside (wintry mix in late October is not my friend) and we didn't want to go pick up avocados.  We picked up some Persian cucumbers today while we were at Costco and I think cucumbers go really well with seared tuna.  I briefly considered doing asparagus instead, but decided that cucumbers would be the better choice.  So we went with cucumbers and I was not disappointed with our choice at all.  It was fabulous.  The cool and vinegary cucumbers were the perfect contrast to the warmth and spice of the Sichuan peppercorns and star anise of the tuna, and the richness of the hoisin dipping sauce.  Actually, I was pleasantly surprised by the cucumbers.  Sometimes cucumber salads are so lightly flavored that they are forgettable and only really work when served as an accompaniment to a really flavorful meal.  While the cucumbers were a great compliment because they were refreshing and didn't compete with the flavors of the tuna, they were also tasty enough that they stood on their own.  They were really good.  I would definitely make them again, with or without the tuna.  And I definitely plan on making the tuna again.  Maybe next time we will make the Asian guacamole that Susan Spicer intended to go with the dish.  I think if we fried up some dumpling wrappers as if they were tortilla chips to eat with the guacamole that would be pretty fabulous.  This was a really excellent meal - one of my favorites that we have made recently.

Recipes after the jump!

Seared Tuna with Olive Tapenade Vinaigrette and Arugula

On Saturday Alex and I went to Chelsea Market after having lunch at The Spotted Pig.  I went a little crazy at The Lobster Place buying fresh seafood.  There were these amazing Mayan Shrimp from Guatemala (biggest shrimp I have ever seen - more on that later), gorgeous ruby red tuna steaks, huge lobsters, Dungeness crab, etc.  If good seafood wasn't so expensive I would have gone buckwild.  But I managed to restrain myself with 3 things - the Mayan shrimp, the tuna and some nice wild salmon.  I know it's lame that I always buy salmon, but I can't resist.  It's delicious, easy to cook and one of my favorite fish.  Next time I promise to get something a little more exotic.  Anyway, back to my tuna!  When we cooked up the recipe in my last post about tuna, Seared Tuna with Green Onion Wasabi Sauce, I had two other recipes that I really wanted to make, but we didn't happen to have the ingredients at the time.  So I decided to go ahead and make one of them, only once again we didn't have all of the ingredients.  But I picked the recipe that required the fewest ingredients we didn't have at home (in this case basil and baguette) and ran by Fairway on the way home from work.

I have to say that the tapenade in this dish was fantastic.  I have never thought to add balsamic vinegar, basil and lemon zest to olive tapenade but it really worked.  I also never would have thought to serve tuna steaks with olive tapenade, but that worked too.  The tapenade was equally delicious when drizzled over the tuna steaks or spread on the toasted baguette slices and provided a ton of flavor.  Without the tapenade the tuna steaks would have been a little blah, but with the tapenade it was a completely different dish.  I might try out the tapenade with other dishes - perhaps with some roast chicken breasts or a nice seared piece of striped bass.  I'm not sure if I will make this tuna recipe the next time I pick up some nice tuna steaks, but I am glad that I finally got the chance to try it.

Recipe after the jump!

Tuna Salad with Cannellini Beans

Sometimes on the weekend Alex and I run out of inspiration when it comes to making lunch.  So we end up going out to lunch a lot.  That would be ok, except that we end up going out to dinner a lot on the weekend too.  So after awhile going out to lunch all the time on the weekend begins to take its toll on our wallet (and our waistlines).  We were talking about going out to lunch again today (and struggling to pick a restaurant) when I decided that since we are meeting friends for dinner tonight, we should just forage in the fridge for lunch.  Alex ended up eating leftovers and I ended up with this tuna salad.  It was either that, or boxed mac n cheese.  I think I made the right choice with the tuna.

Initially I was thinking about making tuna tartines, but the bread we used for our radish crostini and the merguez sausage sandwiches last night (which I haven't posted about yet, but I promise to do it sometime today) was a little stale.  So I decided to just serve the salad as is.  If I had any arugula in the fridge I would have served this tuna salad atop a bed of arugula and made an actual salad out of it all.  I guess you could say that this tuna salad is vaguely Italian with its combination of basil, parsley, lemon, evoo, and just a touch of balsamic.  All I know is that not only did I like the tuna salad, but Alex, who has long professed a hatred of all things tuna fish, tried it (after some admitted bullying on my part) and he actually liked it.  Boo-yah!  So it has to be pretty good, right?

Recipe after the jump!