The guy and I have been harbouring this thought for a long time now. We’ve been wanting to try cooking a chunk of tuna steak on a grill pan at home, but given that it’s such an expensive piece of ingredient, we’ve been putting it off for a long while. Plus, none of us was confident of doing it the right way even though we’ve been watching a lot of cooking programmes like Jamie Oliver and Master Chef. These western chefs love cooking fresh sashimis on their grill plates, and when they do, I will go “Nooooo…..! They should be eating this raw!“
So I finally convinced myself to cook tuna after much coaxing. (I mean, it really is not easy to stop yourself from digging into a fresh raw chunk of tuna when you’ve got one right in your hands on the kitchen counter.) So apparently, when grilling a piece of tuna steak, you’ll really need to have at least a slight glimpse of confidence to know that when your tuna steak is done, it’s done. This is the most challenging part of cooking the dish because, well, how am I supposed to know if it’s still too rare or overdone with the outside already cooked white? There is a huge tendency to overcook the tuna because you’ll keep thinking about the ‘what-ifs‘.
Moral of the story is – if you aren’t convinced with your own counting skills, go get a kitchen timer in and listen to it this time round.
Ingredients:
- Tuna steak: 200g
- Olive oil: 1 tbsp + 2 tbsp
- Black sesame seeds: 2 tbsp
- White sesame seeds: 2 tbsp
- Ground blackpepper: 1 tsp
Method:
- Rub tuna steak with 1 tbsp oil.
- Mix together black and white sesame seeds and blackpepper on a plate.
- Evenly press and coat both sides of tuna steak with sesame seed mixture.
- Heat 2 tbsp olive oil in pan. Cook tuna steak for 1 min on each side. Remove from heat.
- Slice and serve medium-rare with salad.
Trick:
- You could serve the tuna slices with either mayonnaise for a Pan-Asian taste, or balsamic vinegar for a more western fusion take on the dish. I added some Turkish sweet pomegranate sauce into mine which made it really tasty and appetising!
Disclaimer:
- I got worried about under-cooking the tuna and added in a minute more or so the second time round. The end result was an almost fully cooked tuna steak, which really didn’t look as pretty (as you can see here) as what we see that’s done by the professionals. My take is that it’s a little bit like steak actually, so if you’re not comfortable with the fresh and raw taste of fish, then leave it to cook a little longer on the grill. But if you’re a huge fan of raw sashimi, then take it off from the heat as soon as you can!
Serving:
1 person
