Fennel Crusted Tuna with Tabouleh and Citrus Vinaigrette

Finally a fish dish!

It's snowing in NJ. My buddy Alex dubbed it Snowpocalypse. Which is the perfect word for describing how people in NJ act when they hear a forcast calling for flurries. Everyone runs to the store to buy ALL the milk, water, and bread because, otherwis,e they would die if they couldn't leave the house for a few hours before the plows came...

...It stinks for the restaurant business too...one bum Saturday night during the busy part of the year can kill a restaurant...I try to make it a point to at least venture out to one restaurant in bad weather. For one, you're helping the restaurant when they need it, for two, it's usuallly not crowded. Support your local restaurants!

In any case, our friend from Montana was in town, we figured we'd cook her and her boyfriend dinner. After our last dinner, which I was actually QUITE proud of, (you can see the post on that here) we knew we had to knock it out of the park again.

Here was out menu:

Curry Marinated Lamb with Curry Yogurt

Fennel Crusted Tuna with Tabouleh and Citrus Vinaigrette

Braised Short Ribs with Tamarind Sauce

Green Tea Poached Pear with a Pistachio Brittle

We have made the Lamb and Short Ribs before, so we knew at the very least, those would come out fantastic. You can't go wrong with Poached Pears, but we have never cooked tuna at home before!

This dish has 3 components: The Crusted Tuna, Tabouleh Salad, and the Vinaigrette. After looking at the recipe, the tuna was going to be the easy part as long as we scored good tuna, as it's basically just toasted and ground spices and a quick sear. The vinaigrette, believe it or not, was the time consuming (but not too hard) part of this recipe. So we started with that....

Laurie then juiced some oranges, lemons, and limes and reduced it down. The recipe calls for 2 hours, but since we cut it in half, it reduced down pretty quickly so while I'm not sure the exact time, it was under 2 hours.

Then it needed to be strained...

We placed the liquid in the fridge to cool it and use it later as it needed to be combined with some egg yolk, some more citrus juices, and some oil to complete the dressing. At this point, I'm hoping this dressing is worth it! (...as I passed by the bottled dressings in the fridge...)

Next up was the Tabouleh Salad. This was composed of Quinoa, and a number of various items from the produce section. From Fennel to Cucumber.

 

  

 In the cookbook, Chef used red quinoa. Unfortunately, it's hard enough finding quinoa in the store, let alone red quinoa, so I had to settle for regular ol' quinoa. (If anyone knows where to get red quinoa in NJ, let me know!)

The salad was made! In the cookbook, the Chef says that this dish was made for summer, I can definitly see that with these flavors, granted it's snowing, but hey, maybe summer will come quicker now. It was very fresh tasting. 

Now, comes the moment of truth, not screwing up the tuna. 

We actually had a hard time sourcing decent tuna too. We settled on some thinner cut pieces at Wegmans after exploring various options. I suppose it's one of the reasons people like to eat out right? So they can eat things they normally can't find, or find good quality of?

Luckily, I have no problem sourcing spices! Here's a tip though. Buy spices in the bags...either from Asian or Indian markets. MUCH cheaper than McCormick. We made the spice crust ahead of time.

Here is what our kitchen and 'dining room' looks like pre-'service

 

You can see my short ribs cooling, the pears behind there poaching. The mashed potatoes warming....and the non-stick skillet heating. (hey, at least I found a use for that skillet) and our plates awaiting...

We seared off the lamb loin skewers and they went (all 15 of them) in a matter of seconds! Now..was the REAL moment of truth. While I removed the short ribs and reduced down the sauce, I prepped the tuna for searing...I know what you all are thinking...why am I worrying about this? Well, I'm just not comfortable yet cooking fish.

I wasn't happy with how these 'steaks' were butchered, and at 19.99/lb, I didn't want to square them up and waste any to get a perfect rectangle as I would in a restaurant.

And here we go! We were sure to get our guests nice and drunk first, just in case we screwed it up we could have quickly threw it out, and served up the short ribs!

 

And...Bazinga!!!

with one to try and match the book a little...

Thoughts: It was one of the best seared tuna dishes I ever ate, let alone cooked. The dressing, that I bitched out was perfectly awesome. When I first tasted the dressing, I was a little dissapointed as it was a little flat, but some more oil and some salt and then it just 'clicked' into perfection and was WELL worth it. The only thing that could have made this dish better was better tuna, although, this tuna was quite good. I'm not even a seafood eater really...and I had seconds. So did everyone else. The quinoa salad I should have served a little warmer, maybe at room temp as it was a little cool but the flavors were fantastic. I'd make it again for sure. I'd even make some fennel crusted tuna skewers with this dressing as a dipping sauce.

By the way, the wine pairing was a sparkling riesling. 4 stores - no dice. Our guests drank beer...and it worked out anyway.  Although, I'm steadily making my way through Zraly's wine course...

P.P.S....Our dessert came out well too! Looked a little not so good, but tasted fantastic. I could have made the brittle a little thinner. Next time.