Seared Sesame Tuna Steaks

Aunt Joanne, this one's for you! :-)

I got the idea for this awesome recipe while watching Food Network one evening (imagine that), and seeing Alton Brown do something very similar. He actually had an entire tuna loin, which I had been unable to find until recently, and he grilled his. I believe he also used more wasabi powder in his, which you are more than welcome to do, but if you’re serving it with something like wasabi mashed potatoes or drizzling a little bit of wasabi aioli over the top, I think it’s best to use the wasabi in moderation. My fellow sushi lovers can attest to the fact that too much wasabi can definitely be a bad thing!
What I really like about this recipe is that the marinade adds a little bit of flavor to the fish. If you buy really good fish, tuna included, it should never smell fishy or “off”. Sometimes, if you buy frozen fish, it has kind of a weird smell, but you can easily remedy that by soaking the fish, any fish, in milk for an hour or so. The acid in the milk absorbs any added smells and tastes… Now, keep in mind, if the fish is bad, there’s no saving it! Please, do not ever try to revive old/bad fish by soaking it in milk, because it’s not going to work and you (or your dinner guests) could possibly suffer from food poisoning. Nobody wants that!
For those of you who don’t know about tuna, I just want to say that, yes, you ARE supposed to eat it rare to medium-rare. In fact, if you overcook it, I’m guessing it will taste very much like that dry stuff you buy in a can at your local market, which needs some mayo to make it taste good. You can ask just about anyone, and they’ll tell you that eating rare meat is not generally something I do. I was at dinner with my best friend and her mom and ordered a hamburger that was still very pink in the middle, and I couldn’t even eat it after seeing that. I don’t generally care for steaks because I don’t like them to have any pink in them, which means they usually end up on the tough side. I’m not the kinda girl to condone eating raw meat, at all! But, this time, I will most definitely emphasize how imperative it is. The important thing to remember is that you need to make sure you’re buying sushi-grade tuna, which is most generally always eaten without being cooked at all. Anything given the sushi grade has to be of very high quality, so the chances of getting sick from eating it are slim to none. I’ve eaten uncooked, rare, or medium-rare tuna on many occasions, and have yet to get sick as a result. Try doing that with chicken! ;-P

Printable Recipe

1 c. dark soy sauce
1 c. honey
¼ c. dry wasabi powder
2 (app. 8 oz.) sushi-grade tuna steaks
¼ c. white sesame seeds
¼ c. black sesame seeds
2 Tbsp. canola oil
Wasabi aioli, optional

In a non-reactive (glass) bowl, whisk together the soy sauce, honey, and wasabi powder. Place the tuna in a glass baking dish and pour the sauce around the fish, moving the fish around to coat evenly. Marinate the tuna up to 4 hours, turning the steaks halfway through marinating. Remove the tuna from the marinade and discard the marinade. On a plate, combine the sesame seeds and coat both sides of each tuna steaks with the seeds, pressing gently so that they adhere.
In a non-coated or cast iron frying pan, heat canola oil on medium heat and place the tuna steaks in the frying pan when the oil is hot. For medium rare steak: cook for 2 - 4 minutes, flip and cook for another 2 - 4 minutes. Slice the tuna against the grain and serve drizzled with a little bit of wasabi aioli. Makes 4 servings

Oven-Roasted Sesame Broccoli

I know that some people don’t really care for broccoli, especially my best friend who went on a diet craze and basically only ate broccoli and chicken breasts, but I happen to think it’s delightful! Of course, that’s probably because I’ve never really been on a diet craze, so I wouldn’t know anything about eating too much of it… Hee hee hee! My problem with diets is that I can’t eat ANYTHING for more than a few days in a row before I’m ready for something else no matter how good it is, especially sandwiches. Variety is the spice of life! I suppose that means no cookie-cutter diets for me…

But, anyways, back to the broccoli!

I don’t know if any of you have caught on to this, but I’m really quite fond of roasted vegetables. Potatoes… Eggplant… Squash… Asparagus… (YUM!!) It’s all good when it’s roasted! Until now, though, I had never had roasted broccoli, despite hearing rave reviews. Generally, I’ve just always steamed it, because that’s fast and easy, especially when I’ve got so much other stuff going on. But, this is just as easy!
A lot of other recipes call for roasting the broccoli at a higher temperature, and I normally would have done that, but I was making pork chops for this particular dinner and was finishing them in the oven, so I didn’t want the oven to be real hot. I also didn’t want the broccoli to be cooked and waiting while I finished the pork chops, or vice versa, so I roasted the broccoli at the same temperature as what the pork chops’ finishing temperature was and cooked the broccoli a little longer than normal. It turned out wonderfully, and I think I’ve found my new favorite way to prepare broccoli!

Printable Recipe

1 lb. broccoli crowns, rinsed and drained
Freshly ground black pepper
Sea salt
1 - 2 Tbsp. sesame seeds
1 Tbsp. sesame oil

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Cut the broccoli crowns into bite size pieces.
Place the broccoli into a mixing bowl and toss with the pepper, salt, sesame seeds, and olive oil. Spread the broccoli on a foil-lined cookie sheet and place into the oven and roast just until the broccoli is tender and the edges have darkened slightly, 20 to 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and serve immediately.

Scali Sandwich Rolls

You might be surprised to know, this is my first time making homemade bread. I’ve always felt a little intimidated about it before, because it’s such a long process… Mixing the yeast with “just right” warm water, mixing that with flour and other stuff to make a dough, letting it rise, punching the dough down and kneading it, letting it rise again, punching it down and kneading it again until just the right texture, blah blah blah. Talk about a daunting task! Not to mention time-consuming. So, imagine my delight when I came across one that didn’t require all of that junk!
I should probably start out by telling how I came across this bread, being that it has a kind of strange name and I had never heard of it before. Unlike most other recipes, I didn’t come across this while looking for another recipe of some sort online. I was actually at Wal-Mart with a friend, and I happened to notice the braided rolls while looking for something to go with my fish sandwiches that I’ve been planning to make. I had never heard of scali before, so I Googled it on my phone while still at the store and found that it’s not a well-known kind of bread around my area in Wisconsin. It’s more local to the Boston area, where some people of Italian decent settled and made the bread popular. It’s a mild, slightly nutty bread with a “crumb” (as it is called) that is perfect for sandwiches and such. While I could have purchased the bread from the bakery there, I declined as I was more than a little disappointed in the fact that they omitted the sesame seeds, which are characteristic of this bread. Being that I love sesame seeds, AND bread, I was intrigued and therefore set about learning what I could about the bread - which is when I found out how incredibly easy it is to make.
The basic recipe for this bread called for one large loaf or 12 small hamburger-sized rolls. However, I wanted slightly larger ones as I am planning to make my own fish sandwiches, which means that they’re not going to be the perfect little square crap things you buy in a box, and so will need more bread for the sandwich part. I adjusted the measurement part of the recipe thusly, and also added the egg wash and sesame seeds after proofing, but otherwise the recipe is the exact same. When it comes to bread, I’m not sure that it’s something you should mess around with too much… Well, I’m not going to anyways, being a very amateur bread maker! The only thing that I did do differently was how I went about making my rolls... I had asked a few questions on different blogs about how to go about braiding the rolls, whether it would be best to separate the pieces of dough for each roll and braid them separately or has a larger loaf. I was told that, being an amateur bread maker, I should stick with the larger loaf and cut it into separate rolls because that would be easiest and only really talented bread makers should attempt to braid individual loavees. I guess now I should probably tell you (even though it might be obvious) that I have never braided bread before either! And all I have to say about the advice I was given... Whatever!! I tried doing what they said and making one big loaf, but right away I was having difficulties getting the bread to cooperate and stay a uniform size while trying to braid and all of that mess. So, finally, I stopped messing around with that, cut the pieces smaller, and braided each roll separately. It was MUCH easier and the rolls turned out looking more uniform and pretty! After all, it's all about the aesthetics!! ;-)

Printable Recipe

Starter:
1 c. unbleached all-purpose flour
⅓ - ½ c. cool water, to make a stiff dough ball
Pinch of instant yeast

Dough:
All of the starter
2 c. unbleached all-purpose flour
1¼ tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. nonfat dry milk
2 tsp. instant yeast
⅔ c. lukewarm water
2 Tbsp. olive oil

Topping:
1 large egg white beaten
1 Tbsp. cold water
½ c. sesame seeds

To make the starter: Mix the starter ingredients together, cover, and let rest at room temperature overnight. Note: This is a dry, stiff starter. If it's too dry to come together, it may be that you measure your flour differently, or that you're in a particularly dry climate. Dribble in sufficient water to make the dough come together, and proceed with the recipe as directed.
To make the dough: Combine the starter with the remaining dough ingredients, and mix and knead — by hand, mixer, or bread machine set on the dough cycle — to make a soft, smooth dough. This will take about 7 minutes at medium speed in a stand mixer equipped with a dough hook… Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl or large (8-cup) measure; cover, and let it rise for about 90 minutes, till it's just about doubled in bulk.
To make the rolls: Gently deflate the dough, and divide it into six equal pieces; then, divide those six pieces into 3 equal portions. Shape each portion into a rough log, and let the logs rest, covered with a towel, for about 10 minutes. This gives the gluten in the dough a chance to relax, which in turn will make the logs easier to roll. Or so I've read... Working on a lightly greased surface, take three of the logs and roll each into a thin rope. Grab one end of each rope, and squeeze the ends together firmly. Braid the ropes, tucking the ends under to make a neat braided loaf. Repeat with the remaining logs. The resulting loaves will be about 6" long.
Place the rolls on a large, parchment-lined (or lightly greased) baking sheet, spacing them approximately 2” apart. Cover the rolls with lightly greased plastic wrap, and allow to rise until very puffy, about 90 minutes. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 425°F. Brush each roll with the egg white/water, and sprinkle heavily with the sesame seeds, rolling the tops of the rolls gently in the seeds to pick up as many as possible. Bake the rolls for about 25 minutes. Remove from the oven, and cool on a rack. Yield: 6 rolls