Mike van de Elzen: Ember-fired tuna with tomato and cucumber salad

Ember-fired tuna with tomato and cucumber salad 

Cook time: 5 minutes 

Prep time: 15 minutes 

Serves: 6-8

300-400gm piece yellow fin or similar tuna  

1 tbsp sunflower oil  

Flaky sea salt  

3 tomatoes 

1/2 cucumber 

1/2 cup coriander leaves, chopped   

2 tbsp toasted white sesame seeds 

2 tbsp black sesame seeds (optional) 

2 tbsp soya sauce 

1 tbsp black vinegar 

1 tbsp sesame seeds

Small cos lettuce leaves to serve with. 

Start by lighting your wood-fired Engel, BBQ or Hibachi. If you don't have any of these, you can place a wire rack over an open flame or gas burner.  

Lightly oil the tuna and season well with the flaky sea salt.

Place the tuna onto the flame and cook for approx 1 minute each side and remove to rest. The idea is to create as much colour on the tuna, whilst keeping the tuna as rare as possible.  

Prep the vegetables by cutting the tomatoes into a medium dice, peel the cucumber and cut in half. Using a teaspoon, remove the seeds and then dice the remaining flesh.  

Cut the tuna in 2 cm dice and combine in a bowl along with remaining ingredients. Season with a touch more salt and then spoon a tbsp in little cos leaves to serve. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks dB.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Water Pump the Dam diver Tron nine hundred range. I'm
joining us now is our resident chief Mike vander Alison.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
Good morning, Good morning. How are we very good?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Thank you. I'm very excited you're talking about tuna to
day because I'm too scared to prepare tuna even raw.
I think I'm going to make a mess of it
because I just love it.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Yeah, it is delicious, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
It's really delicious, But I'm worried that I'm just going
to make a mess of it. And it's a bit
of a treat, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
It is. You know, it's not the cheapest fish out there.
But at the moment from what I'm not a big
game fisher. I don't I don't go out to sea and.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Correct yourself in for a day at a time.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Yeah, it terrifies me, so but I know, I know
that the fishing has been amazing, particularly the tuna. So
lights of yellowfin tuna and the and the fishmongers at
the moment. So yeah, if you are going to have it,
now's your time and last week we did, we did
a first smoke fire class and I cooked this recipe

(01:14):
for that class, and it was just magical. It's not
it's not complicated, it's not difficult, and we just treat
that tuna with as much respect as we can because
it is. It is. The less you cook it the better,
So that the biggest thing around tuna is not to
overcook it. So I'm using like a four hundred grand

(01:34):
piece of elephant tuna. So it's like a slab of tuna.
This will feed you know, six to eight people, will
give them a pretty good sort of little starter or
an afternoon luncheon or you know, it's almost like a
finger food. So start by lighting a fire. So we're
here at the school. We have a lingal fire. So
that's a wood fires cooker or grill. If you've got

(01:57):
one of those, light it up, get it hot as
hot as you can. If not, light your barbecue, keep
the lid down into its farcely hot. If you haven't
a bardcut, then like a pan, you know what I mean,
you can cheap by just turning. It does make a
mess of your burners, your gas burners. If you've got
gas burners inside, turn them on. Take a wire rat,

(02:18):
put the wire rack over one of the burners, and
then you can put the tuna directly onto that wire
rat and that will kind of give you that intense
heat that were after. So once you've got your your
cooking apparatus underway, take your tuna a little bit of
more so, just a little bit sunflower all over it,
some flaky salt. Use flaky salt, because what that does
it gives you that crust on the outside. So when

(02:39):
you go to eat the tuna in a later time,
you know, you get that crunch, you get that crack
of that salt. Season it up and then put it
over your flame. So you know, depending on the size
of your tuner, like we're talking about like a minute
each side, you want to get maximum color and minimal time.
Once that's got a little bit color on the outside,
pull it off, set it aside, just let that chill

(03:01):
out while we prepp the vedgie. So we've got three tomatoes.
Tomatoes are amazing at the moment. Just dice those guys up. Cucumber.
What I do with the cucumbers. I don't want that
real intense flavor the cucumber, So you peel it cut
in half, take the seeds out using little teaspoon and
then dice that guy up. And then I've got half
a cup of coriander. Chop those up, and then take
your tuna, cut that into maybe two centimeter chunks or cubes,

(03:27):
pop them into a bowl along with your tomatoes, cucumbers,
and cranda. And then to that we add two tablespoons
of white sesme seeds that have been toasted. This is
optional black seesame seeds if you find them. If not,
no driver with two tablespoons of black sesame seeds, and
then two tablespoons of sawyer, one tablespoon of black vinegar,
which is a Chinese black vinegar, easily avail are Asian supermarkets,

(03:48):
and then one tablespoon of sesame seed foil. Give that
a good mix together, and then what I do is
I serve them in like little cos leaves, and people
can just pick up the little cos leaf and shove
that into their mouth. That is soluicious.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
It sounds divine. Thank you so much, Mike for taking
us through there. You can find that recipe at good
from scratch dot co dot in z, or we'll put
it up on our website today NEWSTALKZIDB, dot co, dot
in z forward slash.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
Sunday For more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin.
Listen live to News Talks B from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio