seared sesame tuna with spicy salad

We were in Rarotonga 3 weeks ago. It seems like an age away now, but the memory  of the holiday will linger for a while yet.

view, I miss you.

The food was excellent, the seafood especially so, and one of the few dishes I cooked whilst we were there was this one, when we discovered that there was an excellent fishmonger in the small town on the island. However, we also discovered that, unless we went to the shop very early, all the best tuna was sold, and we did end up with a piece that was quite full of connective tissue and not ideal.

We did expect to be cooking quite a lot on holiday, but eating out was very much more relaxing, and surprisingly affordable.

Today, I noticed that the supermarket has some nice looking yellowfin in,

some tuna, earlier today.

so here's the dish I wanted to create:

The salad is Cucumber that's been skinned, de-seeded and finely sliced, then salted and squeezed:

Add to that some grated carrot:

and dress with a south-east asian kind of dressing of sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, soy, wasabe and sugar into which is mixed some crushed toasted peanuts and some fresh coriander.

now that's what I call dressing, 23.

Meanwhile, take the tuna steak and cut, with the grain as much as possible, into large cubes, then coat in flour, then egg, then sesame seeds. This takes a lot of sesame seeds:

Next time, I might do the coating, and then slice the tuna after it is seared. So maybe try that. Learn by my mistakes. Then gloat.

At this point, don't forget to feed the dogs.

mmm. lucky dogs.

So once the sesame seeds have browned in hot oil, but the tuna is still rare in the middle,

serve with the salad. It's lovely.

I was half way through eating this when suddenly, I remembered that I'd forgotten to take a photograph.

I was going to find some green pawpaw or mango to add to the salad, but there was none to be had. I'll do that next time, too.