HI, I’m Chef Amy Riolo and today we’re making Sicilian Citrus Glazed Tuna Steaks with Braised Fennel and Orange Sauce.
So let’s get started by searing our tuna. The first thing that I’m going to do is add 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil into my pan. And I’ve got this over medium heat, and what we want to do here is just coat the bottom of the pan really nicely to prevent our tuna from sticking. Our tuna is a very healthy fish because it’s low and saturated fat but it has a lot of healthy omega 3 nutrients which are really wonderful for our health. And these are our tuna steaks, now what we’re we looking for in our tuna when we go to purchase is something that is nice and compact like this. Little fillets with a meat is nice and tight and together. We’re also looking for even color, we don’t want marbling it in our tuna. We want something that is nice and even color and a fresh natural Coralish type of a color. You don’t want anything looks that has been augmented or died or bright red.
I’m going to add this to our pan and allow it to sear in either side, this will make a little bit of noise as it sears. And that’s ok because this is what we want, we want to get a nice and crisp on either side. I would stay for this recipe; we’ll need about 2 minutes per side, just a kind of fill in the flavors.
Now here in North America we usually serve our tuna seared on the outside but a little bit raw in the middle, but in Sicily they like to cook it all the way through. So that’s we’re going to do for this application. So I’m going to add a little bit kosher salt while this is cooking on one side. Kosher salt is great because it is lower in sodium than traditional table salt, it all has this nice stick granule which actually melts down and cooked up really well. And then I’m going to add some freshly ground pepper. And I’m going to turn our tuna over and you kind of want to stick your tongs under, if you get a lot of resistance when you’re going to turn that means your tuna is not ready to turn just cook a little bit longer but if it turns easily then you know it’s ready. So it’s very easy and you could see how we have this top layer which is cooked and then in the middle layer which is still has the redness in it. That’s done a little bit longer.
Now tuna, because it lives in the ocean for a longer time and it actually grows and gets to be quite large, it has a high risk for mercury than some of the other fish that we have available for us in the market. So you don’t have to only use tuna for this application. Chicken breast can work very well if you do want to do chicken but in the fish world you could also do many other things like mahi-mahi, sea bass, orange ruffy they all work very well in this recipe, it doesn’t have to be tuna by itself. So do tuna every now and then when you want to splurge get familiar with its recipes, get familiar with the techniques and ingredients. And then use the same sauce in a lot of varieties and you could make a lot of wonderful dishes with this very simple technique.
So now this one is seared cooked well on both sides and we’re going to take it over and transfer it on to our serving platter. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to take advantage of the oil and a little bit of the juices that have dripped down from that tuna, keeping our flame over medium heat. We’re going to add our thinly sliced medium yellow onion. We’d just stir with a wooden spoon and already you can really smell a beautiful aroma as this onion start to cook down. And is such a simple ingredient but taking this extra step and by sautéing the onions, we got a lot of great flavor.
Now we’re going to add our capers, capers are very common Mediterranean ingredient which you can find in your supermarket and they add a kind of grainy citrus flavor which really enhances the citrus taste of our orange juice. I’ll just working this around and I’m getting rid of this little bit from the bottom of the pan. These are really good for adding extra flavor; we’re going to work all of this in. Now through this I’m going to add about 8 anchovies, we have a little more than that here so I’ve reserve some extra for presentation. Break up your anchovies and work them right in with the onions.
Whenever you’re working with a fresh fish and you make a sauce that has something like anchovies in it, you got a salty flavor that it is low in sodium and richer and more complex flavor and it really compliments the flavor of the fish well. So you’ll notice that throughout the Mediterranean.
Now I’m going to add our orange juice in and you see that really makes a lot of perfume. And just be glazing our pan, now I’ll turn our heat down to low and you can see how our onions have gone softer. And this is really kind of come together as a nice little pan sauce. So now what I’m going to do is take our tuna and add it right back into the pan. And we’re just going to let this simmer for about 5 to 10 minutes, covered and that’s going to cook our tuna all the way through.
If you don’t want to cook through it of course, you can cook it for less time than that but it’s traditional in Sicily to cook it all the way through so that’s I’m going to do for this recipe. And if you want to, just kind of take some of the onions and scatter them on top this will allow a little bit of that delicious onion flavor to seep down into the tuna as it cooks. So when we come back we’re going to braised our fennel and we will then plate our Sicilian citrus glazed tuna steaks with our braised fennel in orange sauce.
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