Rice Cracker Crusted Tuna Appetizer Recipe

Emily: New York City may be America’s melting pot but when I’m in the mood for a diverse menu in New England, I know just where to look. Hi, I’m Emily Rodney at market in the newly opened W Hotel in Boston Massachusetts where the menu is spicing things up in bean town. Let’s go Behind the Burner and meet the chef. I’m here with chef Chris Damski. Chris, what are we making today? Chris: We’re going to be making our rice cracker custard tuna with – and citrus emulsion so what we have here is number one yellow finned tuna, and we actually have closer to the tail loin. What we’re going to do is we’re going to actually show you how to cut the baton. I have a little bit of a lukewarm water. You don’t want hot water because you’re cutting raw protein, you just want to have the water go down the blade of the-- Emily: The water kind of helps guide through the fish nice and smoothly? Chris: Exactly and it also helps separate it. So what we’re going to do is going to size this up and judge it. The side is a little bit different. I’m going to take off of the corner one large piece and set that aside and do another one. Emily: It looks like you’re kind of measuring it with your thumb like a guideline. Chris: A little bit, you kind of want to-normally we would have the scales out and portion them to 2.5 or 3 ounces for each baton but after – you kind of get a feel for it. We’ve got two of them because we’re trying to get ahead on the sauce and then I’m going to take you through the breading process of the actual tuna. So first o all I want to talk about the sauce so that we can give it a chance to steep. What we have here is dried Benito. Benito is actually tuna that has been dried and cured almost like any jerky process so we’re going let this steep so that it fully hydrates for about 15 minutes. We’re going to strain it off and just be like float the liquid. Then we’re going to go on to the breading of the tuna. So in this bowl, we have just ground up rice crackers which you can find in any Asian grocery market. What we’re doing here as we’re actually going to make a protein bond to adhere the rice crackers to the tuna so we’re going to use egg whites. Emily: That’s a good binder. Chris: And it’s going to make a nice thin, crispy uniform coat over the top and it’s going to be a bit more durable when we go to cut it. Always start with our egg whites. It’s about three egg whites to about- lightly just whisk it just to break up and start to lightly froth the eggs. It’s you want to go by eye, you’re looking for about two ounces of cornstarch. The liquid has gotten a lot more vicious, you can actually see that when I’m whisking it, you can see the trails that are coming through. Emily: The viscosity is just making it a little thicker like you were saying before. Chris: Think of it like for those of you that are in the home pastry chefs and whatnot when you’re actually whisking egg whites and you can start to see trails in the egg whites, same kind of principle. The next part, this is where it gets interesting. So we’re going to set up what they would call a standard breading procedure. We’re going to have a rack, were going to have our rice crackers and we’re going to start with our egg whites and our lovely tuna that we have here. So what we’re going to do with our hand, making sure that we kind of gently shape the tuna. I like to always make sure that you hold between the thumb and the pinky finger. That gives a kind of support and it kind of gives a little balance. We’re going to actually roll it in that mixture and then kind of very lightly just roll it in our hand. Emily: Make sure it’s evenly coated. Chris: So you can see, making sure that it’s evenly coated but also that we don’t have big clumps of it. We’re going to make a little nest right inside of the rice cracker. We’re going to kind of shake it and while I’m doing this, it’s just lightly coating the rice cracker and rolling it through. You want to make sure that you have all uniform coverage. Then just lightly pressing it in. then we have the actually finished product which we just let rest on the rack. The reason why we put this on the rack is underneath, you want to make sure that you have the air be able to contact all the way around because this egg white mixture once it comes in contact with the air, has to have a second kind of solidify. Otherwise, if it just sits on the bottom of the rack or the pan without a rack, that bottom part is not going to air dry and it will fall off. We’re good to go here. We’re going to start frying stuff up. What I’m doing is I’m taking our little sizzle trays with the little towel on there to block from the oil because you want to make sure all the grease is off. I lightly sprinkled a little bit of salt so that when we take it out, we can put it right on to a lightly seasoned tray and then we can season all the way around it. So we have our deep fryer. This is dish does work best when it’s deep fried, you can pan fry it but it’s not the same effect. We have it about at 375 degrees and what we’re going to do is you make sure that that oil is hot and then you’re literally going to just drop it in till it starts to turn golden brown which is about 15 seconds. This is all that this dish takes. Like I said you want to make sure that you just get it crispy on the outside but still raw on the inside. I’m going to give it a nice little shake here, not too aggressive and then we’re going to roll that out onto our towel. It’s already been lightly seasoned and we’re going to sprinkle a little bit of salt so that’s seasoned all the way around. When you’re deep frying something you only get one chance to season it because of all the oil and that’s right when it comes out of the fryer so you want to make sure that you maximize that time and have your salt ready to go like I do with a little pan. That’s it and we go take it to the plate. This is where it all comes together. So we have our emulsion, and we have our tuna that’s deep fried. The only other I guess garnish for this is the sliced scallion that actually goes in the vinaigrette. I cut this into five even slices and what we’re going to do is we’re going to actually put it on the plate and just right alongside, we’re going to put that dressing and that is your finished dish. Emily: It looks great. Let’s go try it. I can't wait--