Tuna – Avocado Don
I’m having a lot of fun playing with the different flavours here. At home, I nearly always start dinner with three things: wine, butter, and garlic. It’s different here. Their staple flavours are: soy sauce, rice vinegar, sugar, & sake, although miso and sesame oil often play into that.
I wanted to share dinner from last night with you. Jon always gives me funny looks for taking pictures in the kitchen, so I thought I should put them to good use.
We’ll call this Tuna – Avocado Don, and it was adapted from a cookbook I was reading in the bookstore. (don just means “rice bowl”)
Shopping list (serves 2):
- ~10oz of the best-looking tuna you can find. (I used a brick of blue fin (maguro).)
- 1 large, firm avocado
- 1/2 T lemon juice
- 1 T spicy something (I used house seasoning, but chili oil, tabasco, or sliced jalapeños would also work well.)
- 1 t extra virgin olive oil
- 1 t soy sauce (Japanese brands, like Kikoman, seem to be milder than the Chinese versions, like La Choy.)
- 3/4 t wasabi (if it was easier to find, you could also use horseradish for the same kick)
- 1 c rice (Italian risotto rice (arborio) works well in place of sushi rice because it’s also small and starchy)
- Nori (the toasted seaweed that goes around sushi), cut up into teeny-tiny strips
- sesame seeds
I had a lot of this on hand, but splurged on the tuna ($10). Dinner ended up being around $15 for both of us.
Once you’ve got all your ingredients, cooking rice and chopping into squares is about as complicated as it gets. As soon as you even think about starting dinner, get your rice maker going. Rice is the most time-consuming part of dinner. You should also pour yourself a glass of sake about now. White wine will do in a pinch, but let’s get authentic here, people!
- Whisk the following in a large bowl: lemon juice, spicy, evoo, soy, wasabi
- Chop your tuna and your avocado into equal sized squares, about a 1/2 inch big. Take caution not to shred your tuna – you spent a lot on that! Use a sharp chef’s knife and run it under water to clean it off before each new slice.
- Gently toss the tuna & avocado with the wet ingredients, until they’re well coated.
- Equally divide the mixture over two bowls of rice.
- Top with nori (salty flavour) and sesame seeds (happy toasty flavour)
I love this dish because it’s flavourful, but really delicate. Japanese cooking doesn’t use a lot of big, bold flavours but instead relies on the tastes of a few high quality ingredients to really shine.
