Pan seared?

A couple of months ago I had purchased a cast-iron skillet in the hopes of making the kind of steak you see in cookbooks and menus; done on the outside with a pink center. Being raised under a textbook Filipino roof, whenever steak was on the menu it was always well done. Any shade of pink or red and we were suddenly at risk of salmonella. To make a long story short, I did get to try it once, but it was a failure in the fact that the meat was done all the way through, and I placed the blame mostly on the fact that the steak was too thin (roughly 1.5cm. And as I was about to find out, that was only part of the reason for the failure).

Browsing through some cookbooks the past week, I was inspired to try the same thing but with tuna. Tuna being a) healthier and b) cheaper (!) what did I have to lose? Since it was me and The Girlfriend's anniversary I wanted to make it for Saturday, but the stupid grocery (Damn you Makati Supermarket Alabang! Screw you and your retarded (non) refund policies!) didn't sell any tuna slices. Just as well, as I was able to get "fresh" slices from the market the next day. After looking up several pan-seared tuna recipes online, I decided to go with this one. Being the cheapskate that I was, I skimped out on the mirin and the rice vinegar, and substituted the honey with sugar.

Now what to go with the tuna. Don't know why, but I suddenly thought of rice pilaf. Not that I've ever cooked or had pilaf on a regular basis or even knew exactly what it was, now seemed like a good time to try it. So again, after scouring the internet (or picking the first link that shows up in Google) I chose to follow this recipe. I substituted the celery with spring onions, did away with the seasoned salt, and we didn't have any cayenne either. Also I didn't have any chicken stock or bones on hand, so I made some bootleg stock with some onions, carrots and a cube Knorr chicken stock. Crap, I just realized now that I had put away some chicken neck and bones in the freezer for situations just like this. Oh well.

Our menu: Pan-seared Tuna covered in sesame seeds with rice pilaf, and a garden salad with thousand island dressing.

My plan of attack was to get the pilaf going, and then cook the tuna while it was cooking. So I started my bootleg broth, and then browned the rice. Never in my life have I thrown uncooked rice into a frying pan, so I was completely clueless on it's color or how to tell if it was done. And I think I may have overdone it with the spring onions, because it looked like more than half of what was in the pan was green. Nevertheless, once it looked like the grains were slightly browned, I threw it in my bootleg broth, and it smelled pilafy, so I assumed everything was good so far.

For the tuna, I took of the skin and the darker areas (Not sure what the part is called, but I'm pretty sure my parents would disagree vehemently from the apparent wastage) and then put them in the marinade of soy sauce and sesame oil. Sesame oil is one of, if not the best smell that can come from a kitchen. Just getting a hint of it's smell and you know good food is to follow.
Anyway, I decided not to follow the recipe and followed the user comments, ie. dipping the cooked tuna into sesame seeds instead of having the sesame seeds mixed in with the marinade.

So after heating the skillet and putting a drop of olive oil, away we went. Since The Girlfriend has trouble with even slightly raw fish, I cooked the thinner slices for her, and left the 2 thicker slices for my pinkish test. For the thinner slices, I left them at 2 mins on each side, and for the 2 thick slices, I left it at about 1 minute.

When I dipped the cook slices in sesame seeds, it looked nothing like the pictures depicted it. In the picture you see a nice tuna steak garnished with a few sesame seeds. In reality, my tuna steaks were completely overwhelmed with sesame seeds, like you see in cartoons where the antagonist gets covered in honey and is then engulfed with bees.

So how did it all turn out? well, the pilaf was ok, I mean I don't have enough pilaf experience to make a proper judgement, but it was maybe lacking in taste. I mean, if you compare it to just plain cooked rice the flavor difference could've been more. As for the tuna, yep, it was a failure, still overcooked. But if you look at the next picture, you can see this slice did have a slight smidgen of pink tinge to the center part, but not the pronounced color difference I was looking for.


The marinade slightly worked too well, as both The Girlfriend and I commented that it was a bit too salty, this owing to the fact that I skimped on both the mirin and the vinager, and I had probably used too little sugar.

Lessons learnt: Skillet wasn't hot enough, fish left in the pan too long. I really should be more diligent about the cooking times. I was thinking about 30 seconds per side but in the middle I was like "meh, a few more seconds won't hurt" and so the cooking times were a bit inconsistent. And as far as the heat, I was pretty sure that it wasn't hot enough, but since it started sizzling a few seconds after putting in the pan, I thought it was good enough. Well, apparently not. As for the pilaf, well, I have to eat more pilaf I guess :P That and using proper chicken stock and salt.
Oh well, all in all it didn't turn out too bad, but I will definitely be trying this one again.