Tag: the taste

Olive Oil Poached Tuna – You Can Tuna Fish

You’re perfectly happy eating regular canned tuna, until the day you taste the imported, olive oil-packed tuna, and realize exactly what you’ve been missing. You tell people that there’s nothing better, but that’s not entirely true. There’s this.

By gently poaching fresh ahi tuna in olive oil, you can create a “tuna fish” of exceptional quality. The taste and texture are amazing, and you can adapt this in many ways. Besides switching up herbs and seasonings, you can cook the fish to a wide range of doneness.

Traditionally, the tuna is cooked all the way through, and preserved in the oil. This is a perfectly fine way to do it, and you will be blown away by the results. If you want to cook it through, simply keep it in the oil on low heat, until it’s just barely pink in the center (it’s okay to peek). Then proceed as shown, and by the time it cools it will be perfect.

Or if you prefer, you can follow my lead, and give it a briefer basting in the hot oil, so that after cooling in the oil, you’ll still have some gorgeous pink running through. There are so many variables, so the 5-7 minutes I did mine should only be a guideline for you. If you stop when the tuna is rare to medium-rare, by the time it cools in the hot oil, you should get something close to what I have here.

You can also do just one steak in a smaller pan, and it should work about the same. By the way, do not throw away the olive oil! You can use it for salads and pastas, or strain and freeze for another batch. It may take you a few experiments, but once you dial it in to how you like, you will be enjoying one of life’s great pleasure. I hope you give it a try soon. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

2 thick cut ahi tuna steaks (about 10-12 ounce each)

enough olive oil to come to surface of tuna steaks

handful of thyme sprigs

2 whole garlic cloves, bruised

red pepper flakes to taste

sea salt to taste

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Pita Bread – What’s in Your Pocket?

There are many baked products that you could make at home, but because of time, effort, and quality issues, probably shouldn’t.
Fortunately, pita bread is not on that list. The dough is easy to make, and
much like the flour tortillas we did, the taste and texture of the freshly made
product is far superior to anything that comes with a twist tie.

The method is very straightforward, but I wanted to take a
moment to talk about production. As you’ll see in the clip, after you roll the
pita dough out, you’ll need to let it rest for 5 minutes before grilling. Since
each one takes about 5-6 minutes in the pan, while one is cooking, you’ll want
to roll the next, so it’s rested and ready to puff.

Speaking of “puff,” don’t be too upset if yours don’t go
full balloon. Sometimes they all puff, sometimes some, and sometimes none. This
is the way of the pita. But the good news is, even if they don’t fully puff,
you should still get some sort of internal pocket with which to stuff. Even if
you don’t, it’s okay…you’ll just call them “flatbread” instead! I hope you give
these a try soon. Enjoy!

Ingredients for 8 pita breads:

For the sponge
mix:

1 pkg dry active yeast (2 1/4 tsp)

1 cup warm water (about 90-100 degrees F.)

1 cup (4.5 oz by weight) all-purpose flour

Then:

1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil

1 3/4 teaspoons salt

1 3/4 to 2 cups all-purpose flour, or until a soft, slightly sticky
dough forms (about 8-9 oz by weight)

*Let rise about 2 hours, or until doubled in size. Form 8
small, round loaves, let rise 30 minutes. Roll out and let rest 5 minutes
before grilling.

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Pickle Brine Chicken – I Need to Give You Props

The chicken breasts seen herein started off as nothing more than a couple of props for our recently posted “How to Make a Brick Grill” video, but they came out so well, I decided to show you what I think is a pretty neat trick.

And let’s face it; there aren’t a lot of great uses for leftover pickle juice. I did hear recently that some people like to drink this stuff after jogging, which I found to be quite shocking, since I had no idea people still jogged.

As you’ll see, I only let mine brine for about 2 hours which seemed to be enough. I’ve heard that you really only need about one hour per inch thickness of meat, and that rule of thumb seems to work for me. These breasts were tender, juicy, and flavorful.

Speaking of flavor, you can probably just go with the straight pickle juice as a brine, but I hedged my bets with a little extra salt, sugar, and pepper. Like most brined recipes, the payoff is in the texture and moisture content, and not necessarily in the taste, but having said that, these did have a nice little twang.

So, the next time you have nothing left in the pickle jar but the juice, you now know what to do, and I don’t mean take up jogging. I hope you give this a try soon. Enjoy!

Ingredients for 2 breasts:

2 large boneless skinless chicken breast

olive oil to coat

salt and pepper to taste

For the brine:

1 tbsp brown sugar

2 tsp kosher salt

1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

pinch of cayenne

1 1/2 to 2 cups dill pickle juice