Sunday, December 11, 2011

Tuna and scallion "Negima" ねぎま

This was part of our tuna feast. Although I posted a simialr dish before, this time, I used sashimi-grade tuna. I modified how I made this scallion ("Negi") and tuna ("Ma"guro) dish.
Tuna: This was a block of tuna from Catalina. I used the red meat or "akami" portion. I did not really want to cook the tuna, so I used a kitchen torch to cook/sear the one surface and poured hot broth over it. So the center of the tuna was still raw.

Scallion: I used scallions (4 stalks) instead of Japanese negi. After I washed them, I held them over the direct gas flame (using a metal tong) until they wilted and some brown patches appeared on the white parts. I then cut them into one inch long pieces on a slant.

Broth: I made dashi using kelp/bonito dashi pack as usual. I added light colored soy sauce (Usukuchi chouyu) and mirin to season the dashi and make broth.

In a small pot which contained some hot broth, I placed the scallion and cooked for 1 minute and then mixed in two eggs and stirred until the eggs are just cooked (or became "egg flowers").

I placed the seared tuna in miniature "donabe" pots and poured the hot broth over it. I arranged the scallion and eggs as seen above.

This tasted really good and gave us a reprieve from just eating raw tuna. The texture of the tuna went very well with the texture of the egg. Compared to using non-sushi grade tuna as I did in my previous post, this is a much better way to make negima.  It's a bit of a sacrifice especially when the tuna sashimi was top-knotch quality.

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