Grilled tuna steak with kaffir lime & Vadouvan sauce
Some ideas turn out even better than what you hoped for… this is definitely one of those!
Equipment
- cast-iron grill pan or (kamado) bbq
- mandoline
- hand blender
Ingredients
- 300 gr fresh tuna
- 4 chicory or radicchio leaves
- 3 radishes
- 1 shallot
- 1 clove of garlic
- 100 ml white wine vinegar
- 1 tsp sugar
- ¼ cube fish stock
- white balsamic vinegar
- rice vinegar
- Mirin (rice wine)
- Japanese smoked vinegar (optional, if you can get your hands on it)
- 1 tsp Vadouvan
- 3 (frozen) kaffir lime leaves
- 125 ml cooking cream
- Furikake
- olive oil
- butter
- affilla cress
Instructions
Pickled radishes
- Cut the radishes into thin slices with a mandoline or knife.
- Put the white wine vinegar in a sauce pan and add a teaspoon of sugar. Heat until the sugar has melted (it doesn't need to boil).
- Then take it off the heat and put in a small jar with the radish slices. Let it sit for at least half an hour (but longer is fine as well, you can make this in advance).
Kaffir & Vadouvan sauce
- Peel and finely chop the shallot and sauté it in a bit of oil and butter in a sauce pan.
- Peel the clove of garlic and cut into thin slices and add those to the shallot.
- When the shallots are translucent, add a dash of rice vinegar, mirin, white balsamic vinegar, ¼ cube of fish stock, 150 ml of water, a teaspoon of Vadouvan and 3 kaffir lime leaves. If you are able to find it (I bought it at Hanos), add a tiny dash of Japanese smoked vinegar (see picture below). Make sure not to add too much, because it has a very strong flavour that could easily overpower everything else.
- Let it simmer for about 15 minutes for it to reduce to a concentrated sauce (if it needs longer for that, that is fine as well, it doesn't need to be a large amount, because you will add cream after this). It should have a great kaffir scent and it should be both deeply savory and deliciously fresh.
- Strain the sauce into a bowl to remove any solids. Put the liquid back into the sauce pan. Keep off the heat until almost ready to serve.
Tuna
- Take the piece of 300 grams of tuna as a whole and grill it (in a cast-iron grill pan or on a (kamado) bbq) very shortly, just to sear the outside, leaving the inside raw (see picture).
Sauce again
- Heat the concentrated part of the sauce again and then add the cooking cream.
- Foam the sauce with a hand blender.
Serving
- Slice the tuna thinly.
- Put some sauce on to each plate as well as one leave of chicory per plate.
- Put some tuna on top of the sauce.
- Sprinkle some furikake on the tuna.
- Then put some slices of radish on top of the tuna.
- Finish with an affilla cress.
