Tuna steak with honey-flavored sauce and french fries

• 20 minutes to prepare • 30 minutes to cook • Serves 4

Happiness is stealing someone's French Fries without them realizing it

 

The historical origin of French fries is still the subject of dispute between Belgium and France.
According to a manuscript dated 1781, french fries were born in Namur, a Belgian village where the inhabitants used to fry the fish caught in the river Meuse. When the river froze, people started to fry potato sticks, a food used at that time to feed pigs.
According to the French, instead, french fries were born in 1789, in the middle of the French Revolution, with the name of Pont-neuf potatoes, a few years after Antoine Parmentier began to promote their use. Parmentier was a military pharmacist and nutritionist; during the Seven Years War Parmentier had been prisoner in Prussia, and there he discovered that potatoes - considered poisonous in France - were edible and had high potential as a food. Once the French accepted the potato, its popularity skyrocketed in France, particularly in Paris, where they were sold by push-cart vendors on the streets and called “frites”.

Whatever the truth about these golden strips of goodness, we adore them. These lovely sticks of potatoes, fried to perfection and bathed in a golden brown hue – they are just yum.
Today we will employ them in a nasty combination with tuna fish fillets, seasoning them both with a tasty sauce of tomatoes, honey, balsamic vinegar and toasted pine nuts. Enjoy!

 

Here are ingredients for the 4-serving recipe:

 

800 g fresh tuna 
1kg small potatoes
3 tomatoes 
2 tablespoons toasted pine nuts 
2 tablespoons honey
4 tablespoons EVO oil
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar 
2 glasses seed oil
1 sprig parsley
salt and pepper

1. Get yourself a slice of fresh tuna, and keep it in the refrigerator until you are ready to start, so that tuna flesh is chill and easy to be cut. Once removed from the refrigerator, cut tuna lengthwise into 4 thick slices (about 2-3 cm)
2. Put tuna slices in a baking dish and drizzle them with 1 tablespoon of EVO oil, a pinch of salt, freshly ground pepper and let them to marinate for 10 minutes
3. Meanwhile, peel and cut potatoes into chips: I chose to prepare french fries, which are strips the length of the potato, about 1/2cm wide and tall
4. Place 2 tablespoons of EVO oil in a pan and once it reaches the necessary heat (the oil should sizzle), add tuna slices and cook them for 2 minutes. Be careful not to overcook them, so that tuna stays rosy inside. Transfer them on a baking paper sheet and put them for about 10 minutes in the oven at 200°C. Then, switch the oven off and leave tuna slices inside, to keep them warm
5. Prepare the sauce: peel and dice tomatoes, remove the seeds, and sprinkle them with a little of salt and pepper, parsley finely chopped
6. Reduce the balsamic vinegar until it's as thick as you want: pour balsamic in a saucepan over medium-high heat; bring it to boil and simmer it for about 2 minutes, watching carefully and lowering the heat if necessary. Add the honey and taste the flavor: if necessary, add some more honey
7. Let the vinegar reduction to cool down, then stir in the tomatoes, add 1 tablespoon of EVO oil, pine nuts, a pinch of salt and keep aside
8. Pour seed oil in a pan and bring it to a temperature between 150°C and 160°C. You can test it by using a thermometer or by dropping a little piece of bread. When the oil is ready, it bubbles gently when it comes in contact with bread and the bread becomes golden within 1 minute
9. Pour french fries into the seed oil and let them to fry for about 5 minutes. Once they become golden, remove them from the pan and lay them on paper towels, to preserve their crispiness
10. Arrange the slices of tuna on a serving plate, and place around the chips. Sprinkle all over the sauce and serve immediately!

Nutrition Facts are listed for this recipe in the table below. Data is provided per serving.

Vincent: You know what they put on French fries in Holland instead of ketchup?
Jules: What?
Vincent: Mayonnaise.
Jules: Goddamn.
 (Pulp fiction, Quentin Tarantino)