seared sesame tuna

• fresh tuna steaks
• sesame seeds
• olive oil

Rub tuna in seeds, coating all sides evenly. Heat olive oil over high flame for 3 minutes or until very hot. Saute tuna, cooking each side for three minutes, turning once. Remove from pan and serve immediately, slicing into thin strips on the bias.

The dish: In computer programing there's an old saying, gigo, or, garbage in, garbage out. That basic premise holds true in so many different areas of life that it's worth mentioning here. One of the basic steps to good cooking is to start off with quality ingredients. Eating a dish of rare tuna is highly dependent upon starting off with a pretty good grade of fish. I recently found a wholesaler that has some of the best frozen fish I've had at any price, and he's cheap. The tuna comes ready to eat and is sushi grade so eating it a little rare is no problem at all. I stocked my freezer full of fillets of salmon (who da thunk it?) and tuna. When they're ready to eat you can have a healthy a tasty dinner in a matter of minutes. If you're local to the orange county area, I encourage you to stop by 3 Kids corp and fill your freezer a little for the busy fall months ahead.

insider tuna

• 3 cans of tuna, drained
• 1/3 cup of bread crumbs
• 1/4 cup mayonnaise
• adobo, I prefer the con pimienta variety
• dried dill
• old bay seasoning

Combine drained tuna with other ingredients and blend well. If mixture appears to have too much mayonnaise, add more breadcrumbs for balance. If mixture appears too dry, then add more mayonnaise. Use just a little old bay seasoning, with a healthy shake of the adobo and 2 healthy shakes of the dill. Serve on your favorite bread with spinach for extra flavor.

The dish: If you've ever ordered a tuna sandwich at a deli and thought, "why doesn't my tuna come out like this", the answer is in three parts: 1. the original idea was to cut costs, but adding breadcrumbs to the mixture totally enhances the flavor. 2. Always drain your tuna before you do anything with it, the funk in the can doesn't bring anything to the party. 3. The deli only makes tuna once, maybe twice a week. The longer all these flavors sit together (within reason, of course) the better they all become. If you happen to have a ripe avocado, which I did not at time of writing this, a few slices on top turns this sandwich into a superstar.