recipes

Tuna Cru / serves 4

1 pound yellowfin or ahi tuna, cleaned
4 caperberries, sliced into circles
4 nicoise olives, meat sliced off the sides so you're left with 4 pieces per olive
4 picholine olives, sliced like the nicoise olives
1 shallot peeled and very finely minced
2 T. fresh, chopped chives
1 ea. freshly squeezed and strained lemon
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium bulb fennel, fronds cut off and bulb washed
½ seedless, English cucumber
Kosher salt
Sea salt
Fresh ground black pepper

1. For fennel and cucumber salad: Thinly slice fennel starting on the opposite end of the core. Cut cucumber in half lengthwise and with a spoon, gently scrape out the seeds. Cut cucumber into thin, crescent moon slices. In a non-reactive mixing bowl, combine the fennel and cucumber with about ¼ cup olive oil and black pepper. Set aside.

2. Portion the tuna into 3 - 4 inch bars: cut even slabs of the tuna across horizontally starting from where the head would be towards where the tail would be. Rotate the slab 90 degrees and cut the slabs into bars.

3. Assemble the tuna: lay 4 sticks of tuna parallel to one another on a plate. Place one slice each of the caperberries and both types of olives on each bar of tuna in a consistent pattern. Drizzle about 1 - 1 ½ tablespoons of olive oil over the tuna. Season with pepper. Sprinkle about 2 teaspoons each of the minced shallots and chives over the tuna.

4. Add about 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, and 5 T olive oil to the fennel and cucumber salad. Season with kosher salt. Place a small mound on the plate with the tuna bars.

5. Drizzle lemon juice over each of the tuna bars and season with sea salt right before serving.