We used to eat a lot of fish. I’m not sure what changed, but that has not been the case lately. If we’re eating meat, it tends to be chicken, although we’ve had a lot of beef since Thanksgiving. Perhaps it was the winter weather, or maybe because the grocery store is on the wrong side of the road for me on my way home (and I don’t like that fish market very much), or because my husband no longer stops for fish on HIS way home – I don’t know. But I realized that I missed it and I did NOT want to be eating so much beef.
When I did the grocery shopping this weekend I picked up some scrod and some tuna. My husband used to bring home sashimi-quality tuna from the fish market he passed on his way home. He would season it with a bit of oil, lemon and salt & pepper, and then sear it quickly. Fantastic. I knew the tuna I got at the grocery store was not that quality, so I spent a little time thinking on what to do with it.
The scrod was an easy decision. My husband baked it with lemon juice and a little salt, and we had fish sandwiches made with the fresh bread I’d bought. I haven’t been baking much bread lately. I’ll need to get a few loaves in before it’s Passover and we’re eating matzah. Matzah is fine, but it is NOT bread. 🙂
I thought that I would take the tuna steak and slice it the way restaurants serve tuna – in strips, as opposed to one whole unit. My husband is not as enamored of raw tuna as I am, so I knew I had to cook it. I’m trying to get us back to a diet with a lot of vegetables – have to get ready for spring and all of those outfits that do NOT hide winter accumulation.
I also know that I have a tendency to throw LOTS of ingredients into the wok, so I wanted to rein in that temptation as well.
I decided on a Thai peanut sauce (a bottle I picked up at the Asian market). I knew that the sauce was fairly light and not over-powering. The ingredients for the stir fry would be bok choy, shallots, mushrooms and the tuna. I think the shallots have a lighter flavor than onions. We’d serve it with zucchini noodles (I cheated on that too and bought it fresh at the store). The beauty of cooking the tuna, and the limited number of ingredients, was the speed with which it cooked. I’d been doing chores and errands all day, and didn’t really feel like spending a lot of time cooking.
I thought it came out very well. It had a decent balance of color, no one flavor was overwhelming, and it was healthy. Zucchini noodles and riced cauliflower are great assistance in trying to be healthier in my food choices but still have something that feels like carbs!
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