Seared Ahi Tuna Bowls

This particular dish is a cooking hack for a quick and easy lunch that’s healthy and delicious. (Not the easiest of combinations to accomplish.) I grew up blessed by flavorful meals, with my mixed Middle Eastern and Asian heritage; but health wasn’t always a priority when it came to eating.

It wasn’t really until I moved in with a lover of fitness from Maine that I started to cook with more clean and simple ingredients. The trick was learning not to sacrifice taste. Americans love “bowls,” I’ve discovered. It’s a good concept - one I hadn’t seen much outside of traditional meals minorities already knew to be served in bowls. I wasn’t used to the requirement of serving style being attached to meal titles, as bowls in any noodle or rice dish I’ve come to know have been purely functional. What else does one eat out of anyway? What I’ve learned over time though, is that the Western concept of “bowls” is really just taking dishes that we know and love and reconstructing them in a way that makes it easier to serve and faster to consume.

Once a concept I thought to be a cheap and lazy knock off of centuries worth of traditional cooking techniques; I now interpret to be a modification of ancient recipes for the purpose of adaptation towards a modern and more fast paced lifestyle.

So I’ve taken things I’ve learned from the people I love; my mother, my best friend and her mother, in order to present to you this fresh and easy ahi tuna “bowl.”

Ingredients:

• 1 Wild Caught Ahi Tuna Steak

• Cooked brown rice and quinoa (Seeds of Change is healthy and easy to use)

• Broccolini

• Onion

• Garlic

• Garlic & ginger paste

• Cucumbers

• Radish

• 1 egg

• Microgreens

• Rice Vinegar

• Honey

• Sesame oil

• Hot chili oil

• Pink Himalayan Salt & Black Pepper

Method:

1. In a hot frying pan with sesame oil, saute your chopped onions on high heat. Once half-cooked, add chopped broccolini and garlic. (Do not overcook the broccolini, it should still have a crunch when the dish is done.)

2. Once your onions are golden brown, add the cooked quinoa and brown rice and stir together. Add additional sesame oil if needed.

3. Once the brown rice and quinoa has soaked up enough flavor, gently push the mixture to one side of the pan.

4. In the empty space, crack an egg into the frying pan and scramble; once scrambled slowly mix the mixture into your eggs.

5. Drizzle hot chili oil over the fried rice and quinoa, and set aside.

6. Season your Tuna steak with salt and pepper, and generously rub the garlic & ginger paste onto each side.

7. Sear your tuna on high heat for 3 minutes on each side, and set aside. Once it’s cooled you can now thinly slice your tuna steak.

8. Finely chop your radish and cucumber, place them in a bowl, and drizzle over the rice vinegar, honey, and salt to your taste.

9. To make the dressing for your bowls, combine the rice vinegar, honey, sesame oil, hot chili oil, salt, pepper, and a bit of water and whisk together.

10. Now, for the bowl! I begin with the fried rice and quinoa, placing the tuna atop on one side and the cucumber radish salad on the other. Grab a small bunch of microgreens to top it with and lightly drizzle your dressing over the whole dish.

Enjoy on a warm day, share it with friends and family, and be sure to comment on your experience! I’d love to hear how it went.