Tuna with tataki sauce

The French morning TV, Télématin, recently showed a nice clip from the fish market in Saint-Jean-de-Luz where a local chef cooked tuna with tataki sauce.

The tuna fishing season in the Bay of Biscay is from June to October. The fishing is sustainable respecting the quotas and every caught tuna is numbered. They seemed to weigh 30 kg in the market of Saint-Jean-de-Luz.

The chef cooked the tuna filet mi-cuit gently over medium heat on all sides and leaving it raw inside. The tuna was then sliced, placed on top of sautéed green vegetables and drizzled with tataki sauce.

The simplest tataki sauce is lemon juice, soy sauce, grated garlic, sesame oil, and minced green onion whisked together. For more Mediterranean flavours, I replaced sesame oil with olive oil. Tataki sauce goes also well with salmon. Soy sauce is salty so if you want to reduce some salt in tataki sauce you could choose salt-reduced soy sauce.

2 servings tataki sauce

1 tbsp. chopped green onion

A dash of finely minced garlic

2 tbsp. lemon juice

1 tbsp. olive oil

1 tsp. soy sauce

Whisk together all the ingredients until the sauce emulsifies and thickens. Keep refrigerated until needed.

Make a green vegetable sauté by cooking over medium heat in 1- 2 tbsp. of olive oil different greens in season such as green asparagus, courgette, green peas, spinach, and some shallot and garlic. Keep warm, covered while you cook the tuna steaks.

Warm 1 tbsp. olive oil over medium heat in a frying pan and gently cook the tuna steaks leaving them pink, almost rare inside. The cooking time varies according to the thickness of the steaks, about 2- 3 minutes on both sides. 

Divide the vegetables and tuna on the plates and drizzle the tataki sauce over the fish.