One of my favorite foods to go out to eat is sushi.
In general, I don’t like going out to eat.
After working all day, I want to come home to the peace of my kitchen and the comfort of my sweatpants.
I don’t want to go to a restaurant where it’s crowded, it’s loud, it’s expensive, and I always feel like I could make the same plate in front of me at home.
Sushi is an exception.
I don’t see me busting out the bamboo sushi mat and picking up sushi grade ahi tuna at the market any time soon. (Though, you never know. My boyfriend recently decided he wanted to learn how to make Chinese food and so went out and bought a wok. Yes. He woks on occasion. Yes, I will try and sneak a video next time.)
If we wanted sushi, we’d have to venture out.
Trouble is, we were both really set on a weekend of sweatpants.
So I started thinking about sushi as components rather than rolls and came up with this deconstructed spicy tuna roll salad. The tuna is cooked, but the flavors are about the same as the roll you’d get at your favorite sushi restaurant.
The best part? This is a one bowl dish. That’s right. Bowl. Not pot. This is an almost no cook meal. Just assembly required.
Really, you’re going to do three steps.
1. Make the dressing
2. Make the salad
3. Cook the tuna.
So first the dressing.
You will need:
- 2 tbsp Greek yogurt
- 1 tbsp siracha
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
- juice of half a lime
- a pinch of sugar
In a large bowl, whisk together all of the ingredients.
We actually always have all of this stuff on hand. Like I said, he started woking recently and went out and bought a bunch of Asian ingredients. Even if you don’t have them or don’t think you’ll make that many Asian dishes, consider getting them. I’ve made some amazing marinades with soy sauce. And sesame oil adds a really nice deep flavor to sauteed vegetable. And if you don’t have siracha or don’t want to buy it, use whatever hot sauce you like or have on hand.
To the bowl of dressing, toss in your salad ingredients.
We used:
- 1 avocado, diced
- 3 scallions, sliced
- 1/2 cucumber, sliced into matchsticks
- 1 handful shredded cabbage (like the bag of coleslaw mix)
- 1 large handful baby spinach
- 1 large handful spring mix
These can easily be adjusted. Arugula would be nice to add a peppery kick, or even romaine if you want a real cold crispness to cut the hot sauce. I recommend the avocado and the cucumber if you want that sushi roll taste, but really the salad ingredients are up to you.
Toss to coat the veggies with the dressing.
Pop into the fridge so the flavors can, in the words of my dad, fester.
Anytime a recipe calls for something to hang out in the fridge, dad calls it festering.
Now, while the salad festers, it’s onto the tuna.
You will need:
- 2 tuna steaks
- vegetable oil
- juice of half a lime
- black pepper
Turn the broiler on high and line a baking sheet with foil. The foil gets balled up and tossed in the trash later, making the bowl with the salad the only cleanup for the night.
Place the tuna steaks on the foil-lined sheet and drizzle with vegetable oil and lime juice and a few grinds of black pepper.
The tuna will cook under the broiler pretty quickly, about 4 minutes per side.
This meal is complete with just the salad and the tuna, but we added brown rice on the side to give it the real sushi roll taste.
I confess, I didn’t make the rice. Our favorite Chinese take out place is literally steps from our door (the joys of city living) so while I watched the tuna, he ran down and got a container of brown rice. And maybe two egg rolls. Shih Lee has the best egg rolls. Hands down.
Plate the salad and tuna and add a scoop of brown rice on the side.
When you get a bite of lettuce, avocado, rice and tuna, all coated in the spicy dressing (our version of the spicy mayo of sushi restaurants) your taste buds will be convinced they are down Second Avenue at your favorite sushi place.
But, no. You are at your table, with a huge plate of spicy tuna salad.
And most importantly, you’re still in sweatpants.