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Special

Jacques Pépin Makes Tuna Tartare

Premiere: 9/21/2022 | 00:06:39 |

For tuna tartare, Pépin recommends dicing the fish with a knife instead of using a food processor, which tends to make the fish mushy. He serves his tartare with onions, scallions and a garnish of bread and cucumbers.

About the Episode

Serves 2 to 3

“When I find a beautiful piece of tuna at my market, I like to make this tuna tartare. I cut the fish into small dice with a sharp knife and never use a food processor as it tends to make the fish mushy. Spending a little time on the presentation transforms this simple dish into an elegant first course but don’t add the lemon juice until you are ready to serve.” —Jacques Pépin

Ingredients:

5 thin slices dark rye bread
Unsalted butter
8 ounces ahi tuna, cut into ¼-inch dice
Salt
½ to 1 teaspoon Tabasco
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons finely chopped sweet onion, such as Vidalia
1 scallion, minced
⅓ cup diced cucumber
Dash sugar
6 black olives, pitted and halved, for garnish
Additional extra virgin olive oil, for garnish
Chives, for garnish
Lemon wedges or freshly squeezed lemon juice

Method:

Generously butter 4 of the slices of bread and stack them together, then add the final slice on top. Set aside in the refrigerator so that the butter can harden. This can be prepared ahead.

In a medium bowl, combine the tuna, ½ teaspoon salt, Tabasco, olive oil, onion and scallions. In a small bowl, combine the cucumber, dash of salt and the sugar. Let both sit for 15 minutes.

To serve, spoon the tartar into 3 small glass custard cups and press lightly to pack into shape. Carefully unmold the tartare onto 3 plates, and garnish with the diced cucumber, olive halves and a drizzle of olive oil. Sprinkle some chives on top. Slice the bread into thin slices, vertically to reveal the layered stripes of bread and butter; arrange on the plate around the tuna. Just before serving, squeeze some lemon juice on top and serve immediately.

QUOTE

"I feel that if Jacques Pépin shows you how to make an omelet, the matter is pretty much settled. That’s God talking. "

— Anthony Bourdain

TRANSCRIPT

TRANSCRIPT

(upbeat instrumental music) - Hi, I'm Jacques Pépin.

And this is, 'American Masters at Home.'

(upbeat instrumental music) When I find a beautiful piece of tuna like this, very often, I decide to do a tartare with it.

And, sometimes I cook it, of course, but I like do the tartare.

Now, one of the biggest, I think a mistake that people do, they try to chop it, you know?

Don't chop it like in a food processor, because the thing becomes kind of mushy, you know mushy, pasty, and all that.

See, that beautiful piece of fish here?

I'm cutting it into like, quarter of an inch dice.

And that piece is a half a pound, eight ounces, and it will be two beautiful tartares.

So, in there I'm going to put-- there's a good half a teaspoon of salt here, and probably, uh-- Tabasco, maybe a little more, like close to a teaspoon of Tabasco, like a tablespoon of olive oil, that, and then some onion.

Keep it pretty simple.

Again, make sure that those are, you know, Vidalia-type of onion so that they are not strong.

And if you think they are too strong, you can take those onion, put them into a sieve, run them under cold water, and that will remove the compound of sulfuric acid in there.

So, what I have here is a good-- one, two, like, three tablespoons of onion, yep.

You can add a lot of other things, and probably I have a scallion here, which is beautiful.

I'm gonna use the scallion as well.

And you can do that ahead.

Very often in those type of things, like ceviche or tartare, you put some acid, like lemon juice or vinegar, but I would not put it now.

I would serve it with it, but not put it, because otherwise the citric acid kind of eat, it cook the fish, and it looks, sometimes-- you put a piece of salmon and lemon juice on top, it changes color, it becomes all white-ish.

So, you do it at the end, not now.

So, basically it's a very simple seasoning, and I like it simple, and it will take, oh, 15 minute or so, and that's going to be-- Let me see, yep.

Then the salt, beautiful.

With that, I want to serve some bread, black bread that I have here.

So, what you can do-- well, doing this bread and butter with one on top of the other.

Another slice.

You can do that for any garnish, black bread or, yeah, okay.

That makes a nice garish.

Oh, I wanna put a little bit of cucumber as a garish outside, so I'll peel the cucumber.

You don't have to put the cucumber.

You know, those type of recipes, you can always vary.

So what, what I'm doing here, I'm cutting it around the seed in the center, which I discard, cut that into little dice again.

I will sprinkle a tiny dash of salt on top of it.

Bit of sugar and salt on top of it as a garish.

So I can serve my tartare here.

Well-- That will be plenty, and that's two.

I think you can probably serve three people in there with this.

So this, your tartar here.

A little bit of the garnish around, like this.

A couple of the black olives.

Take the pit out, of course.

We want to put a dash of olive oil around.

Maybe if you have a few sprigs of chives, we could put that around like this on top, and our bread garnish.

Now you have bread, so you cut that into thin slices like this.

So, you have your buttered bread.

Makes it elegant.

And this is my beautiful tuna tartare.

Do it for your friends or your family, and happy cooking.

(upbeat instrumental music) Thank you for joining me.

For more, subscribe to this channel and watch here.

Thank you, and happy cooking.