Easy Dinner: Tamarind-Glazed Tuna Steaks

Hey, I'm Louisa Shafia, on eHow.com, and today I'm showing you how to make a pan seared tuna steak with a tamarind glaze. So the most exciting thing about this recipe is that I'm using tamarind. Now, this is what the container looks like and this is what the actual puree looks like when you buy it. Now this is something that's used a lot in Southeast Asian cuisine. You'll find it in Thai food. You'll also find it in Indian food, Mexican food, almost all over the world except for North America and it's got a wonderful flavor that's very very tart. It really needs to get mellowed with a sweetener, whether it's sugar, maple syrup or honey but once you have a little sweetener in there, it's got a really rich flavor. So I'm going to quickly pan sear a tuna steak which my tamarind glaze is going to go onto. So I'm going to put a little bit of oil in my hot pan and then I've got this really thin tuna steak. This is only going to need maybe about a minute in my hot pan. I'll season this very simply with some salt. Okay so my tuna steak is searing in here. What a gorgeous pink color, wow this looks great. It only needs a really short time in the pan. I don't want to over cook it. That's almost done. Meanwhile I'm getting together my ingredients for my tamarind glaze. So I've got my tamarind sauce right here, I'm going to put in a little bit of garlic, a little bit of ginger and then to sweeten it, I'm using honey. I'm going to put a little bit of toasted sesame oil into this. If you've ever used sesame oil, it gives things a real smoky kind of meaty taste and since all my flavors here are pretty much Asian I'm going to add a little bit of soy sauce. Okay so my tuna steak is sizzling away here. It's got a little bit of color on it. I think it's done so I'm going to take that out of my pan. Looks great, and then in the same pan I'm going to go ahead and make my glaze. So I'm putting a little bit of oil into here and then I'm going to brown my garlic and my ginger for just a moment. Garlic cooks very very quickly so it needs a very short time in the pan here on its own but I don't want that raw garlic taste so I'll just let it cook a moment and now I'm going to put in this delicious tamarind pulp. Looks great, sweetening it with some honey, shot of soy sauce and just a little bit of sesame oil, a pinch of salt and I only want this to thicken a little bit in the pan. This really doesn't need very long. This is looking great. Um, smells wonderful. It's really rich, smoky, sweet and it's got that little bit of tang. Tamarind does great if you don't have lemon or lime around. It's a really good substitute for citrus. You can always find it in Asian stores. You can find it in a lot of natural food stores and it's just fun to try a different flavor. I don't know about you but I always put lemon or lime on fish and tamarind is just kind of a nice change. So this looks really thick. I think this is ready to pour onto my tuna. Um, that looks great, really thick. It's got a lot of color and it's really clinging to the tuna. Now just for fun I'm going to put some scallions on here, very very simply garnish. Scallions always look great and I've got some toasted black sesame seeds so that looks wonderful. So here's my pan seared tuna steak with a tamarind glaze. This is a great way to liven up a weeknight meal. I hope you'll give it a try. I'm Louisa Shafia. I'll see you next time on eHow.com.