Seared Tuna & Soba Noodle Salad

Seared Tuna & Soba Noodle Salad... It's summa time and the grillin's easy! We recently procured a lovely grill and honestly it's fabulous. I have zero interest in cooking anything inside anymore and I must admit my landlord/roomie is actually quite the grill master. So far he has cooked everything to perfection - and I'm picky. I like things with a char but juicy inside, I HATE overcooked meat but I also don't exactly want my food to give me a deathly illness. Anywho, among the burgers and flank steak and pizza we have also had some lighter fare, and this seared tuna was summatime on a plate.

The Tuna:
Marinated in a teryakki sauce for about 30 minutes before spending about 2 minutes on each side at a very high heat. The tuna was super high quality from Whole Foods and you could cut it with a fork it was so tender.

The Soba Noodles:
I had leftover lacinato kale which had been chiffonade (is that a major grammatical error??) as well as julienned zucchini which I wanted to incorporate into this "pasta salad" of sorts. To start I cooked the buckwheat soba noodles per the instructions, drained them and rinsed them with cold water.

While they cooled I added a bit of oil to the emptied medium sized pot I boiled the noodles in (water drained of course) and tossed around my veggies on very low heat for just a few minutes, long enough for them to soften slightly but still keep their crunch. Once done I tossed them into a large salad bowl and quickly doused them with a chilled miso soy ginger dressing and added the cooled soba noodles. I gave it all a big toss and voila!

To Serve:
Plate each dish with the soba noodle salad in the middle and then when the tuna is ready, slice each steak into 1/2 inch thick strips. Fan them out over the noodles for a beautiful display of grill marks and bright red tuna - sprinkle with sesame seeds and you've got yourself a Dahlicious gourmet dinner!

Tossing the soba noodles with the veggies and dressing

Dinner!

Classic BLT Perfection

Classic BLT Perfection...yesterday morning one of my favorite blogs, Cup of Jo, posted about the most gorgeous, simple, crave-worthy tomato sandwich. I literally spent the whole day fantasizing, dare I say obsessing, over this morsel of Dahliciousness. I just couldn't shake the desire to recreate it myself. But as the day continued and as I started thinking about how I could work this into dinner, accommodating my meat loving roomie, I decided what better way to make this "man friendly" than to add bacon. So, the homemade BLT was conceived.

Oddly enough, I don't think I've ever made a BLT at home, and it's also one of those things I perhaps order once a year at a restaurant. But man is it good. Lightly toasted bread, slathered with tangy mayo, luscious ripe heirloom tomatoes, salty decadent bacon, and crispy fresh lettuce. I MEAN.

The big ticket item here that really started the whole thing was the heirloom. Here we are, in the midst of summer, in prime heirloom season and all I wanted was to luxuriate in that juiciness, and so I did.

After work I convinced my driver-roomie-significant other-landlord to accompany me to Whole Foods, I figured this might get him excited about his impending dinner... letting him help select the bacon and all.

Here's what we ended up with:

• 3 GORGEOUS heirlooms, of which I used one and could only even eat half of what I sliced up (don't worry the leftovers are being put to good use - more to come). Also side note the guy who rang us up looked at this wonky lopsided hunk of glory and said, defeated,"ugh this was the one I had been eyeing". Sad, but it was mine - sorry!!!
• Whole Foods French Pan loaf
• 4 strips of WF Original Pork bacon
• 4 strips of WF Maple Pork bacon
• 4 strips of WF Savory Pork bacon
• Salt & Vinegar Chips
• Cole Slaw

*At home I had mayo and mini romaine/gem lettuce*

Once home, I got cookin'. The bacon went in the oven at 400 for about 20 minutes on a baking sheet until crispy around the edges.

I started by slicing the big yellow/red/orange heirloom and quickly realized it would be PLENTY, and so to test it, I snuck myself a little hunk of bread with mayo and piled a few slices on top - salt and pepper. DONE.

Once the tomato was sliced I rinsed and dried my lettuce and sliced up some bread. When the bacon was done and resting on a few paper towels, I took just a minute or so to lightly toast the bread. I don't know about you, but I want my bread starting to crisp without a trace of brown. This way it holds up to the mayo and tomato, but still has enough integrity to meld into the shape of it's innards (the B, the L, & the T). I wish I had gotten a picture of it in it's glory, but once I got hold of my sando there was no putting it down to take a photo of the inside.

So, without further ado.... here she is:

Heirlooms, Bread, what more could a girl need

The Goods

Perfection

This cook needed a tasting mid prep

Basically the light shining on this plate was from the heavens

Here we go

Mayo (check), Tomato (check), Bacon (Check)

Lettuce (check)

Time to devour


Happy Fourth Yall! Maybe if you're lucky you'll find some beautiful tomatoes and make yourself a classic American BLT this holiday weekend!