Tv Dinners and Tuna Carpaccio

Photo: Patricia Turo

Ingredients

1 pound Sashimi quality tuna

Fresh basil

8 Sun dried tomatoes

1/2 cup pine nuts (pignoli nocci)

Extra Virgin Olive oil

Lemon juice

Sea salt

Preparation

Put the tuna in the freezer for about 15 minutes. You don’t want to freeze it, but it should be at the point where it is just beginning to freeze. This makes it easier to slice paper-thin slices. Layout the tuna slices on a plate just slightly overlapping them. Refrigerate until you are ready to serve.

Sauté the pignoli nuts in a non-stick sauce pan. This can be done without any butter or oil, but you can add a little butter (optional). Remove them from the heat as soon as they start to brown; let the heat from the pan continue to brown them. They brown very fast and can easily burn. Put them aside to cool.

Julienne the sun dried tomatoes and set them aside.

Just before serving, sprinkle the tuna with the sea salt. Sea salt has a lot of flavor and is a grainy. It gives a very nice taste to the tuna and also adds a little crunch with a distinct taste of salt when eating it. Roughly chop several pieces of fresh basil and set them aside.

Just before serving, sprinkle the toasted pine nuts and basil and sun dried tomatoes over the tuna. Sprinkle olive oil and the lemon juice over the top of the carpaccio and serve cold.