Recipe: Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto's tuna poke

Prep time: - minutes | Cook time: - minutes | Serves: 4

Once you secure sushi-grade tuna, this meal in a bowl takes almost no effort to make.

I upgrade the typical tekka don–sliced raw tuna, often briefly marinated in soy sauce–by merging it with the Hawaiian dish tuna poke (pronounced PO-kay), which I fell for while opening my restaurant in Waikiki.

The cubes of luscious crimson fish dressed with a little salt, sugar, and spice taste great over wonderfully plain white rice or less traditional but no less delicious sushi rice

*Recipe and photo excerpted from The Art of Japanese Home Cooking by Masaharu Morimoto. 

Ingredients

• ¼ cup Japanese soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon mirin (sweet rice wine)
• 2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
• 1 to 2 teaspoons tobanjan (chile bean sauce), preferably a Japanese brand
• 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
• 1 pound sushi-grade tuna, cut into ½-inch cubes
• ½ medium Hass avocado, peeled, pitted, cut into ½-inch pieces
• 6 cups cooked short-grain white rice or cooked, vinegared short-grain white rice, warm
• 1 nori seaweed sheet
• ¼ cup thinly sliced fresh shiso leaves (also called Japanese mint and perilla) or scallion greens
• 1 teaspoon toasted sesame seeds

Preparation

1. Combine the soy sauce, mirin, sesame oil, tobanjan, and sugar in a medium mixing bowl and stir until the sugar dissolves. Add the tuna and avocado to the bowl, toss well, and set aside to marinate for a few minutes but no more than 5 minutes
2. Divide the rice among 4 wide bowls. Top each bowl with the tuna and avocado, leaving the sauce behind. Then drizzle the sauce over the tuna and avocado. Tear the nori into small pieces and scatter some over each bowl; top with the shiso and sesame seeds. Eat right away