Seared yellowfin tuna with sweet pork crackling, ruby red grapefruit and black pepper caramel recipe

Created by Peter Kuruvita

2 comments

Enlarge text

Rating:

5/ 5 stars 5 Votes

Cuisine: Modern Australian
Prep Time: 1 hr(s)
Cook Time: 1 hr(s) 30 min(s)
Serves 4 as an entree

Peter Kuruvita shares one of his most popular dishes at Flying Fish. Together with the crunchy pork crackling, seared tuna and black pepper caramel, this dish is a beautiful mix of cultures, flavours and textures.

Wine match Lark Hill Gruner Veltliner 2011, Canberra, ACT
This is a fascinating and complex dish with lots of subtly competing, but complementary, flavours, and a delicate balance of key ingredients: tuna, pork, chilli, citrus, black pepper and caramel. It needs a white wine with spice at its core to help accent different parts of the dish. Couple that with some clear, crystalline fruit to pierce the complex flavours and provide refreshment. Finally, the wine needs a little bit of weight to stand up to the richness of the dish. You could find a great pinot gris to do the job, but, even more interesting, is the white pepper-infused Austrian variety, Gruner Veltliner, which has popped up in a couple of Aussie vineyards in recent years.
-Dan Coward

Ingredients

400g piece pork belly, skin on, bones removed
Salt
400g sashimi-grade tuna loin
¾ cup (95g) chilli salt
Vegetable oil
2 ruby red grapefruit, segmented
1½ cups (375ml) black pepper caramel
Baby shiso leaves, to garnish

Chilli salt (makes ¾ cup/95g)
1 cup (15g) large dried red chillies
⅓ cup (25g) fried shallots
1½ tbsp (15g) fried garlic
2½ tbsp (20g) salt flakes
5 tsp (20g) caster sugar

Black pepper caramel (makes 1½ cups/375ml)
600g palm sugar
3 eshallots, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
¼ cup (60ml) red wine vinegar
¼ cup (60ml) fish sauce
¼ tsp cracked black pepper

View conversion table

Preparation

Steam the pork belly in a bamboo steamer, covered, over a wok of boiling water for 45 minutes. Remove and while the belly is still hot, lightly score the skin at 1cm intervals using a sharp knife. Refrigerate overnight.

The next day, rub salt into the score marks. Place the belly on foil, folding the sides up to the skin, leaving the skin uncovered.

Place into a deep tray. Add water until the belly is half submerged. Roast for 30-40 minutes at 240°C (fan-forced), or until the skin is crisp and crackling.

Once cooked, cut the crackling away from the belly and scrap off any remaining fat. Cut into strips and set aside. Slice the belly into 1cm slices and keep warm until ready to use.

To make the chilli salt, place the chillies in a single layer on a baking tray lined with baking paper in a 160°C (fan-forced) oven for 3-5 minutes until the chillies are hot to the touch and fragrant. Once cool enough to handle, but still pliable, cut each one open lengthwise with scissors and carefully scrape out the seeds and the veins.

Place the chillies, shallots, garlic and salt in a food processor and puree until fine and well combined. Stir in the sugar. (Chilli salt can be made 1 week ahead and stored in the pantry in an airtight container.)

Coat the tuna loin in chilli salt and sear evenly all over in a lightly oiled hot pan. Remove from the pan and set aside to cool. Slice into 1cm-thick pieces.

To make the black pepper caramel, heat the palm sugar and 1 tablespoon of water in a medium saucepan over a moderately high heat until the sugar dissolves and caramelises. Add the eshallots and garlic. Stir in the vinegar and fish sauce, then the pepper. (This can be prepared 2 days ahead and refrigerated in a covered container.)

To serve, assemble layers of pork belly, grapefruit and tuna. Drizzle with black pepper caramel. Garnish with the shiso leaves and pork crackling.

Notes: Fried shallots and fried garlic are available from Asian food stores.

Fresh shiso leaves are available from selected Asian food stores. If unavailable, substitute with flat-leaf parsley.

If you enjoyed this Seared yellowfin tuna with sweet pork crackling, ruby red grapefruit and black pepper caramel recipe then browse more Modern Australian recipes, meat recipes, seafood recipes, baking recipes, prepare ingredients in advance recipes and our most popular hainanese chicken rice recipe.

Modern Australian Restaurants

Displaying 10 of 601 Modern Australian Restaurants.

	Restaurant	Book Online	Suburb
1.	Valentino's		Northbridge
2.	Smithfield Tavern		Smithfield
3.	Benny's Bar & Cafe		Fremantle
4.	Arch Rival		Palmerston
5.	Stirling Hotel		Stirling
6.	Inn Mahogany Creek		Mahogany Creek
7.	Morning Star Estate		Mt Eliza
8.	Anise		City
9.	Artespresso		Kingston
10.	The Boat House by the Lake		Barton

View all Modern Australian restaurants | Start a new search

Comments (2)

02 Sep 2012 06:29 AEST

Angela Schofield

Kingston Beach

So easy but very impressive

This recipe is so delicios and definately something you can cook at home but would expect to find in a restaurant. A very successful Fathers Day dinner.

Agree(0 people agree)

Disagree(0 people disagree)

31 Aug 2012 06:22 AEST

Esther Heng

Peter Kuruvita's >seared yellowfin tuna and pork belly looks delicious on tv, therefore will try the sauces when I have the time. Thank you for sharing!!!!!! Please continue to showcase the produce in regional Australia.

Agree(0 people agree)

Disagree(0 people disagree)

Comment on this recipe

PLEASE NOTE: All submitted comments become the property of SBS. We reserve the right to edit and/or amend submitted comments. HTML tags other than paragraph, line break, bold or italics will be removed from your comment.