Tuesday Night Dinner Party: Turn Frozen Tuna Into a Feast

Photograph by Sara Dickerman.

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I have vowed to stop letting my perfectionism in the kitchen keep me from entertaining. The old me could barely pull off a dinner party because my ambitions of restaurant finesse just didn’t scale down to my kid-crowded life. So I decided to change my model. I’d make do with what was already in the fridge, settle for one-dish meals or mayo not made from scratch, and make spice substitutions that once would have made me cringe. Like exercise, I’d make entertaining a habit, and see if I could develop skills to make it less overwhelming, less about the food, even, and more about the people I welcome into my house. Now I invite people over every Tuesday. Join me as I lower my standards.

My father-in-law, Chet, arrived to spend the night before heading out on a four-day motorcycle jaunt with my husband Andrew. I was slightly stressed about the sheer volume of rubber they’d be burning, given that neither is a serious touring biker (although Andrew has been prepping, sort of, by watching Ewan MacGregor’s charming Long Way Round TV series). Andrew and his father were a little nervous too: They took an extra practice ride before dinner to make sure they could handle the bikes with all their saddlebags loaded up. Chet was on a rented jade-and-white Harley, which made me wonder if there are telltale rental bike colors, just like there are certain car paint jobs—like refrigerator-white and Sonic-the-Hedgehog-blue—that you only see coming off the Hertz lot.

The menfolk had maps to study and stuff-sacks to repack, so I didn’t plan much in terms of company, but at the last minute our neighbors (and an old family friend of theirs) seemed eager to get out of the house, so the dinner guest list went from three grownups to six, plus four in the 5-and-under crowd. No problem—I already had poached tuna in the fridge. Not just any tuna, but the yummy frozen albacore loin my friend Curtis discovered at Uwajimaya and has made a staple of his kitchen. I don’t eat tuna all that frequently, since it is relatively high in mercury and in many regions totally overfished. But I’m not a purist on the subject (or any others, really). Plus, this frozen tuna loin is an astonishingly good deal for fairly premium fish. (Fish that has been scrupulously frozen like this is far better than poorly handled “fresh" fish.)

In preparation for the meal, I had defrosted the tuna, and then poached it in a bath of water slightly acidified with lemon, wine, and vinegar. Then I let the flesh cool in a more luxurious bath of olive oil, sage, and garlic, and refrigerated overnight. By the time I got word of the expanded guest list, all I had to do to stretch the tuna for a crowd was toss it with a vat of pasta, ready-made tapenade (an inexpensive Moroccan brand that my favorite fishmonger carries for some reason), and some of my 4-year-old Gus’ pre-peeled carrot nubbins that I blanched in water. Salad was a drawer-cleaner—a bunch of asparagus that had been lingering in the fridge for a few days, plus a bag of frozen edamame. I blanched them both and then tossed them with some dill, diced red onion, and a Dijon vinaigrette, and laid it on a bed of lettuce from my garden (an unnecessary but pretty step).