Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Grilled Tuna over Sage Caramelized Onions

On Saturday CB had his LEED exam. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (sorry for the misprint, earlier I put Leadership Excellence in Environmental Design which Mona pointed out to me - I new I should have double checked it before I posted) and is regulated by the USGBC which is the United States Green Building Council. In the world of architecture and sustainability it's a very big deal, it means that not only can CB design and stamp his own construction documents, but he can also design environmentally conscious homes, with smaller carbon footprints, and less impact on the environment, and it's an extremely hard test. CB has been studying for months and months and on Saturday he passed; we were so extremely excited and happy. After the test we went to a few wine shops that were having tastings, bought some wine, and then went home to make a big congratulations dinner.

My sage plant seems to taking on a life of its own, so I needed an excuse to cut it back a little. I decided that I would serve the grilled tuna over a bed of caramelized onions, and that I would add ribbons of sage leaves to the onions as they were cooking to impart their earthy flavor to the sweet onions. It was awesome, I admit, I stood over the stove and ate about three spoonfuls of the onions before they ever made it onto our plates, they were that good.

I marinated the tuna steaks in a premade balsamic onion marinade that I had, so I can't take any credit for how the tuna came out, but the onions, were pure heaven. I also topped the tuna with cucumber ribbons that I had sprinkled with salt and pepper and then left in a mesh strainer to release some of their water, which was very good, but next time I may serve them on the side because the tuna seemed to heat the cucumbers very quickly, and I don't like warm cucumbers.

Sage Caramelized Onion
2 large sweet yellow onions
about 12 medium sage leaves sliced into thin ribbons
Olive oil
salt and pepper

Heat enough olive oil to generously cover the pan. Cut the onions in half, and then slice into thin half moons, add to the hot olive oil, season with salt and pepper, add the sage ribbons. Cook over medium heat for about 20-30 minutes until the onions release their sugar and begin to caramelize. Watch to make sure that the onions do not burn or brown too much.

These can be served under anything, chicken, fish, pork chops. I served them under fish, I would think that they would be great under just about anything.

Rating = So God Damn Good

PS. If anyone has any recipes that call for good amounts of sage can you please forward them to me. My plant has seriously turned into a sage bush and it's taking over my basil.

5 comments:

Patricia Scarpin said...

I love this dish, JB - it looks elegant and beautiful, and yet not complicated to put together. That is a very special dinner, for sure!
Congratulations to CB!

Oh, and I don't like warm cucumbers, either.

Anonymous said...

Sage is one of those herbs that I light and put in a diffuser - it's used to dissolve evil and malicious energy from your home. So, if you ever need to trim it back, you should consider that. Or dry them for me :) Congrats to the engineer. We will catch up soon, I promise!

Anonymous said...

Hello. Just want to provide a minor correction - LEED stands for Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design.

Find out more about LEED at:

www.usgbc.org

Passing the exam is an impressive accomplishment - Congrats!

Anonymous said...

we had butternut squash ravioli topped with crispy fried sage at a restaurant in vermont last fall... no recipe though, but sage is amazing fried to a crisp.

JB said...

Hmm. I may have to try and make that recipe. Thanks.