Perhaps the most elegant version of Sicilian tuna for us was this one that we ate in the kitchen of a tiny, chalk-white house set in the curve of an alley and whose arch-walled garden looked to the sea. The lady who cooked it for us—the owner of the house—was born there in that most ancient parish of Trapani more than ninety years ago. Warm, insistent winds—the breath of Africa, one thinks—billowed up the old blue curtain that was her back door, bidding in the damp, balmy spice of her wisteria as she sat there, beatific, talking and working. It was as though pressing peppercorns into the flesh of a fish was a most magnificent task.
Recipe information
Yield
serves 6
Ingredients
Preparation
Step 1
Prepare the tuna in the morning or early afternoon of the evening you wish to eat it. Several hours of riposo, rest, help to ripen its rich, luscious savor. Bathe the tuna in cold, sea-salted water (2 tablespoons sea salt dissolved in 2 quarts water) for 1/2 hour. In a large, noncorrosive bowl, mix 1/2 cup of the vinegar and 2 cups Marsala. Rinse the tuna under cold water and roll it around in its marinade, covering the bowl with plastic wrap and letting the fish rest for another 1/2 hour. Remove the tuna from the marinade, patting it dry with absorbent paper towels. Discard the marinade. Press the coarsely cracked pepper onto both sides of the tuna and sprinkle a bit of sea salt over each surface.
Step 2
Over a medium-high flame, heat the oil in a large sauté pan and cook the fish—2 or 3 pieces at a time or as many as will fit comfortably without touching—for 2 to 2 1/2 minutes to the side. The flesh will be rare at the center, as it should be. As they are cooked, remove the tuna pieces to a deep plate to hold them and their juices.
Step 3
Pour off the oil from the pan and add the remaining cup of Marsala and 1/3 cup vinegar, along with the accumulated juices from the tuna, stirring and scraping and allowing the liquids to reduce for a minute or two. Stir in the honey and taste the sauce. Neither the sweet nor the sour essence of the sauce should be aggressive. Should the vinegar be too much, soften it with a few drops more of honey.
Step 4
Pour the very hot sauce over the fish, bathing the pieces as evenly as possible. When the sauce and fish have cooled, cover the dish. Permit the tuna to rest until dinnertime, serving it at room temperature after, perhaps, opening with the cipolle arrostite sul sale marino (page 192).
