I sent my dear husband off to Frank’s Seafood Market with instructions to purchase “whatever Mr. Fishmonger would choose to take home for dinner tonight.” He returned with a slab of sushi-grade tuna so gorgeous it begged to be licked and then devoured raw. I couldn’t wait to crack open my bottle of Sicilian olive oil I had been saving to drizzle over supremely fresh fish.

Perfect tuna

Although the tuna could have easily been enjoyed as is, I did decide to give it a nice crust with a quick sear in a hot cast iron skillet. I then thinly sliced the tuna, placed it on a bed of wilted spinach and topped it with one of my favorite seafood sauces from Steven Raichlen’s Planet Barbecue. A riff on his recipe for Livornese sauce and photo follows.

Livornese sauce

Livornese Sauce:
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil. (Use your good stuff for this recipe as it shines)
Handful of pitted kalamata olives — feel free to chop them if you wish
2 to 3 cloves of garlic, sliced paper-thin
Handful of drained capers
Several chopped fresh tomatoes or good quality canned tomatoes in the winter months
Several tablespoons of chopped fresh parsley or other herbs
Squeeze of fresh lemon juice
Salt & pepper to taste

Heat the olive oil in a medium skillet over high heat. Quickly saute the garlic, capers, olives and parsley until garlic turns golden brown and crisp. Add tomatoes and a few squeezes of lemon juice and boil until reduced just a bit — 2 to 3 minutes should be plenty. Season with salt and pepper and spoon over fish. Drizzle additional olive oil over fish if needed.

Viola, that is all! Light, healthy and satisfying. All you really need is fresh fish and high quality olive oil to turn this into a fabulous dinner. Enjoy!

Seared ahi with Livornese sauce and roasted butternut squash

This recipe was my first foray into playing with duck and it’s one I go back to again and again. It’s truly easy enough for a weeknight meal and elegant enough for a dinner party. The sauce can be made days ahead so you aren’t stuck trying to monkey around with a pan sauce while guests are seated at your dinner table. In fact, I have made the sauce in double batches and often freeze half to pull out later when I spot a fresh duck at the market.

The only trick with this one is coaxing out all of that quack fat to render the skin crispy crunchy, which, let’s face it, is the best part of any feathered creature on our plates.  What I love about this dish, however, is that the fabulous sauce makes up for just about any mistake with the duck. Limp duck skin? No problem, ladle on that sauce. Just past the perfect rosy medium rare? Sauce to the rescue. Skin charred black? Peel it off and dump on the sauce. This is nearly a fool-proof recipe. Whether you’ve tackled duck 100 times in your kitchen or have shied away from our web-footed friend, give this dish a whirl.

Crispy Duck with Pomegranate Chile Sauce & “Celery Root” Remoulade

I know some of you are wondering why the remoulade is fluorescent yellow. If you are not wondering, you should be. Alas, Whole Foods did not have celeriac available and thus, I substituted golden beets and rutabagas. I do not recommend trying this at home.