My biggest fear coming into this week was that I was going to manage to burn the entire dish a second time. I have a decent amount of self-confidence, yet…it was definitely shaken when it comes to grilling after I saw flames shooting out of the back of the grill my last time around. I didn’t want to fail making a dish again quite like I did a few weeks ago while trying to make Meat Miq’abobs.
I took it as a learning experience, and I tried to be less hard on myself for failing the first time. And honestly? I think I mostly succeeded, although I definitely didn’t get up close and personal with the grill until AFTER I was sure that the fish wasn’t going to catch on fire. I’m definitely trying to grow from this and give myself that necessary grace and Love, Eorzean Style.
I’m still not completely where I want to be with not being hard on myself, but there is definitely improvement.
If you’ve missed an installment of Cooking Eorzea, you can check out all the prior recipes here.
Recipe of the Week
This week’s Cooking Eorzea dish is the 20th recipe in the cookbook, hails from the La Noscea region of Eorzea, and has a difficulty rating of ‘Easy’. The dish consists pretty much only of fish, marinade ingredients, and a lemon juice that is sprayed over the ahi tuna skewers before they go on the grill. It is probably one of the simplest dishes that I have made for this column so far…but don’t assume that anything is a breeze.
Featured Ingredient of the Week
This week’s featured ingredient is ahi tuna! Also known as yellowfin tuna, it is a deep-sea fish that is regularly used in sashimi sushi and can weigh 400 pounds. I ended up using sushi grade ahi tuna for this week’s recipe and so the ahi tuna steaks were purchased frozen.
My Cooking Attempt
This week’s Cooking Eorzea recipe utilized only ingredients for the marinade, lemons, and ahi tuna as you can see in the photograph below:
When I got the ahi tuna out of the refrigerator, I realized that the steaks were still frozen even though they had spent the night defrosting. As a result, I broke the ahi tuna steaks out of the vacuum bags, placed them into Ziplock bags with the air squeezed out, and then dunked them into cool water to try to defrost quicker.
Setting the bowl aside for the moment, I turned my attention to the marinade. First, I zested a pair of lemons. As you can tell in the second photograph, I was a little TOO aggressive with my zesting, as I ended up ripping open one of the lemons.
I then chopped up a bunch of cilantro until I had what I needed for the marinade.
I got another Ziplock bag out, and I added the soy sauce, the honey, the sesame oil, the garlic powder, the ginger powder, the lemon zest, and the cilantro into the bag.
I then pulled out my whisk and mixed them all together.
…And it was then that I realized that I forgot to add in the fish sauce. I ended up adding it in and then just vigorously shaking the bag repeatedly until the fish sauce was mixed in.
After setting the finished marinade aside, I cut the now-defrosted ahi tuna into pieces. The fish was surprisingly easy to cut, and it stayed almost completely intact while I was cutting through it.
I then placed the pieces into the marinade, manipulated them around inside the bag to make sure that the ahi tuna was thoroughly coated, and compressed as much air as possible out of the bag.
I then placed the marinating ahi tuna into the refrigerator for two-and-a-half hours.
As I was about to get the ahi tuna out, I sliced up the lemons into slices.
Once those slices were placed into an airtight container, I went out to the grill and preheated it.
This is a photograph of the whole setup for the grilling.
Onto each skewer, I loaded up several pieces of ahi tuna. You can see that the marinade really soaked into the ahi tuna pieces as I load them onto the skewer.
Once all of the ahi tuna was used, I took several lemon slices and squeezed the juice out over the skewers.
I placed each of the four skewers onto the grill after spraying the grill down with nonstick spray, and I closed the lid for several minutes.
I opened the lid and turned the skewers over to make sure that all of the sides cooked through. This time, I managed to NOT catch the whole dish on fire.
And of course, here is the finished Tuna Miq’abob dish for this week’s Cooking Eorzea!
I then sat down and immediately tried it. The ahi tuna was cooked through, as the recipe said to do. It had a pleasant citrusy-savory taste to it that complemented the tuna EXTREMELY well. The fish wasn’t tough, chewy, or burned either. Overall, I was surprised at how simple and yet delicious this dish was.
Afterword
This is a Cooking Eorzea dish that I would ABSOLUTELY make again. The dish was simple to execute, and even the frozen ahi tuna was simple to fix. I was a little surprised that there were no vegetables to also go on the skewer, but the ahi tuna honestly didn’t need it. I would love to try it with a little bit more raw fish instead of it being cooked all the way through. But honestly? It was great as is.
Onto the ‘thank yous’! I want to thank Victoria Rosenthal (as always) for writing The Ultimate FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook. I also want to thank the staff over at Insight Editions for giving me permission to use the photos from their book to show how these recipes are actually supposed to look. Furthermore, I owe Brandon Rose a special thanks for creating the logo for this series on short notice. You should check him and his works out over on Twitter.
Finally, I want to thank both Hiromichi Tanaka and Naoki Yoshida for producing FINAL FANTASY XIV Online in both iterations of the game…this column honestly wouldn’t have happened without both of you.
Next Week
Next week, we move into the ‘Breads’ section of the cookbook with ‘Bacon Bread’. I have looked at the recipe and it is a LITTLE intimidating, but I am sure that it will all work out in the end.
Please return next Friday to see how my attempt turns out!
Have you made bread before from base ingredients? What do you think of bacon bread?
Let us know in the comments below!
