jennfrank.

spicy tuna in 90 seconds

Yesterday’s recipe ingredients inspired my friend BT, who, like me, really loves the book French Cooking in Ten Minutes.

Today I ran into the kitchen to use up my already-open tin of Fishwife tuna before a Zoom appointment—I’d stirred half a can into my instant macaroni last night—and I, once again, immediately understood what must be done. This combination of foods is so quick to shkiaff together, I didn’t even end up eating on camera.

Okay: this recipe is a lot like the one that appears on Fishwife’s official website. Did I look at that recipe before making this? Not even.

spicy tuna on rice, in a frosted-glass bowl, on a desk

sushi-style spicy tuna with rice

Today’s rice mix-in will have you asking yourself, “Did I just fly to San Francisco for a world-famous sushirrito?” Many people are asking this question.

This recipe will serve up to 2 people, or just 1 very hungry person.

  1. Begin by microwaving your bag of instant rice1.
  2. In a second bowl, dump out 1.5 cans of albacore tuna in spicy olive oil. That’s a pretty expensive meal, but at least your tuna is already spicy. I incorporated most of the packing oil, rather than draining—because, listen, this can is expensive, so we’re using all of it.
  3. Everything relies on Kewpie mayo2. It doesn’t require a lot, I discovered. To the first half-can of tuna I’d added a splash of mirin and a very conservative squirt of American Kewpie, and the balance was perfect. But then I put in the second tuna can and more mayo, and whoops, I overdid it. Be cautious.
  4. The rest of these cooking steps are me attempting to recover from my mayonnaise error.
  5. I attempted to rebalance everything with tamari (which is gluten-free soy sauce). I think Worcestershire might’ve been even better for this task. Anyway, it was also too much. I groaned.
  6. I’d been planning to finish with the tiniest drizzle of sesame oil, but there’s kind of a lot of oil in the tuna already, so I zagged and used a glug from a bottle of “all-purpose” garlic sesame sauce. You can find readymade bottles and many homemade recipes online, but what was already in the fridge was Spicy Onion Garlic Umami Sauce.
  7. I reincorporated everything and taste-tested. I think the last step really helped. To finish, I stirred in a couple pinches of freeze-dried spring onion.
  8. Pour your spicy tuna over rice and serve. If you have any shichimi—I’m all out—this is when you’d sprinkle it on. Last. Obviously.

ingredients

You’re done! It’s still beautiful even after you’ve fully incorporated the spicy tuna into rice. Every bite tastes like sushirrito! It shouldn’t be legal!

P.S. I ought to be posting these recipes at Frankly Jenn, my joke lifestyle blog I “launched” after I’d internalized the idea that writing about video games seemed potentially dangerous all of a sudden. I recently tried logging in, broke the website twice, and then got locked out. Check back to see what happens with it next!

  1. Today’s bag burst open in the microwave, which has never happened to me before. I was very startled! Out came the glass Anyday bowl once again, since it literally exists for moments like these.↩

  2. This is an occasion where there are zero benefits to using ‘original’ Japanese Kewpie mayo as a U.S.-based person. What Japanese mayo contains, which locally-made Kewpie does not, is msg and sugar. If you add additional ingredients to your spicy tuna mix, you will effectively be adding those ingredients anyway. For instance, I imagine there’s a shit-ton of sugar in mirin.↩