Poke made with Trader Joe’s ahi tuna.
We bought and accidentally defrosted a brick of Trader Joe’s ahi tuna. What to do? Make some poke! Don’t try this at home (unless you want to) because the fish, which you will eat raw, needs to be absolutely fresh or at least flash-frozen. But we had been in control of our product from freezer to home which gave us confidence to proceed.
A generic internet recipe told us we should chop the tuna into small pieces and mix with soy sauce, sesame oil and green onions. Not good! The salty soy overpowered the other ingredients. Having a second 8 oz tuna steak we cubed it and tried again, with a marinade that included more or less:
2 T toasted sesame oil
1 green onion, sliced into rings including some of the green part
Half a shallot, chopped, about 2 T, standing in for Maui sweet onions
½ t pink Hawaiian sea salt (if we didn’t have it would have used Kosher)
1 T Trader Joe’s Furikake
The result? Onolicious but, more important, approximating the good poke we’ve had on our trips to Oahu. Sesame oil is viscous and clings to the tuna pieces in a way that makes for a cohesive product you can easily eat with chopsticks and combine with rice or other mix-ins. Next time (and there will be a next time, as soon as we get back to TJ) we might experiment with a bit of ginger or a sprinkle of toasted sesame seeds (though those are incorporated in the TJ’s furikake) or we might enjoy it just the way it is.
The internet wants you to use very fresh tuna-grade ahi for poke and eat it right away, but that doesn’t make sense to us. Isn’t poke a way to use up fish that is a bit past its prime? The excellent Onolicious Hawaii blog has thoughts as well as links to places on Oahu which sell her favorite poke varieties. She likes to pick up several 8 oz containers (so marinated, not fresh) and serve them with hot rice. She casts shade on the mainland trend of mixing poke with a lot of ingredients to create a healthy bowl with the fish taking a supporting role. We agree, though we are thinking of a couple spoonfuls of edamame (out of the shell) as an accompaniment next time.
Sushi Stack by caloriesandcocktails on TikTok.
Onolicious Hawaii would certainly scoff at the TikTok trend of sushi stacks (poke stacks with alliteration added) in which a can opened at both ends (or a special mold, if you want to waste money) is used to create a mini tower with a layer of rice, a layer of poke and a top layer like avocado. We’re okay with this; it is essentially a stateside poke bowl with more dramatic presentation. But we insist that the poke itself take center stage.
