Seared Sesame Tuna with crunchy green veg

The key to successful dieting, apart from focus and willpower, is being able to make easy, tasty and healthy meals in a few minutes with only a handful of ingredients. Seared Sesame Tuna from Jamie Oliver fulfils this brief brilliantly and is lip-smackingly good to eat!

The tuna steaks literally only need to be cooked for 1½ minutes on either side, or longer if you don’t like seeing any pink bits. Similarly, you want the sugar snap peas and spring onions to have some crunch, so don’t cook them for longer than 2 minutes otherwise you’ll cremate them. Fresh tuna steaks are expensive, but frozen varieties (I got mine from Iceland in the above pic) are much cheaper and ideal for producing quick weeknight winners.

You’ll find this recipe, and others like it, in Jamie’s ‘5 ingredients’ book. Ironically, this recipe requires 8 ingredients but Jamie classes salt, olive oil and red wine vinegar as core base ingredients. Ok, I’ll agree on salt and cooking oil, but red wine vinegar….. hmm. If you want to save a few calories, be less frivolous with the sesame seeds.

Recipe: Seared Sesame Tuna

Calories: 450 calories per portion

Serves: 2

Book: Jamie Oliver – 5 ingredients

Prep time: Approx 10 minutes

Cooking time: Approx 10 minutes

Ingredients: 1 heaped tablespoon miso paste, 2 x 150 g tuna steaks (ideally 2cm thick), 4 tablespoons sesame seeds, 8 spring onions, 150g sugar snap peas, red wine vinegar, sea salt, extra virgin olive oil

Cost per portion: Approx £4.70

Method: Place a large non-stick frying pan on a medium-high heat.

Rub the miso all over the tuna, then pat on the sesame seeds to cover.

Place in the hot pan with 1 tablespoon of olive oil and sear for 1½ minutes on each side, so it’s beautifully golden on the outside but blushing in the middle.

Remove to a board to rest. Quickly wipe out the pan with a ball of kitchen paper, then return to the heat.

Trim the spring onions and slice at an angle the same length as the sugar snaps, tossing both into the hot pan with a few drips of red wine vinegar and a pinch of sea salt for 2 minutes to lightly catch and char.

Slice the sesame tuna and serve on top of the veg, drizzled with 1 teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil.