looks like a holiday pastry

 

It may look a bit like a holiday treat, but it’s totally savory.  The tuna is ‘paved’ with crushed fennel seed and peperoncino, not colored sugar, and the red and green comes from the Chinese brassica and the most modern expression of the ancient Andean/Mexican cherry tomato.

• one 12-ounce tuna steak from P.E. & D.D. Seafood, halved, rubbed with a mixture of dry fennel seed and one dried Itria-Sirissi chili, peperoncino di Sardegna intero from Buon Italia, both ground together, additionally seasoned with salt and pepper, then pan-grilled for little a little more than a minute and a half on each side, finished with a good squeeze of lemon and a drizzle of olive oil
• one bunch of yu choy sum (‘flowering bok choy’) from Lani’s Farm (where it was probably grown in one of her magic high tunnels), roughly chopped, added to a heavy enameled cast iron pan where one very large bruised and quartered Rocambole (Calabrian) garlic clove from Keith’s Farm had been heated until beginning to brown, the greens stirred until tender along with a little of the water which the greens had shed after being washed, arranged on plates and drizzled with olive oil and drops of lemon juice
• two Backyard Farms Maine ‘cocktail tomatoes’ from Whole Foods, halved, seasoned with salt and pepper, pan-grilled, then placed on the plates with a mixture of one very cosmopolitan green garlic from Lani’s Farm, sliced, one Mexican poblano pepper from Oak Grove Plantation, also sliced, both of which had been sautéed in olive oil and seasoned
• the wine was a Spanish (Rioja) rosé, Muga Rosado 2014 
• the music was entirely from Counterstream radio