#Recipe
Bluefin tuna cheek, hollandaise and pickles
Chef Cristobal Muñoz, finalist of Chef Balfegó 2021, reveals an appetizing recipe made with the inner part of the tuna face, the cheek.
Elaboration
Glazed cheek
To make the glazed cheeks, cut the vegetables into mirepoix to fry them in the following order: onion, leek and carrot. We caramelize for 2 hours to homogenize. We grill the red tuna cheeks. We vacuum seal the bluefin tuna cheeks with the caramelized vegetables, bay leaf, pepper and salt. We cook the cheeks in a steam oven at 53ºC for 30 minutes. We blanch the veal legs twice and cook them in a pressure cooker for 20 minutes. Once cooked, we separate 100 g of cooking broth and add 30 g of cooked veal legs. We crush the whole until we obtain an emulsion. We crumble the cooked cheeks, add the previous emulsion and correct the seasoning. Finally, we roll the mixture with the help of plastic wrap until we obtain a cylinder with a diameter of 4 cm. We reserve it cold to gel the piece with the help of collagen. For the glaze, we reduce the rest of the cooking broth from the veal legs until we obtain a demi-glace and we finish by adding the cooking juices from the cheeks.
Hollandaise corn sauce, piparras and mustard
Blend all the ingredients, except the clarified butter, in a Thermomix for 5 minutes at medium speed. Once crushed, we add the clarified butter in a fine thread until we obtain a homogeneous emulsion. We strain with the help of a fine strainer and introduce the emulsion into a siphon and add 2 loads of N2O. We keep it in a water bath at 50 ºC until serving.
Sour apple pickle
We mix the ingredients except the apple and bring to a boil, let it infuse for 10 minutes. Once warm, we add the apple segments and osmosize in the vacuum machine.
Puffed corn
Grind the popcorn in a coffee grinder until you get a fine couscous texture. We puff at 200ºC and reserve.
Plating
We cut the cylinder of the cheeks with a thickness of 2.5 cm and mark the disc in a non-stick pan, glaze with demi-glace and finish lacquering in the oven at 160 ºC, dry heat. We use a 10 cm diameter cookie cutter as a guide to place the different nuances of the preparation by drawing a semicircle on the plate. We finish by placing the glazed cheeks with puffed corn on the top at one end of the semicircle and on the opposite side we finish by adding the corn hollandaise, peppers and mustard.
Ingredients
Glazed cheek
- 550 g Balfegó bluefin tuna cheeks
- 50 g onion
- 20 g carrot
- 500 g veal leg
- 500 g water
- 20 g leek
- 20 g mild oil
- 5g Salt
- 3 g pepper grain
- 1 pc bay leaf
Hollandaise corn sauce, piparras and mustard
- 50 g pasteurized yolk
- 260 g clarified butter
- 20 g mineral water
- 5 g honey
- 10 g Dijon mustard
- 5 g pickled peppers
- 5 g pickled pepper liquid
- 80 g corn smoothie
- 3 g corn vinegar
Sour apple pickle
- 1 pc granny smith apple
- 30 g sugar
- 250 g apple cider vinegar
- 1 g peppercorn
- 3 g salt
- 150 g mineral water
- 5 g lemon thyme
- Thyme
Puffed corn
- 20 g popcorn
- 100 g olive oil
Garnish
- 40 pcs capers
- 50 g pickled cucumber
- 50 g tender corn
- 8 pcs pickled peppers
- 30 pcs nasturtium leaf