You'd think that after being in the freezer for only 24 hours it'd only take 12 hours to thaw this piece of tuna in the fridge. Also you'd think the president of the United States would be intelligent. You'd think a lot of things that are wrong these days.

It was my co-worker Tony's birthday on Friday, which incidentally was my first day back at work after the wedding/honeymoon. (Yes, it was a long break. Yes, I would rather still be drinking gin at noon and napping at two. Yes, there are photos, we went to Alaska. Click through one of those flickr-photo-dealys.) For his birthday we decided we'd all go fishing in the ocean off Sheepshead Bay in the lovely shadow of the southern approach for JFK. (You ever fly in and land from the south? Ever look down and see a ton of small boats/a scattering of lights? That was us. Well, I mean, unless it was Friday night between around 7:30 and 11:30, it wasn't us. But, you know, you get the point.). So after work (it was a blissfully gorgeous summer Friday) we got some beer, ate some crabs and then loaded ourselves onto one of the boats that ply these waters for the occasional fisherman to test their skills. And test they did. During the course of the entire five hours spent asea, only one keeper among the boat was caught. Talk about bunk. Jim did take us back to his place though and make us some bomb fucking nachos though.

Oi myte! In Australia we call this watcherydoo and run down emu in them!

Oh shit. Wait. This isn't about nachos nor fruitless fishing fun. This is actually about fish. The reason I was so inspired to cook more fish this week was the hopeful bounty of fresh fish I was planning on catching on Friday night. With no fish in hand though I had to turn to other means. Luckily the farmers market has a fish monger in McCarren Park on Saturday morning (and I woke up early enough after getting home at 3:30 AM to get there before the torrential downpour). The tuna was looking amazing, so I got myself a steak thinking I would cook it that night and make a Tuna Niçcoise salad with the veggies from our (downright horrible — more on that later) CSA. As fate would intervene though I ended up making a harissa-marinated flank steak with hummus and a feta, tomato, cucumber and onion salad that night, followed by linguine with monkfish, zucchini and thyme on Sunday. And I totally forgot that I owned a digital camera so you'll have forgive the lack of information about them. Only to say that the latter of the two was a Mario Batali recipe and it was fantastic, but better yet took about 35 minutes to make from start.

Back to the point thought. On Saturday afternoon when I realized the tuna was not meant to be for the next few days I threw it in the freezer to extend out it's shelf life. Sunday night I should have pulled it back to the fridge, but I'm a little retarded (and possibly drunk from the bottle of Chianti that Julie and I shared*.) Luckily, or so I thought, I remembered it this morning after getting it out of the shower. Figuring it'd only been in the deep freeze for 36 hours it'd be fine with 12 hours in the chill box. Much to my surprise when I got home it was still a decidedly not-so-delicious tuna-sicle. Thankfully running cold water is thermally dense enough to pull out the freeze without heating the tuna up; it just took another 2 hours after I got home. (For those at home doing the math I got home at 7:30).

* Sharing a bottle of wine with Julie means I get to drink an entire bottle of wine with her drinking at most a full glass, but usually just a half a glass. It makes me feel like less of an alcoholic since I didn't technically drink the entire bottle, but usually makes me just sloppy enough to be forgetful and sleepy.

Amazingly enough, at this point, this is suitable for vegan consumption. Unless of course the promise of meat to come and the dead animal visions in my head while I assembled this portion de-veganify this totally and completely. But hey, as has been said before and will be said again: you can't make friends with salad.

With little time for a marinade to soak in (I did want something other than just straight up tuna) I figured I'd get a little Japanese on it (especially since I was already planning on eating soba noodles and had made a detour to the health food store AND the C-Town to get soba noodles and Kikkoman soy sauce on the way home. Can you believe that Fairway did not have Kikkoman on Sunday? That's like not having Heinz!) and so I mixed up a little mirin, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil and soy sauce with some shredded ginger, minced garlic and wasabi powder and threw the thawed fish in there.

After bringing a pot of water to the boil I cooked the soba noodles, pulled them out and then blanched the green beans followed by the carrots, making sure to shock the veggies in an ice water bath. After this was all done I tossed them with some of the marinade (minus the wasabi powder) I had reserved and scatted on some sesame seeds and scallions. I heated up the grill pan to "fuck-you-hot," patted dry the tuna and pressed it into a bed of sesame seeds and then grilled it, five minutes to a side.

Red at night means sailor's delight, correct? If so, just call me a salty seaman!

Man that was worth the wait, but I think I need to get my fridge a little less chilly.