OK, this is not a new recipe, but it is a delicious and time tested one that I love to eat again and again and it is a beautiful collaboration between my husband and I. But first a story…

So this recipe deals with one of my culinary obsessions: ahi tuna. It was harder for me to give up tuna rolls when I was pregnant than it was to give up coffee or beer or basically anything. My first meal after giving birth was spicy tuna rolls and champagne (highly recommended- happy mama happy baby!)

Pro-Tip: To keep the gorgeous color when you defrost, soak for 5 minutes in salt water before moving your frozen piece to the fridge for the next 4-6 hours!

However, sushi is expensive and we don’t make it ourselves at home because we don’t have the tools or the space to put rolling mats. But I found frozen ahi tuna stakes both at our local farmers market and occasionally Costco as well as several delicious Ahi tuna recipes I started playing with after our son was born. Our favorite recipe quickly became Ahi poke.

When I first made ahi poke I wanted to roll it up in some seaweed snack for a make shift tuna roll, but my husband had the idea to serve it in a bowl over rice. And unlike having it in a sushi roll, the rice would be piping hot. We soon fell in love with the cool but flavorful tuna mixture over the hot, simple rice. So we started calling this recipe Katy Perry bowls after her Hot and Cold song.

We have modified it several times and keep playing around but here’s the basic recipe:
KATY PERRY BOWLS:

• 2lbs Ahi Tuna, fresh or thawed, cut into bite size pieces
• 1/3 cup soy sauce
• 3/4 cup chopped green onion
• 2 Tbs. hot sesame oil (or regular sesame oil if you aren’t heat fanatics like us!)
• 2 Tbs Mayonaise
• 2 Tbs Siracha (adjust to taste or leave out if you aren’t heat fanatics)
• chopped up jalapeño pepper (again, with the we like spicy… if you don’t you could get some crunch with macadamia nuts
• You can also include any of these yummy additions: 1-2 tsp fresh ginger chopped fine, seaweed snack torn into small pieces- spicy or otherwise, sesame seeds, crushed red pepper or substitute other kinds of peppers- (are you sensing a theme for us? seriously though, this dish doesn’t have to be spicy if you don’t want it to be…)
• 2 cups cooked rice

Instructions:

1. combine all ingredients aside from the rice in a large bowl. Mix well so the flavors all come together. Leave in the refrigerator for a few hours (up to 4 but we usually can’t hold out longer than 2), stirring occasionally to let the ahi soak up all that flavor!!
2. Just before removing the tuna mixture, cook your rice- we use a rice maker but you could also make on the stove or heat up some frozen rice- whatever you prefer!
3. Scoop the rice into bowls and scoop the tuna mixture on top and enjoy!!

I made this yesterday as the perfect pick me up after finding our heater went kaput… (I can’t emphasize enough how glad we are we bought a home warrantee! The compressor went out and that would have been a $2000+ repair!) so we enjoyed this tonight and are going to plan a soup or something for the next few days while we wait to get it fixed! The hardest part of this recipe is realizing that we have no self control over eating acceptable portion sizes. There are NEVER leftovers.