Seared Tuna with Roasted Potatoes & Asparagus

A few nights ago I wanted to make something fabulous for dinner. I already had asparagus at home, and sashimi style tuna was on sale. I decided to buy it along with fingerling potatoes and make a simple, but flavorful meal.

(I also bought chips and salsa and hummus and dark chocolate cookies with pecans...there was a lot of eating! But at least I was done before watching The Biggest Loser...because otherwise it'd just be so totally wrong.)

There are no exact measurements for this "recipe." Instead, this is just a blue-print for a meal.

Ingredients
tuna steaks
coarsely ground black pepper
vegetable oil

fingerling potatoes
asparagus
olive oil
lemon juice
salt & pepper
garlic cloves, unpeeled
Parmesan cheese

Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 400F.
2. Microwave potatoes for 4 minutes. This step allows you to shorten the amount of time you'll have to roast potatoes: they'll be already tender inside and will only have to get crispy in the oven.
3. Drizzle potatoes, asparagus and garlic cloves with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Roast for 10 minutes at 400, increase the heat to 450 and roast additional 10 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, heat a non-stick pan with vegetable oil. Coat tuna steaks with coarsely ground pepper and sear the tuna for 2.5 minutes on both sides depending on its "height." [I mistakenly let the tuna sit in the pan while the potatoes were roasting, and so it ended up being almost completely cooked through: do not make the same mistake. Remove the tuna from the pan immediately after cooking it!]
5. Serve sliced tuna steak with potatoes and garlic. On the side, serve asparagus sprinkled with Parmesan.

If you don't like fish, you can make the same meal with steak or chicken (obviously you'll cook the chicken all the way through). If you don't like asparagus, roast some green beans or zucchini. This is a quick and delicious meal to serve on any weeknight.