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Home » wine pairing » Grilled Tuna with Halter Ranch Syrah

Grilled Tuna with Halter Ranch Syrah

Published: Sep 13, 2014 · Modified: Feb 27, 2023 by Cooking Chat · This post may contain affiliate links

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Easy grilled tuna steak served with eggplant and peppers for healthy dinner. We served the grilled tuna with a Syrah from Paso Robles.grilled tuna with eggplant and peppers for a tasty and healthy meal from the grill | cookingchatfood.com

Sure, I like my classical regional food and wine pairings. You’ll certainly find plenty of Italian dishes in our house paired with a wine selected from the same region the cuisine hails from.  But I also like the challenge of starting with a wine, and then trying to create a dish that is in someway inspired by the wine region. That’s the way I decided to roll for Wine Pairing Weekend #4.

I’ve come to enjoy quite a few wines from California’s Paso Robles region. Through blogger friends like Matt of the Hoot n’ Annie Blog, I’ve gotten some sense of the regions vitality from afar. But what would a Paso Pairing entail? I didn’t know, but I thought that would be fun to figure out for this #winePW event.

I asked Matt what Paso food would entail. He mentioned fresh seafood with seasonal produce from local farms, perhaps with a Mexican flair. That gave me enough to get my wheels turning about a Paso pairing I might create. Grilled tuna was on my mind.

I’d enjoyed the Halter Ranch Syrah from Paso before, and thought that might be a good wine to work with for this event. I served it with steak previously and thought it would be interesting to see if it could work with a tuna steak. I had an eggplant to use from our fall farmshare, so that seemed in the spirit of the local produce. I decided to grill the eggplant and toss it with a mixture of peppers, including some hot ones to give the dish some Mexican spice accents.

grilled tuna with eggplant and peppers

 

The result? Not sure if this is properly considered Paso Robles cuisine, but it was definitely rooted in what I learned about the food in the area. And it definitely worked with the wine! Read on for the Grilled Tuna, Eggplant and Peppers recipe and wine pairing details.

Wine Pairing for Grilled Tuna

Sure, a Pinot Noir can work nicely with salmon, but a big bold Syrah for seafood? Well, the meaty tuna is very substantial, and turned out to pair well with the 2011 Halter Ranch Syrah. This wine has a big fragrance of violets and forest floor. I got blackberry jam and white pepper taste. I had my initial taste before I started grilling the tuna. By the time we settled down to eat about 10 minutes later, the Syrah had really opened nicely and was showing a lot of finesse on the long finish. This helped it make a nice harmonious pairing with the tuna–plenty of substance for this meaty fish with the spice element to work with the food. I could definitely imagine eating this flavorful pairing al fresco on a warm evening in Paso Robles!

Grilled Tuna with a Halter Ranch Syrah | cookingchatfood.com

 
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Recipe card

Grilled Tuna with Eggplant and Peppers

grilled tuna with eggplant and peppers
Print Recipe

Grilled tuna topped with a flavorful blend of grilled eggplant and peppers.

  • Author: Cooking Chat
  • Prep Time: 30 mins
  • Cook Time: 15 mins
  • Total Time: 45 mins
  • Yield: 3 servings 1x
  • Category: Main
  • Method: grilling
  • Cuisine: American

Ingredients

Scale
  • 1 cup chopped grilled eggplant (instructions below)
  • ½ red bell pepper, chopped and coated with cooking oil spray
  • ½ green bell pepper, chopped and coated with cooking oil spray
  • 1 serrano pepper
  • 1 jalapeno pepper
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • ½ clove garlic minced
  • 1 high quality tuna steak, 10 to 12 ozs
  • 1 tsp cumin
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • ¼ tsp salt

Instructions

  1. Prepare the eggplant and pepper mixture: slice the eggplant ½ inch thick. Spread the eggplant slices on a plate in a single layer. Salt the eggplant sliced generously, and let the eggplant sit and aborb the salt for at least 30 minutes.
  2. Preheat a grill to medium high. Spread the salted eggplant on the grill or a grill pan. Coat with cooking oil spray. Place the grill pan on the grill to cook the eggplant. Turn the slices over after 5 minutes, and grill for another 5 minutes or so until the eggplant is cooked to a nice tenderness and has begun to caramelize. Remove the eggplant from the grill and set aside to cool.
  3. Start grilling the bell peppers and hot peppers at the same time as the eggplant. Place the chopped bell peppers in a grill pan onto the grill, or something else to keep them from slipping through. At the same time, place the whole hot peppers on the grill. After 5 minutes turn the hot peppers over and stir up the bell peppers. Check the peppers after another 5 minutes. The bell peppers are done when they are softened and browned; the hot peppers should be nicely singed all over. When done, place the bell peppers in a mixing bowl and close the hot peppers in a brown paper bag to cool. Keep the grill heated for the tuna.
  4. When the eggplant has cooled, chop it into bite sized pieces and add to the bowl with the bell peppers.
  5. Remove the hot peppers from the bag. Place on a cutting board, and slice off and remove the pepper skin with a sharp knife. Slice open the peppers, and remove most of the seeds. Use more seeds if you want the dish hotter. Chop the hot peppers into small pieces and add to the mixing bowl.
  6. Add the olive oil and garlic to the pepper/eggplant mixture, and stir to combine. Set aside as you prepare the tuna.
  7. Combine the cumin, garlic powder and salt in a bowl. Gently rub the spice mixture onto the tuna, and set aside for a few minutes.
  8. Grill the tuna for about 90 seconds on one side, then turn for another 90 seconds on the others side. This gives you a rare tuna steak, with the outside seared in the middle just warmed a bit. When done to your liking, remove the tuna to a platter.
  9. Slice the tuna crosswise into the slices. Serve by fanning 4 to 6 slices of tuna out on a plate around a generous dollop of the pepper and eggplant mixture.

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Be sure to check out these great pairings from my fellow #winePW 4 bloggers!

grilled tuna with eggplant and peppersCulinary Adventures with Camilla posted “Chuletas de Cordero + Tempranillo”
Vino Travels — An Italian Wine Blog shared “Piedmont Pleasures”
Grape Experiences is pairing “Avantis Estate Malagousia 2013 and Greek Shrimp”
Curious Cuisiniere shared “Cheddar Cranberry Grilled Cheese with Door Peninsula Winery’s Peninsula Red”
foodwineclick is sharing “Minnesota Wine at the Midwestern Table”
Pull That Cork posted “winePW 4: Sicily”
Confessions of a Culinary Diva blogged about “New Mexico: Burgers, Bubbles and Beer”
Rockin Red Blog shared about “A Rustic Meal in Valpolicella”

Join the #winePW conversation: Follow the #winePW conversation on Twitter throughout the weekend and beyond. If you’re reading this early enough, you can join us for a live Twitter chat on our theme “Regional Food & Wine Pairings” on Saturday, September 13, from 11 a.m. to noon Eastern Time. You can also visit our group Pinterest board to pin some great pairing ideas for later! Stay tuned for the October Wine Pairing Weekend, which will focus on “Fall Fruits and Wine Pairings” on Saturday, October 11.

« Risotto with Butternut Squash, Chicken and Sage for #SundaySupper
Farm Fresh Tomato Sauce with Ground Turkey »

Reader Interactions

Trackbacks

  1. 10 Tastiest Healthy Recipes for 2015 - Cooking Chat says:
    January 2, 2015 at 5:56 am

    […] Grilled Tuna, Eggplant and Peppers I’m not including many from the grill given that I’m posting this in January. But this was one of my most creative as well as healthy recipes of the year, so I wanted to include it. If your grill is away for the winter, save this for warmer weather! […]

    Reply
  2. Salmon with Mushrooms #SundaySupper - Cooking Chat says:
    January 4, 2015 at 6:06 am

    […] and enjoy with this healthy dish! For a more adventurous red wine and seafood pairing, try this grilled tuna and Syrah combination. Salmon with Mushrooms   Print Prep time 10 mins Cook time 25 mins Total time […]

    Reply
  3. Roasted Sirloin Steak with Chanterelle Mushrooms and a Halter Ranch Cab - Cooking Chat says:
    January 23, 2015 at 6:30 am

    […] you think I always go for such natural pairings, be sure to check out the Grilled Tuna with Eggplant and Peppers I came up with for a different Halter Ranch […]

    Reply
  4. Linguine with Roasted Carnival Squash and a Garnacha for #winePW 5 - Cooking Chat says:
    February 12, 2015 at 7:08 am

    […] say this was as spot-on as some of my other #winePW pairings, such as last month’s Grilled Tuna with a Halter Ranch Syrah. Nonetheless, this Garnacha is a good value wine and a decent pairing. Linguine with Roasted […]

    Reply
  5. Great Grilled Fish Recipes - Cooking Chat says:
    July 3, 2015 at 6:10 am

    […] Grilled Tuna with Eggplant and Peppers I came up with this recipe seeking to show that a fish dish could get paired with a big, bold red wine. Mission accomplish, as the meaty tuna and spicy grilled peppers were a great match for the Syrah we served. […]

    Reply
  6. Turkey Chili and Wine Pairing | Cooking Chat says:
    March 16, 2016 at 5:19 am

    […] bottle of the 2012 Halter Ranch Syrah from Paso Robles waiting in the wings. It paired nicely with this grilled tuna, which was served with a mix of grilled eggplant and spicy peppers. I had a notion that it could […]

    Reply
  7. Grilled Tuna Steak with a Gamay Noir | Cooking Chat says:
    March 24, 2018 at 2:00 pm

    […] after one of the first times I tried grilling tuna. For an updated Cooking Chat recipe, try our Grilled Tuna with Eggplant and Peppers.  Tuna steaks were on sale last weekend, and it was grilling weather, so it seemed like a good […]

    Reply

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Hi there! I'm David. I love creating tasty, (mostly) healthy recipes, finding great wine pairings, and sharing good food with family and friends. learn more about me!

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