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ime. You can cook it in water or you can cook it in oil. You can flavor the oil or you can leave it plain. All work, though eachresults in a slightly different dish.

Cooked in water, tuna tastes purely of fish and the texture isfirmer and meatier. Cooked in oil, the flavor is complex, and thetexture is softer and richer. Cooked for a long time in oil, thetuna absorbs the garlic and spice flavors, but dries out a bit.Cooked briefly, the flavor is not not developed, but the texture isnicer.

In the end, I settled on adapting a little bit from severaldifferent recipes - cooking the tuna briefly in olive oil flavoredwith garlic, red pepper, bay leaf and lemon peel.

I learned a couple of things. First, the quality of the tuna makesa difference but not as much as you might think. This is importantbecause fresh tuna can cost the Earth these days.

Cut the fish into the biggest chunks you can while maintaining acube shape (this will ensure that it cooks evenly). If the tuna isabout one inch thick, that is how wide you should cut the chunks.Generally, the bigger the chunks, the better, up to about twoinches.

Use as small a pan as will hold the tuna and to crowd the chunks offish together as tightly as possible. Use only enough oil to cover;the flavor seems to be richer this way. I used a one-quart saucepanto cook a pound of tuna, and it took only a cup of oil.