You Can Do It: Cervo's Tuna Crudo with Banana Peppers and Green Chili
Welcome to “You Can Do It,” a new series where I take dishes I’ve lusted after on Instagram and make them at home, having never tasted them IRL!
This happens to me a lot: I’ll be scrolling along, minding my business, when I’ll see a post of a dish from a restaurant in New York or LA or, like, Minneapolis, and I’ll be filled with an acute longing that tingles all over my body like pins and needles.
As Lizzo said on TikTok: “I honestly feel like I can cook anything if I taste it once…hell even if I haven’t tasted it I can cook it. I can’t describe it. My Brain just knows how anything tastes even if I never tasted it before. Like look at the wall — I know what ur wall taste like. I ain’t never ate wall before either.” True words, Lizzo, true words.
So, for this first You Can Do It, I’m recreating the tuna crudo with banana peppers and green chili from Cervo’s. I’m a big banana pepper person. I love them on subs and pizza, and when I was in fifth grade, they were a regular after school snack. Mt. Olive for me, plz. So, I loved the idea of combining them with silky, mild raw tuna. There’s obviously gobs of olive oil and cracked pepper on the Cervo’s dish, and I zoomed in on the ‘gram and noticed what looked like a fair bit of lemon zest, so I knew that would be included as well. Here’s the original:
Guh. She’s perfect. And here’s mine:
I had a tuna steak kicking around in my freezer (I don’t normally fuck w/ frozen tuna, but my friend did the food buying for a show recently and filled my chest freezer with random bounty after it wrapped), so I thawed and sliced it and then doused it in my best olive oil. I layered some banana peppers (a lot. like, more than what is probably in the dish), lemon zest, lemon juice, salt & pepper, and then I sat on my back porch and ate it like a satisfied kitty. 10/10 would make again, preferably with fresh tuna. I wasn’t really sure how to get the green chili component in the dish, having no visual reference in the picture, so I left it out! NBD! We’re flexible!
Thank you for the inspiration, Cervo’s. I will absolutely come eat tuna crudo and piri piri chicken and drink martinis as soon as I’m in New York again!