Hair Food Recipe: Poke Power!

Today I'd love to share a quick recipe for a dish I've been enjoying ever since I was first introduced to it's deliciousness while on my trip to Hawaii. It's called Poke (pronounced poke-ay) which is relatively easy to prepare (no cooking involved) and it's really yummy.  I love sushi and seafood so I gravitated to this dish the moment I first laid eyes on it. I was served Poke as an appetizer but I like to create enough of it to enjoy as a main course.  So let's get started, but before I do, I'll inform you that I don't measure anything so I apologize in advance for not having proper measures listed.  Everything is according to taste so if you like a lot of something, add more!

What you will need:

-Raw fresh Tuna (cut into chunks)
-Green onion (sliced thinly)
-Red pepper flakes
-Thin Dried Sea weed strips (I found them at an Asian grocer)
-Toasted black sesame seeds
-Sesame oil
-Soy Sauce (low sodium)

I start off by rinsing the tuna and cutting it into large chunks and tossing them into a shallow bowl. Then I usually add the chopped onions.  I used to buy whole green onions and slice them up myself but I'm no longer involved in this manual labor since I realized that Walmart offers them already pre-sliced.  I've experimented with these pre-packaged onions on several occasions and they have a pretty decent shelf life.  I definitely eat more green onion because now of how convenient they are.


The order of the ingredients doesn't really matter much.  But I like to ad the red pepper flakes in earlier so they get a chance to soften under the moist ingredients.  Also, the sliced seaweed come pretty stiff. They too will soften but I like to add them near the end, maintaining the some of the stiffness because it adds a nice contrast to the softness of the tuna.

In the pic below, I've added the black sesame seeds, the seaweed, and and sesame oil.  When you add the soy sauce, start off with a small amount and increase gradually to monitor the salt content.  These seaweed strips add  a nice taste plus they are pretty salty so I like to leverage the seawead for it's natural sea-saltiness over the soy sauce.   Using less soy sauce also allows you to taste the unique flavors each ingredient brings individually. 

The final product tastes pretty close to the real thing I had in beautiful Hawaii.  I've served this dish over white rice and also over a bed of spinach or field greens in a salad.  While in a Whole Foods once, I noticed they had a "low carb" sushi dish which was raw spicy tuna served over field greens with sliced avocado.  That's what inspired me to add fresh sliced avocado to my Poke salad and the results were amazing.  I threw in the avocado on the greens so it wouldn't disturb the flavor of  the Poke. 

In these pics, I used much less soy sauce then I'm used to which left the tuna nice and pink. In the past, when I added lots of soy sauce, the tuna soaked up the sauce and the left overs became overly salty and the tuna lost it's brightness in color.    I adore this dish because it's flavorful and chock full of omega 3s and protein. Add the seaweed, which is loaded with minerals, and the red pepper flakes to increase circulation and you've got a recipe for a healthier body and (of course) healthy hair! I also just realized that it's a raw food entree that helps me increase the amount of raw foods I enjoy. 

I hope you love this dish as much as I do.  I look forward to sharing more hair healthy dishes with you in the future.