Grilled Tuna and Crushed White Beans with Pesto

Grilled Tuna and Crushed White Beans with Pesto

Ok, shameless bit of self-promotion here – I've run four marathons. Not brilliant times, granted, and each time I've looked a complete mess at the finish, but I've got the medals to prove it (I've even got some pretty manky feet as a result of smashing them into concrete for mile upon mile, but they don't look quite as nice hanging above the mantlepiece). I reckon that, for a bloke, running a marathon is the closest we're going to get to experiencing childbirth – there's basically nine months of intense training followed by half a day of agony, the emotions swinging back and forth from despair to ecstasy and then back to despair again. We'll swear that we'll never do this again, but then, when it's all over and the pain starts to ease, there's that annoying little fucker in the back of the mind erasing all the bad bits (the previous 26.2 miles) and leaving you with good bits (er, the finish and beating Floella Benjamin). Before you know it, you've signed up for your next race, your knees are shagged and you start craving the smell of Deep Heat.

Anyway, what's this got to do with tuna and white beans? Well according to Michel Roux Jr in his rather odd premise for a book, The Marathon Chef (recipes interspersed with pictures of the great chef doing groin stretches in various stages of undress), this is the sort of stuff us runners should be eating. Forget pasta, forget jelly babies, forget sickly sweet energy drinks – if it's good enough for a two Michelin-starred chef in a vest and tight shorts, then it's good enough for me.

One other thing. Sorry for the presentation of this dish in the picture – it looks really scruffy and is something I need to take more care on. It looks a pale shadow of the finished dish in the book and I've got this mental image of Michel wearily shaking his head in pity, as he does to any unfortunate contestant who fucks up one of his "classics" in the latest series of Professional Masterchef. Saying that, it tasted superb and I've got plenty of the pesto left over to use later in the week. Serves 4.

Ingredients:
400-500g tuna loin, trimmed (I used a chunky piece of tuna steak)
160g dried butter beans
1 litre vegetable stock
60g dry-cured bacon in one piece
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

For the pesto:
200g basil leaves
20g pine nuts
3 walnuts, roughly chopped
pinch of salt
50g Parmesan cheese, freshly grated
150-200ml extra-virgin olive oil.

Method:
1. Soak the white beans for 8-10 hours in plenty of water. Drain, cover with the vegetable stock and add the bacon and garlic.
2. Bring to the boil, skim and simmer for 30 minutes. Season lightly and continue cooking until tender, topping up with water if necessary. Leave the beans to cool in the liquid.
3. Remove the bacon and chop finely. Pan-fry in a drizzle of olive oil until crispy.
4. Drain the beans, keeping the cooking liquid, and crush them with the back of a fork. Add the bacon and enough of the cooking liquid to make the mixture moist.
5. Make the pesto by putting the basil, nuts and salt in a large mortar and grinding with a pestle to form a coarse paste. Work in the Parmesan, then gradually beat in the olive oil with a wooden spoon until you have a thick sauce.
6. Brush the tuna lightly with olive oil and season well. Cook on a cast-iron griddle until rare or to your taste. Cut the tuna into slices and place on top of the beans.
7. Take the remaining cooking liquid, bring to the boil and add 4 tbsp of pesto. Froth with a hand blender and pour over the tuna.