Seared Tuna, Grapefruit & Avocado Salad. Plus, a Review of New West KnifeWorks

Earlier this month I received a gorgeous gift from the New West KnifeWorks: The 8. What's The 8?

"The 8 inch Chef Knife is for those who love only the best.  "The Lightspeed 8"  This knife was deliberately designed for folks who find a traditional 8 inch chef cumbersome or intimidating.  The graceful blade shape, tapered tang and super thin blade grind makes this nimble knife come alive in your hand."

Although I don't find a traditional chef's knife intimidating at all, I was interested in trying out a slimmer one.  Plus, look at the gorgeous handle of the knife! I knew it would not only look great in my kitchen, but feel comfortable in my hand.

The knife came with a caution: EXTREMELY SHARP. This is due to its blade:

"Blade shapes and grinding methods create a functionality unparrarelled in performance in kitchen cutlery.  The Fusionwood 2.0 plunge ground blade and tapered tang is fusion of Asian and European blade styles.  It combines the heft of a European knife with the cutting ability of a super thin Asian blade."

To test and showcase this knife's sharpness and sleek design, I decided to create a Seared Tuna, Grapefruit & Avocado Salad. This salad requires slicing, segmenting and handling delicate ingredients. And guess what? The knife performed great!

Because of its light weight and slimmer blade, The 8 is perfect for handling tasks such as segmenting a grapefruit and slicing an avocado into even and thin planks. It also handled a seared piece of tuna well.

Seared Tuna, Grapefruit & Avocado Salad

Ingredients for 2

olive oil
salt & freshly ground pepper
6-8 ounce tuna steak 
1 red grapefruit
1 avocado
2-4 cups arugula
2-4 tablespoons chopped pistachios

Directions
1. Heat oil in a heavy-bottomed pan.
2. Season your tuna steak with salt and freshly ground pepper and sear it for 2-3 minutes on each side depending on the thickness of the steak and how rare you want it to be in the middle.  
 

3. Segment the grapefruit, making sure to collect any of the juice that comes out during this process. Here's a  little video I did on how to segment citrus a while back.

4. Halve an avocado and remove the pit. The 8 handled that really well! Using a large spoon remove the flesh of the avocado from its shell and slice thinly.

5. Slice your tuna steak on a diagonal.

6. Dress arugula with olive oil, salt & pepper, and some of the grapefruit juice you accumulated from segmenting the fruit and put on a plate.

7. Layer sliced tuna, avocado and grapefruit segments on top and sprinkle with chopped pistachios.

The salad is not only easy to make, but it's also good for you. As a bonus, it's so pretty with its pink and green color combination. It almost makes me think of Spring!

Although I used The 8 mainly as a slicing knife in this recipe, it is also perfect for chopping.

If you want to learn more about this and other made in the USA New West KnifeWorks knives, check out their Facebook page and try your luck to win their 4 piece knife set!

On a somewhat unrelated note, I hope everyone stays safe and continues to have electricity. Hurricane Sandy is making me quite scared!

Disclosure: I received The 8 for a review but was not compensated in any way for writing this post. All opinions are my own.