Macademia encrusted Ahi

I normally don't love the fish selection at Whole Foods. I know that will surprise some people, but often most of what they have on display is previously frozen or just looks abused.  This ahi tuna though made me decide it was worth the gamble.

I used an 8" fry pan and our panini pan. I use this for a surprising amount of dishes, and I don't think I've used it for a panini yet. Turn the heat on under both pans so they will be ready when you begin to cook. Cut a lemon in half and set aside. Trimmed the asparagus and tossed with a light amount of sesame oil and salt then placed in the panini pan on medium high. With the asparagus cooking I threw macadamias in the food processor with a light amount of breadcrumbs, salt, cracked pepper, a sprig of fresh thyme, and a clove of garlic. Blended this to a thick paste and spread it over the both sides of the tuna. Make sure to check the asparagus regularly, you want the tips crispy but not burned but you also need to ensure the bases are thoroughly cooked and not crunchy. I placed the halved lemons in the corners of the asparagus plan.

Your 8" pan should be quite hot at this point. I put in a tablespoon of grapeseed oil and then dropped in the fish. The fish cooked for two minutes on each side.

Improvements, next time I'll sprinkle with some toasted sesame seeds and make a point to have the ahi cooked more evenly. The oil was probably too hot, it wasn't burned but you can see that the crust got a little darker than is appetizing. Also the thinner end got cooked a little too thoroughly for my taste.

Seared Salmon

This piece of salmon is served on a bed of wilted spinach, topped with crispy fish skin and a light sauce composed of orange and shallots. It's a quick and easy meal that took fifteen minutes from beginning to end.

For preparation, I took the salmon fillet and put a touch of olive oil on it, squeezed the juice of half an orange, salt, shallot flakes, and pepper. Let marinate for five to fifteen minutes. In my case I was impatient and it was just over five minutes.The spinach was washed and tossed with a light amount of olive oil. Then I began with two ten inch fry pans and placed them on medium high heat.

In one pan, after it was hot I added about a tablespoon of grapeseed oil, then I placed the salmon into it skin side down. I reserved the marinade. The fish was seared at that high heat until the skin was the roasted color you see above, approximately three minutes, then turned. The skin peeled off in the turning, and I lowered the flame temperature when turning over the fish. At this point I placed the spinach in the other heated pan with the reserved fish marinade. Turned this pan down to low and covered it. After the fish was cooked, approximately another two to three minutes, I turned off all the heat. Plated the salmon over the bed of spinach. Poured the orange sauce over it, topped with the crispy skin, cracked some pepper, and sprinked a bit of parmesean over it all.

The dish was delicious and even more gorgeous than my phone did justice to the photograph. If I were to do it again I might thicken the sauce  but as it was everything came together brilliantly.

Vegan Burgers!

These are actually pretty simple, and would be even easier if we could actually fry something.* Mix together: grated potatoes, we used small yellow potatoes white beans, we used small navy beans some dried potato flakes cumin chile powder diced red onion minced garlic ground coriander salt then some more salt and a little more, these are potatoes after all pepper stir it all up then let it meld together for a few minutes, 10-30, then shape into desired sizes and refrigerate to set for at least half of an hour. After they're sufficiently chilled heat some oil in a pan, we used coconut oil because it has such a high smoke point and therefore I could do more with less. (I still don't recommend it - more oil is a good thing for this!) Anyway, heat up some oil and fry the things. Garnish with salsa and avocado, then enjoy! Salsa Like with most foods, including the vegetable burgers, salsa is easily thrown together with whatever you have in the kitchen. In this case we diced tomatoes, some small mystery spicy peppers from the garden, a red bell pepper, red onion, garlic, then added chopped cilantro and freshly squeezed lime juice. *rules forbid frying with more than one teaspoon of grease per serving.

Seared Tuna with a Ginger Soy Sauce

As with all meat, the quality of fish really determines the dish. That's not to say you can't still ruin a good piece of fish, but you can only elevate a bad piece of fish so far.

To begin this dish heat two pans on the stove with a small amount of oil in each and heat to medium high.

What you see above is a piece of yellowtail tuna. I took one steak, rubbed it in olive oil and some lime juice, added a smidge of salt and cracked pepper and let it sit for fifteen minutes.

While the fish was getting acquainted with the lime, I prepped the rest of the food, which meant I thinly sliced ginger, red onions, red peppers, garlic, and snapped green beans. Place the green beans in a bowl and set aside. As I set the fish to sear on medium high I started the red onions in another pan to melt down, after about five minutes I flipped the fish and in pan #2 added the red pepper. At this point I started a pot of water on the back eye to boil. You should have a few extra minutes here, take this time to make a small cornstarch slurry. You'll need it later.

When the second side of the fish was seared, I took that out and threw the ginger in the pan to begin to crisp up. The water should be boiling at this point, pour the boiling water over the green beans to give them a nice blanch. Throw the garlic into pan #1, and begin to add your flavors of choice to the pan sauce. I went with a touch of white wine and soy. Drain the green beans and add them to pan #2, give it all a good stir, and turn it down to low.

Back to your soy ginger sauce, turn it down to low and add in the slurry. Mix it all in very well. While that is cooking down you can begin plating your food. The cornstarch should be absorbing and bringing a nice consistency to the sauce. Ideally you want some viscoscitiy but not that much thickness. It's a potent flavor and you don't want it to overwhelm everything else on the plate. When you deem the sauce perfect, add and serve! I dressed with a touch of fresh cilantro to round out the flavors.

Ribeye with a Pepper Tomatillo Sauce

Pretty isn't it!

Tomatillo Pepper Sauce

Roast in the oven (the grill is preferred but sometimes you can't do anything about the rain) until the exterior begins to blacken and char. Roast whatever you have on hand, in this case I did:
5 tomatillos
2 long sweet peppers
1 spicy pepper
2 little green peppers (yes I know it'd be easier if I knew what anything was)
1 yellow bell pepper
2 tomatoes

Turn when they've begun to blacken to get a nice rounded char all over. Then place into sealed plastic containers to cool and hopefully sweat off their skins. After enough time has passed and they're cool enough to touch (15 minutes is enough) peel it off. After peeling, throw everything into a blender or food processor and puree until smooth, then put into a pot on the stove to cook down into a thick sauce. Meanwhile, blend some cilantro and lime juice, I did maybe a quarter cup of cilantro and the juice from two limes, and set aside.

After the sauce has cooked down to a nice consistency, remove from the stove and stir in the lime and cilantro. I don't like to cook these two ingredients with it because I find it loses a lot of the fresh zing they add to the flavor.

The rice is basic basmati, cooked in a homemade chicken stock, with no additional butter and salt, and it absolutely did not need it. Light, fluffy and flavorful. The ribeye was leftover from an earlier meal, thinly sliced and voila! You have a meal!

Give him a fish!

Eating for a day is just fine with us. We're not ready to learn how to fish, since we're not quite ready to eat fish every day. Yet. One day!






What you see there is a fresh sea bass that soaked in salt, pepper and a little olive oil, then was thoroughly seared with shallots and topped with a tarragon pear vineagar butter. Let's not speak about the side dish. It photographed well.

I got it in my head to try smoked pulled pork on the grill. Of course we don't have a smoker, and we didn't have the right kind of pork, but gosh darn it, I was going to try!

I read bunches of recipes and decided to go with Alton's recommendation of soaking the meat in a molasses brine first. I wound up soaking it for 24 hours. And uh, I made a huge mistake. Which I totally rectified the next time I made it. (you have to reduce the salt if it's going to brine for that long, Alton's called for a 4 hour brine)

Anyway, while so salty it might as well have been bacon, luckily I like bacon. After the brine I stuffed it full of garlic and then coated it in a mix of spices (mostly chili powder) then we tried to cook it at a low'ish temperature. The grill was full of hardwood, some mequite chips, and then cooked on a cedar plank. While it didn't get to 'smoke' long enough, it did absorb some good smokiness.












































And then I made cole slaw! (So maybe I made it six weeks ago. You can actually see it in one of the pictures in the last posting) But I love all these prep pictures. Bobby Flay gets credit for this slaw. It's a combination of about 4 of his recipes. The beach crew also got to taste this concoction.


Sadly I didn't get a picture of the final slaw or the total pork product. I'm slow getting into this food blogging thing though, have patience on me!

One thing that was extra fun is I found a good use for the mandolin. I adore the mandolin, but it's not really that practical and there's few things that the food processor just doesn't do better. But since we only have a 3 cup food processor it can't handle this kind of cabbage shredding. But it was fun, and red cabbage is pretty.