Pepper-seared Sashimi Tuna

 

I finally understand the difference between a $3 roll at Sushi World and a $20 artisan roll at a nice restaurant. The latter most likely uses sashimi grade fish, which, I found out yesterday, does not come cheap.

We bought this beauty at Wellstone Fresh Seafood in Willoughby. I'd read online that they supply seafood to some of the best Japanese restaurants in Sydney. There, I learned that sashimi grade tuna is not the same as a regular tuna steak. In fact, it's twice the price (approx. $20 for 300g) and much deeper in colour. I went home and Googled what makes sashimi grade fish special and it's actually in the way it's caught. Sashimi grade fish is individually caught by hand and killed instantly before chilling. No wonder you rarely see raw tuna at takeaway joints.

This tuna was so tender that the pieces almost fell apart while I was slicing it, and, like most things good in the food world, it melted in my mouth. I have to give credit to Nigella for the pepper crust recipe. Served with a salad of red cabbage, cucumber, spring onion and a soy and wasabi dressing and steamed rice, it was the perfect combination of textures and flavours for a light Summer dinner.

This dish is also an entertainer's dream. You can prepare the tuna and vegetables in the morning and set them aside in the fridge. Then when your guests arrive, you only need to spend 10 minutes searing the tuna, dressing the salad, slicing the tuna and prettying up on a plate.

You'll need:
Sashimi grade tuna
1 teaspoon English mustard
1 teaspoon sesame oil
Peppercorns, lightly cracked
¼ red cabbage
1 cucumber
3 spring onions
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
½ tablespoon sesame oil
½ tablespoon wasabi
1 teaspoon castor sugar
Juice of half a lime
Sesame seeds (optional)
Steamed rice (optional)

Serves 4.

Combine English mustard and sesame oil and rub on tuna.

Roll tuna in pepper, coating well on 4 sides (leaving the ends bare).

Julienne the vegetables and dress with soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, wasabi, castor sugar and lime juice.

Sear each peppered side of the tuna in a hot pan (it should be smoking) for approximately 1 minute or until you can see 1mm of cooked meat. Be careful to not cook any further than that as it will continue cooking off the heat.

Rest tuna until cool.

Slice thinly and arrange on a plate. Garnish salad with sesame seeds.

Enjoy!

Raspberry Sorbet, Toffee and Lime

When I think about foods like blue cheese or even something simple like meringue, I always wonder how people came to invent these recipes. How did someone know to leave cheese to age for a few years or beat egg whites for a long time and then bake it? Well a few nights ago I had a similar revelation: I stumbled across how to make a really great sorbet.

It started with a long day of uni work, coming home spent and having to push on into the night. I needed a raspberry smoothie. Bad. I blended raspberries, ice cubes, icing sugar and fruit juice together and found that it had the texture (if not a bit softer) of sorbet. Then I remembered from an episode of The Naked Chef that sorbet is essentially frozen sugar and water. Man am I glad I made a smoothie that night, because I never knew making sorbet was this simple!

So now that I don't have back-to-back assignments, I decided to make it again tonight with some adjustments. I added a thick sugar syrup with glucose so that it'd hold and it'd have that lovely thick texture of mango sorbet. I've got to say, I am really happy with this recipe so I hope you guys enjoy!

Raspberry Sorbet

2 milk glasses of ice cubes (smoothie measurements!)
1 milk glass of raspberries
½ cup sugar
¼ water
1 cinnamon quill
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon glucose
Icing sugar to taste

Place sugar, water, cinnamon, vanilla extract and glucose in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to the boil then simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat, take out the cinnamon quill and cool completely.

Place ice, raspberries and sugar syrup in a blender. Blend until smooth.

Depending on the sweetness of the raspberries, you may want to add icing sugar for extra sweetness.

Set in a shallow dish in the freezer overnight.

Toffee Shell

½ cup sugar

Lightly grease the backs of metal tablespoons.

Heat the sugar over medium-low heat until the it liquifies and colours slightly. Remove from heat. Cool until you can make ribbons on the surface.

Drizzle over the spoons in criss-cross patterns.

Cool the spoons in the freezer for a minute and gently remove toffee from spoon.

Set aside at room temperature.

Mould the sorbet with two tablespoons and fit the toffee shell onto one side. Serve with creme fraiche and candied lime zest. It's creamy, sweet, fruitily refreshing and the toffee adds a crunch to it.

Easter Egg Mousse Cups

It's no secret - I am a very busy lady. I wish I could say it's because I lead an exciting life, but I can't. No, that's not true - today I cracked open a double-yolked egg. Anyway, spare time is hard to come by and over the four day Easter long weekend, I could only find four consecutive hours to shop for ingredients and cook. This really put a kibosh on my dream of making something extravagant like a simnel cake (oh cake with balls of marzipan, fate will bring us together one day).

So I decided to turn something simple into something exciting: chocolate easter eggs, filled with chocolate mousse, filled with a choice of toppings.

I used my chocolate mousse recipe with white chocolate.

Even though it sounds dead easy, there was a little drama. After buying two easter egg moulds from Wheel & Barrow ($6.95 each), I got home and realised they were useless unless you wanted giant balls of solid chocolate. I cheated and drove back to Chatswood Chase to buy pre-made chocolate eggs, but if you want to make easter eggs yourself, opt for thin and flexible plastic moulds and use lots of oil.

The fillings were the most fun to make, and Dan even helped out! After the beautiful Easter dinner Dan's mum prepared for us, Dan and I served up these babies while everyone picked which topping they wanted.

Butterscotch sauce (recipe courtesy of smitten kitchen)

¼ cup butter

½ cup packed brown sugar

½ cup heavy cream

½ teaspoon sea salt

1½ teaspoons vanilla extract

Melt butter over medium heat and add sugar, heavy cream and salt. Combine well. Remove from heat and add vanilla extract. You can add more salt to taste. I love the contrast of sweet and salty in dessert.

Lime and tapioca pudding

100g white chocolate

½ cup heavy cream

Zest of 1 lime

Juice of ½ a lime

2 tablespoons tapioca seeds

Simmer tapioca seeds in water for 15 minutes or until they turn translucent. Heat chocolate, cream and lime zest over low heat. Combine well. Remove from heat and gradually whisk in lime juice (like you would when whisking lemon juice into hollandaise sauce). Drain tapioca and stir in. This has the wonderful texture of rice pudding and tastes heavenly.

Raspberry with vanilla almond praline

1 punnet raspberries

1¼ cup sugar

Handful of candied vanilla almonds

Heat raspberries and ¼ cup of sugar over low heat for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Push through a fine sieve and you have a raspberry coulis. Set aside. Heat 1 cup of sugar over low heat until it caramelises. Place the almonds in a ziplock bag and crush with a mallet or rolling pin. Lay out in a flat layer on a baking tray, lined with greaseproof paper. Pour caramel over and set in the fridge. Score the praline and break into pieces to serve.

Salted duck egg yolk

I was most excited about this one purely because I was so curious about whether or not it'd taste good with chocolate (it works with moon cake, so why not other desserts?). You can buy salted duck eggs from Asian grocery stores or you can make them yourself by preserving duck eggs in salt water for 3-4 weeks. I love the texture of salted duck egg yolk, it's so unique. It's not as dry as chicken egg yolk (when cooked through), it's firm to the touch but it melts in your mouth. As I suspected, it worked amazingly well with the chocolate mousse. It was slightly sweet, slightly salty, and with the mousse it was like eating moon cake ice cream.

I hope everyone had a lovely Easter weekend. I cannot wait for the carnie food at the Royal Easter Show!

Quick Seafood Salad

A quick seafood salad after a late night at work. Calamari, Atlantic salmon and prawns marinated in olive oil, parsley, garlic and cracked pepper. Pan-fried on medium-high heat for 4 minutes. Served with green coral lettuce, watercress, bean sprouts, red onion (soaked in lime juice, à la Nigella) and pomegranate seeds, dressed with olive oil and lemon juice.

Balsamic Glazed Chicken and Bacon with Roasted Beetroot

As promised, here is the recipe for my balsamic glazed chicken and bacon, roasted beetroot and warm garlic and leek dressing. It's a simple and dynamite combo - not to mention a vibrant celebration of what's in season.

You'll need:

2-3 medium beetroot bulbs
6 cloves garlic
150g thick rindless bacon
2 chicken thighs
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 teaspoons sugar
1 leek stalk
Juice of a quarter of a lime
2 tablespoons cream
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Serves 2

Preheat oven to 180°C.

Lay down 2 layers of aluminium foil. Place beetroot and garlic cloves (skin on, crushed) in the centre and wrap up foil, sealing tightly.

Roast in oven for 1 hour.

Sauteé leek slices in olive oil over low heat. Remove from heat when the leek is translucent. Place in a measuring cup or deep bowl.

Cut chicken into 1 inch cubes and bacon into strips. Wrap bacon around chicken in an S-shape, put on metal skewer.

In the same pan used for the leek, heat olive oil on a medium heat. Place skewers in. Brown on all sides. 15 minutes will give the chicken enough time to cook all the way through (metal skewers will cook the chicken from the inside too).

Remove skewers from pan and deglaze pan with balsamic vinegar and sugar. Put skewers back on, coating them with the glaze. Remove from heat and set aside.

To the leek, add the roasted garlic, lime juice, leftover oils and juices from the pan, more olive oil if desired, cream and salt and pepper. Blitz to a pureé.

Peel beetroots. The skin should come off easily by lightly pressing it. Cut into eighths.

If you want the dish to look gourmet, remove the meat from the skewers. Arrange the meat in the middle of the plate and place beetroot slices around. Dollop dressing on top.

Enjoy!

Smoked Salmon Salad

Smoked salmon with avocado, baby spinach, red onion, feta and fresh mint, dressed with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and lime juice. Garnished with fried ginger strips. I foodgasmed. Twice.