Me and my cravings.

Seared tuna with spring onion and carrot salad

I am very susceptible to bursts of enthusiasm when it comes to food. Perhaps they are better referred to as phases, or even cravings. Some of it is the fault of the seasons: when asparagus season arrived this year I ate it twice a day. G thought I had lost my mind but by the time the season had ended I still hadn't tired of it.

Then there was this cumin and carrot salad that I really should tell you about--it's light and healthy and tastier than you would imagine an average carrot salad could be--and a few months ago, I made it almost daily. Eventually, I moved on, and while that carrot salad is still a definite favourite, it is no longer an obsession.

Sometimes it's a particular spice that grabs my attention for awhile, or a particular method of cooking. And yes, since we're talking about cravings, I will admit that sometimes a girl just wants to ditch it all and sit down with a big old bag of doritos.
But lately I've been experiencing a repeated craving which is a first for me.

Spring onions.

Usually I only buy spring onions when they are called for in a dish, otherwise I have no use for them. They are not one of those staples that I always have on hand like carrots or red onions or garlic. But these days I find myself making things just so that I can use spring onions.
I wish I could explain this one, but I'm stumped.

Nonetheless, I most recently satisfied my craving with an asian style dish of seared tuna with a spring onion and carrot salad. And because I had some time on my hands I tried to make the dish look all fancy pants. A girl needs a bit of glamour in her life sometimes, you know?

I'm no Top Chef, but it sure is fun to try every now and then. It's not until you have a look at your pictures later that you realize that perhaps you were a bit sloppy and maybe next time you need to apply yourself a bit more. But I swear it looked pretty darn perfect in real life. And my little spring onion and carrot salad, as simple as it was, made the dish.



Seared tuna with sugar snap peas and a spring onion and carrot salad
Serves 2

The spring onion and carrot salad
1 to 2 carrots
the green parts of 2 spring onions
a pinch or two of sesame seeds (white or black or both)
Dressing:
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
1 tsp soy sauce
1/4 tsp rice wine vinegar

I was in a patient mood when I made this and actually cut fine ribbons of both the spring onion and carrots by hand. If you have a tool that will make this step easier then I am extremely jealous of you.

Blanch the carrots in simmering water until they were pliable like noodles. I did this so that I could twist them easily with the green onions. The length of time you blanch the carrots will depend on how thinly you managed to slice them.
Drain the carrots and dry them off on a clean kitchen towel.
Mix the dressing ingredients together.
Toss the spring onions and carrots with the dressing, and let sit for at least 20 minutes before serving so the green onions will soften.

You can easily make more of this, just double the dressing if you need to. And if you prefer more carrot and less green onion, or vice versa, that works too.


The sugar snap peas
A handful per person.
Steam until crisp tender. Dry with a clean kitchen towel. Toss with a bit of toasted sesame oil. They don't need much, maybe 1/2 a teaspoon for 2 handfuls of snap peas.

Seared Tuna
2 tuna steaks
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp rice vinegar
salt and pepper
2 tsp peanut oil

Combine the soy sauce and rice vinegar and add to the tuna in a ziploc bag or a tupperware container. Make sure the tuna is coated in the marinade. Marinade for at least 30 minutes.
Remove from marinade and sprinkle both sides with a bit of salt and pepper.
Sear the tuna in peanut oil in a non-stick pan until desired doneness, about 4 minutes per side. If you have a good piece of tuna it would be a shame to overcook it. (I'm guilty of that)

Assembling the dish
Basically just do as pictured, with maybe I bit more tidiness to your flair than I managed. Lay the snap peas on the bottom, top with the tuna, and finally the carrot salad. Sprinkle sesame seeds over the top and serve. Set out some extra soy sauce at the table if desired.

Notes:
Snow peas would be an easy substitution for the sugar snap peas. You could also just put the tuna on top of some white rice if you wanted and in that case I would definitely serve it with some extra soy sauce alongside the dish.

Parties, leotards and celebratory tuna

Bouchons au Thon with kudos to Molly

One day a young couple moved into a Parisian apartment. It was spacious and pretty and they were happy. They bought some new furniture, they hung up some pictures and did their best to build a new home for themselves.
And then one night there was a party.
A loud one.
Fifteen pairs of feet stomping and dancing in the apartment above their heads.
The young couple grumbled a bit to themselves but they did not complain.
"We're hip, we're cool. We can handle a little noise."
When the next party occurred shortly thereafter, they stayed quiet again.
"Perhaps it's just the time of year?" they said to each other.
Then January came and another party, and another one after that, and even more followed still, one after the other. But still they did not complain. This took great strength, because this happy young couple was forced to listen to Madonna's new song "Hung Up" about 6 or 7 times per party.
"It's not such a bad song, is it?" she said to her boyfriend.
"No, I guess not."
"But I'm really starting to hate it, aren't you?"
And then the young couple discussed how unreal Madonna's leotarded bottom looks in that video. But that is neither here nor there.

Finally the girl could take it no more.
"I'm going to find the concierge!" she announced, because she loved gloating that she had a concierge. It sounded so much more frou-frou to say that than 'superintendent'.

"Please help us, we can't take it anymore!" she pleaded.
And the kind sir began to speak very, very rapidly in French. But from the look in his eye she could tell he was commiserating with her. Words flew out of his mouth and she understood some of them: no more parties, lots of complaints, next time he is calling the police. She didn't know they did that in France, but the girl was happy.

She thanked him and bid him adieu breathing a sigh of relief, and returned back to her pretty apartment and made Molly's Bouchons au Thon to celebrate. And they were great.



The bouchons

Ever since I first saw these on Molly's blog, I have wanted to try them. And they didn't disappoint. If you love tuna I think you will really love these. They are a simple combination of canned tuna, eggs, crème fraiche, onion, parsley, gruyère cheese, and tomato paste. You throw it all together and bake them in a muffin tin. It doesn't get much easier than that. They are creamy and deliciously tasty, and a fantastic change from however you might usually eat tuna.. which for me, as much as I love them, is usually a boring old tuna sandwich.
These are great as is, or with an extra dollop of crème fraiche on top and served with a salad.
Click here for Molly's Recipe

Notes:
-watery, mushy tuna can really ruin the texture of these. Find a good chunk light tuna and drain it well.
-try whipping the egg whites separately until stiff peaks form and fold it into the rest of the mixture to make the bouchons a bit airier and less dense.

Food therapy. The way the French might do it.

Harissa Marinated Lamb with Spiced Mash and
Cinnamon Onions

I freely admit that at times I have been known to seek solace for my miscellaneous woes at the bottom of a Lays' potato chip bag. The salty crunch echoes so loudly in my head that there is no room for negative thoughts. Anxiety and frustration go right out the window, if even only for a little while. You must admit, it's much cheaper than therapy and you don't have to make an appointment in advance.

In France, potato chips take up only a small amount of shelf-space at the grocery and convenience stores. The small supply seems to exist only for the cravings of expats and tourists. You quickly get the feeling that the French have more refined forms of "food" therapy.
Cat just died? A Madeleine or two might help.
Hydro is being cut off? A piece of Valrhona chocolate is sure to cheer you up.
Car won't start? A white truffle macaron from Pierre Hermé will take your mind off of it I'm sure.

You get my point.

Somehow it seems shameful to succumb to old (and unhealthy) habits when Paris has such fine foods to offer. When in Rome, as they say.




So, it's true, I've been feeling a little out of whack lately. And damn it, if the French didn't have me so brainwashed I would have marched right out to the corner store and bought myself a big old bag of potato chips, curled up on the couch and turned off the phone.

Instead, I took a deep breath, did my best to ignore the incessant yapping of the neighbour's 3-legged dog, poured myself a glass of port and got to work.

And I found my solace.
Oh yes I did.

In a plate of Harissa Marinated Lamb with Spiced Mash and Cinnamon Onions. And though, just hours before, I had been tempted to pack my bags and head back to Canada, I found myself taking the time to serve it up on a plate as fancily as I possibly could. (Ok, I'm no expert, but it wasn't a bad try was it?) And no, it's not a French recipe, but the point is, it's far more refined than my usual cure.

I felt better before I even sat down to eat it.
But I felt great once it was all in my belly.


Harissa Marinated Lamb with Spiced Mash and Cinnamon Onions
adapted from Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons by Diana Henry

(Harissa is a Tunisian spicy mixture of hot chilies, garlic, cumin, coriander, caraway and olive oil. You can make your own or just buy a jar of it at grocery stores carrying exotic products or a Middle Eastern grocery.)

For the Lamb
8 chunky lamb chops or 4 lamb steaks

For the Marinade
8 tbsp (120ml) olive oil
2.5 tbsp (37.5ml) harissa
3 garlic cloves, chopped
juice of 1/2 a lemon
a good handful of mint leaves, torn

Combine ingredients and coat lamb chops well. Cover and refrigerate 1.5 hours or up to overnight.
When your potatoes and onions are nearly ready, heat a griddle pan and cook the lamb on medium to high heat until desired doneness.

For the Mash
1lb potatoes, peeled
1lb 7oz parsnips, peeled and chopped
5 tbsp whipping cream
3.5oz butter
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
3/4 tsp cayenne
2 fl. oz milk

Boil potatoes and parsnips separately until soft. Drain but return the potatoes to low heat to dry them out a little if they are wet. Puree the parsnips with the cream and in another bowl mash the potatoes. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the cinnamon and cayenne. Add the parsnip and potato and beat everything together. Warm the milk and add to the potato mix. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Leave lid on to keep warm if you are not serving immediately.

For the onions
2 onions, finely sliced
15g butter
1.5 tsp olive oil
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp harissa
a good squeeze of lemon juice
a small bunch of coriander, roughly chopped

Fry the onions in the butter and oil until golden, allowing the onions to brown slightly. Add the remaining ingredients, as well as salt and pepper to taste.

To Serve
Serve the lamb chops with warmed mash topped with the onions.

Harissa from Amazon

And thanks so much to Melissa for giving me this cookbook as a gift when she came to stay with me last weekend!

Prunes. Enough said.

Lamb Tagine with Prunes

This has been a week of interesting firsts for me. On Monday I tasted my first macaron, and on Tuesday I bought my first bag of prunes ever. You may not think this is entirely exciting, and I'm sure my boyfriend would agree with you. I thank Mr. David Lebovitz for the latter of these two firsts, since he declared that this Thursday, October 27th, was officially Prune Blogging Thursday. Bold move on his part, don't you think?

I admit, I thought it was going to take some work to find an appealing recipe, but I quickly discovered that David isn't the only one who likes prunes. My grandmother likes them too.
No, but truthfully, there are a surprising number of prune-friendly recipes to be found.

Somehow (and I have long ago stopped trying to understand it) Martha exerted her domestic power over me and willed me to use one of her recipes. It's some sort of mind control thing that I am at times powerless to resist. But I couldn't help but think that if anyone knows prunes, it would have to be Martha. And so it was that I had Martha's Lamb Tagine with Prunes for dinner on Tuesday night.

I received a double dose of excitement when making this recipe, as it called for a tablespoon of Ras el Hanout. Had there been a cartoon bubble over my head when I read this, it would have contained a single question mark. I now know that Ras el Hanout is a Moroccan mix of spices, which seem to vary depending on who makes it. It was surprisingly easy to find -- mine contained a mixture of ground pepper, garlic, ginger, mustard, cinnamon, nutmeg, chili peppers, and cloves.

The tagine turned out well, and I was enthused about having tried not one, but two ingredients that had previously been absent from my pantry. That is until I looked at what was left of my dinner and realized that my plate was empty but for the many prunes that I had somehow managed to avoid with each bite of my tagine. The tagine was good, but the sweetness of the prunes overwhelmed it a bit in my opinion. By the second day, they had mellowed out quite a bit and had absorbed alot of flavour from the spices in the tagine.

So, my grand conclusion is this:
Day-one-tagine: good, but I had some prune-avoidance issues.
Day-two-tagine: pretty darn tasty, prunes and all.

The chickpeas were an element I would not do without. And please note, due to lack of availability, I omitted the butternut squash from the recipe, which I'm sure would have made a lovely addition. I served mine with couscous, Martha wrapped hers in Lavash bread.

You can find Martha's recipe for Lamb Tagine with Prunes here.

(please note the recipe fails to mention how much water to add. I added enough to cover the lamb by about an inch or so. You may want to add more if you want it saucier.)

So David, can I come over and try your macarons now?