Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Sliced Strawberries with Red Wine

This is a simple delicious way to spruce up strawberries. Inspired by many of the recipes for strawberries with balsamic and black pepper I made a simple change tonight that was just delicious. Since I knew the grownups would be the only ones to eat them I made a small batch, only 6 or so large strawberries sliced.
I replaced the vinegar with a few splashes of some leftover red wine from last week. I know I know, leftover red wine is a crime but my wife and her friends failed me.

Anyway, I splashed some red wine over the berries and tossed them around, them I added a few grinds of fresh black pepper. In the time it took me to grill some tuna and eat it, the wine and black pepper had really soaked in nicely.I didn't add any sugar, well becuase I don't like sugar and berries are sweet enough for me.
I know it may sound odd but you should try it.

Herb "Crusted" Tuna Steaks

I am a big fan of Mark Bittman we have two of his cookbooks that I really rely on at times.
How to Cook Everything and How to Cook Everything Vegetarian
They are both packed full of recipes that are simple and easy to use. No no one will ever mistake me for a vegetarian but we try to eat vegetarian meals a couple nights a week and it is a great cookbook to have for more inspired vegetarian dishes.

His new show on the cooking channel is one of my favorites. I have made a couple of recipes from it. His Pork Pernil which was outstanding and now tonight his grilled herb and olive tuna steaks.


The Tuna was a perfect weeknight meal. About 15 minutes from beginning to yummy. We used a mix of parsley, basil and chives for the herbs. Since we could not find oil cured olives tonight ( for shame Wegmans) we used regular brined olives and mixed in a bit of olive oil.

The residual heat of the tuna is enough to take some of the raw flavor out of the herbs but they still tasted nice and fresh and light. Exactly what I was after. We served the tuna with some steamed broccoli and a favorite preparation of strawberries.

(picture credited to the cooking channel website, I failed to take one. My tuna looked just like this)

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Grilled Red Snapper With Garlic Sriracha Sauce


Some friends and I went to the farmers market with the intention of buying crabs for a crab boil, and wouldn't you know they had none. So we moved on to plan b, buy some tasty seafood and cook it. We wound up with a couple pounds of scallops and a beautiful whole red snapper. The scallops we wound of cooking in kind of a scampi style. I lined a grilling pan with some foil, added some canola oil, butter and chopped garlic and cooked the scallops. Meanwhile on the side burner some of the other guys made up a  sauce with white wine, butter and garlic for drizzling on the cooked cooked scallops (and the steak which was also tasty)

 Back to the snapper.

I really didn't know what I wanted to do with it but as we decided at the market, I was in charge since neither of the other guys had cooked whole fish before. I did a bit of searching and found this recipe from a blog called Cook and Be Merry, which looks fantastic. I didn't have all of the ingredients on hand but I figured I could make do and use it as a framework for my own variation. I really just winged it with measurements but I will approximate.

4 Cloves finely chopped or pressed garlic
2 Tbsp Soy Sauce
2 Tbsp Sriracha (You can use less but I wouldn't recommend it)
2 Tbsp Black Bean Garlic Paste

2 tsp Fish Sauce
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1/4 cup dry white wine
1 Tbsp Lime Juice
1 Tbsp Lemon juice

And my secret ingredient because I don't actually have sweet Thai chili sauce around for no good reason whatsoever .
3 packets of duck sauce form Chinese take out.

I mixed it all up in my 2nd favorite piece of tupperware and brought  it along to the party.

From there I followed the original recipe for cooking it.  I definitely recommend using a fish/vegetable grill basket for cooking. Make several deep slashes in both sides of the fish and rub your sauce into it well.  
Once your grill basket is nice and hot lay the fish in it and brush the exposed side with sauce. Let it go for 4-5 minutes then flip and baste. You will want to flip it a few times to ensure even saucing and cooking. About 20 minutes of cook time.  It was delicious. There was really only enough fish for everyone to have a few forkfuls but I will certainly do this one again.