My journey of cooking, gardening, preserving and more
In my last post, I promised to share an easy way to use an over-abundance of fresh herbs from your garden and here it is: homemade herbal vinegar. I just love these and they make beautiful house-warming gifts! This is all there is to it: Fresh …
I love the way green and purple basil look when they’re growing in the same pot. Fresh herbs are a beautiful thing in more way than one. 🙂
First, let’s make the vinaigrette, so the flavors have time to blend a bit. Wasabiko Powdered Horseradish made by Hime, is the closest taste to what I’ve had in sushi restaurants. The ready-made pastes in tubes always seem to have a chemically or artificial taste to them. With this powder, all you do is put a bit of powder in a dish, add a bit of cold water and mix well with the back of a small spoon, until all the little dry crumbles are mashed and dissolved. Sometimes you’ll have to add a bit more powder or sometimes a bit more water but trust me when I say this isn’t rocket science. You put the two together until it’s a thick yet creamy consistency. Done. You’ve just made wasabi. Now back to the vinaigrette – in a medium-sized glass bowl:
Whisk together and, while whisking, drizzle in:
Keep whisking until well blended. Taste. I had to amend this about 3 times with a bit more soy, a bit more vinegar and a bit more oil until I got to the amounts above. Trust your palate – close your eyes while tasting – and adjust to what you like. Okay, now the tuna:
Okay, I’m gonna babble again. If you have sesame oil, make sure you’re keeping it in the fridge or a dark, cool place – it goes rancid very quickly otherwise. And if you don’t have black and/or white sesame seeds than don’t worry about it. This is awesome even without them.
Put the tuna in a bowl in a single layer, add soy sauce and sesame oil and turn tuna over to coat. Let marinate about 15 minutes, turning again once about halfway through.
Heat a heavy skillet on medium heat; I use my big cast iron skillet for this & it works great. Add olive oil and let heat about 3 minutes. While olive oil is heating, pat the tuna dry with a paper towel and sprinkle half the sesame seeds on one side of each steak, pressing them in a bit. Turn and repeat. Add tuna to heated oil. Heat about 4 minutes each side for medium; the nice thing about cooking tuna is you can see the cooking happening along the side of the steak.
Remove to a plate and slice into slices.
Divide spinach between two plates. Give your vinaigrette a good whisking again. Transfer tuna to top of spinach and drizzle with vinaigrette. Not the most stunning of photos but I was hungry. 🙂
Warning: this vinaigrette is highly addicting. You can thank me later.
Just a quick update on my ghost chili pepper plant. Here’s what it looked like at the end of May: And here’s what it looks like now, in mid-July: It’s gotten quite a bit bigger, but still no ghost peppers. Stay tuned!
I admit I’m a bit of a flower freak. I’ll be talking or writing about a particular one or another in our yard and inevitably say “that’s my favorite flower”. But there are different reasons for my love of different flowers. I love crocus because …
The garlic scape season has just passed, so I apologize for the late post. Planning a vacation and then spending a week away put me behind on a lot of things. But I’ll remind you in October to plant your own garlic. Growing garlic is so easy and, if you do it right, you can enjoy it year after year without having to plant it again. I learned this from a farmer at a farmers market in Connecticut many, many moons ago. This is one of the great reasons to frequent your local farmer’s markets – you can glean great advice on growing things you may not know how to grow.
To start your own garlic patch, the best time to plant it is in mid-October. Find a bulb or more of the largest garlic cloves you can find and separate the cloves, leaving the skin on. In well-tilled soil, in a sunny and well-drained place, plant the cloves pointed-end up about 2 inches deep and cover with loose soil.
That’s it.
Come spring, little green tops will peek through the soil and your garlic is growing. You can use the green tops chopped in the same way you would chives or spring onions.
Come late May to June, your garlic will start to produce a seed bulb at the top of the green. The very young seed bulb is called the scape and you’ll find them now at many farmers markets. To harvest them, simply cut off the stem about 6 inches below the young seed bulb.
Cutting the seed bulb off puts more energy back into the growth of the bulb that’s forming underneath the ground. But always make sure you leave a few, to go to seed, so you won’t have to plant again come fall.
To harvest the garlic, I was taught that when the tops start to turn brown and fall down, that’s the time to dig it up. With a trowel, make a wide circle around the bulb and gently dig it up. You can use it fresh – which is really nice – or let it dry for a few weeks and use it that way.
To cook garlic scape, I prefer mine pretty simple. Toss them around with a little olive oil and salt in a pan or, easier yet, lay a small bunch on a large piece of aluminum foil, drizzle a little olive oil over them, sprinkle with salt, wrap and seal the foil around them, then toss them on the grill for about 10 minutes.
We love garlic, so this is a no-brainer for us; we love the scape. It has a very mild garlic flavor and it’s very, very good for you.
I am a pasta lover, especially if it’s homemade pasta. When I buy dried pasta at the grocery store, my personal favorites of the mass-produced ones are Barilla or De Cecco. When I make fresh pasta at home, it’s in large batches, so that I …