It’s official. I’m now a fan of  Lidia Bastianich and her incredible knowledge of Italian cuisine along with her unique cooking techniques. For Christmas I received my first Lidia cookbook, Lidia Cooks From The Heart of Italy and I was blown away by her depth of culinary knowledge and ability to describe it.

I can’t believe it has taken me this long to get acquainted with her work. She is phenomenal. I was so excited after reading some of her recipes in this book and giving a few a try, I went out and purchased two more of her cookbooks, Lidia’s Italy and Lidia’s Family Table and can’t wait to write about what I’ve cooked from them.

This Tuna Genova Style or Tonno alla Genovese as Lidia calls it started with a trip to the Ardmore Farmers market on Saturday where my friendly fishmonger Andy was cutting up some gorgeous fresh tuna. I asked him when he thought the fish was caught and he thought maybe 3 or 4 days earlier. It looked terrific and again I will advise all home cooks to get to know your fish, meat and vegetable purveyors. They will direct you to the freshest ingredients and the best value of the day. Enough said.

I knew I wouldn’t be cooking the fish until Monday night so I asked Andy to cut me one piece that I could cut up into steaks later. As soon as I brought the tuna home, I vacuum sealed it in one of my favorite food gadgets, the FoodSaver Vacuum Sealer. This tool has saved me a lot of money over time by prolonging the freshness of my cheeses, meats and any leftovers I freeze.

So you can see this whole meal started with my going to the Farmers market looking for something to cook and then finding the freshest ingredients available. Once I had the tuna, I looked for ideas about how to cook and serve it.  Often I will glance through several cookbooks for ideas but this time I picked up Lidia’s cookbook and immediately found what I looking for. This is how I typically decide how and what to cook.

We served the Tuna Genova Style with white rice and Brussels sprouts blanched and then sautéed with bacon and finished in the oven. A delicious meal we all enjoyed including the kids.

Tuna Genova Style
Adapted from Lidia Cooks From The Heart of Italy

Ingredients

1½ pounds fresh tuna, cut into 2 large steaks
salt, to season the tuna
flour, to dredge the tuna in
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
½ cup of dried porcini mushrooms
6 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
2 small anchovy fillets (try anchovy paste if you don’t want to open up a whole can for 2 fillets)
1½ cups of dry white wine
juice from 1 small lemon
3 sprigs fresh thyme
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil to finish the sauce
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped.

How to Make Tuna Genova Style at Home

I made the sauce separately from the tuna only because I wanted to get it done before everyone was ready for me to make dinner. In the end I just added the sauce to the pan the tuna cooked in and finished the recipe. Next time I would prepare the entire dish in one pan as Lidia does.

Start by soaking the dried porcini mushrooms in a cup of water. Next season the tuna steaks with salt on both sides and dredge in flour being sure to coat both sides but more importantly, shaking off any excess flour.

Heat a frying pan large enough to hold both steaks over medium-high heat until hot. Add 4 tablespoons of the extra virgin olive oil and let that get hot but not smoking.

Add the tuna to the pan and pan fry for about 1 minute. Flip the tuna steaks over and cook on the other side for another minute to minute and a half. Remove the pan from the heat and transfer the tuna to a plate to keep warm while you make the sauce. I covered the fish with aluminum foil.

Start the Sauce

Remove the soaking mushrooms from the water but don’t throw the water out. We will use it in the sauce. Chop up the porcini mushrooms to fine pieces.

Add the frying pan back to the burner over medium high heat. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil and let it get hot. Add the crushed garlic, chopped anchovy fillets and chopped up porcini mushrooms.

When those ingredients start to sizzle, add the white wine, lemon juice and the water the porcini mushrooms soaked in. I used a funnel lined with a paper towel to remove any sediment from the water. I would have liked to use a coffee filter in a funnel but couldn’t find any.

Add the thyme sprigs and season with a little salt. Bring the sauce to a low boil and cook until it is reduced by half.

Finish the Tuna Steaks

When the sauce is reduced by half, add the tuna steaks back into the pan and be sure to pour any juices from the resting tuna into the sauce.  Let the tuna cook in the sauce for about a minute, flip and cook the steaks on the other side for another minute. If you like your tuna more well done, let it cook longer.

People ask me all the time how long is longer. I wish I could tell you but it depends on the stove you are using, the pan, the thickness of the fish and much more. The best I can tell you is over time you will get a feel for it. You can always cut into a piece if you have to know, but I don’t like doing that because you are letting a lot of the juices escape. This is even more a problem with meat and chicken.

Extra Flavor

Now to add even more flavor to the sauce, add 2 tablespoons of butter or extra virgin olive oil to the pan and stir to combine the flavors. Remove the pan from the heat, add the parsley, give a quick stir and you are ready to serve.

I put a couple of spoonfuls of rice in the center of the plate, topped with a tuna steak and spooned the sauce around the sides of the fish and some on top. The Brussels sprouts were tastefully arranged on the side of the plate.

This is a very delicious meal I encourage you to try it and be sure to check out Lida’s cookbooks. I may create a page dedicated to her, the recipes I try from her cookbooks and some of the little cooking techniques she offers.

Let me know how you like this recipe.

The 2009 Winner of the LG Electronics / Bon Appetit’s Life Tastes Good Competition Kristine Snyder Interview featuring her winning Mahi Mahi recipe.

I have been following this cooking contest and am thrilled to have been able to interview the winner, Kristine Snyder, who will be traveling to Thailand to compete in a global cooking event. If you want to read more about the contest, the judges and other competitors, go to Taste of Something Better.

Kristine is from Maui, HI and prepared a Soy-Glazed Mahi Mahi with Cilantro Pesto Shrimp dish that I will share with you in the interview. I would like to thank LG Electronics and Bon Appetit for helping make this interview possible.

So let’s get started by asking how you became involved with the LG Electronics/Bon Appetit Life Tastes Good Cooking Competition?

I am a member of a website called Cooking Contest Central which lists recipe contests and when I read about LG’s fabulous prize packages, I decided to give it a try.  I emailed my entry the day before the deadline (I never submit a recipe early because I usually want to change something) and was notified that my recipe was in the top 10.  After that, Bon Appetit prepared the 10 recipes and narrowed it down to the 3 finalists (I was on pins and needles during that waiting time!)

Did you think from the start you had a chance of winning the New York competition and be on your way to Thailand to compete in a global cooking cook-off?

Always hopeful but I am realistic which meant having a 33.3% chance of going to Bangkok.  I also didn’t know anything about my competition which probably was a good thing since their recipes looked and sounded delicious!

What was your strategy for choosing your recipe for mahi mahi and shrimp flavored with soy, lime and cilantro?

I really didn’t think of it as strategy - I just put together some of my favorite Hawaiian flavors (which also includes ginger, garlic, and Hawaiian Portuguese Sausage).  After moving to Hawaii in 1998 I immediately fell in love with the Pacific Rim ingredients and tastes and I cook with them about 80% of the time.  I had created a recipe similar to this one for another contest but it wasn’t chosen so I decided to try again.  The two lessons here are 1) how difficult it is to get into cooking contests and 2) if you know you have good recipe, stick with it and keep trying!

By the way, do you mind sharing your recipe with all my readers?

Love to….

(more…)

Fishmonger Andy with Wild Striped Bass

While at the farmers market, I asked my friend Andy the fishmonger from Ardmore Seafood Market what was really fresh, and he pointed me to the whole wild striped sea bass. You could see with one glance the fish was really fresh by the color, clearness of the eyes, the shiny skin and most importantly the smell or, more precisely, lack of smell.

Andy pulled out a 5 pounder as shown in the picture, but it was way more than I needed for two adults and two kids. We agreed on a 3 pounder that he removed the head, scaled, and then thoroughly cleaned the cavity. We ended up with just over 2 pounds of fish, perfect for the four of us.

Get to Know Your Fishmonger

I’m sure Andy is great with all his customers, but the fact that I take the time to say hello every week and ask questions goes a long way to making sure I get his complete attention. When I ask him what’s really fresh each week, he doesn’t point me to the most expensive piece of fish but directs me to something just off the boat. If I’m looking for a bargain, he is quick to come up with something like the striped bass.

What really impressed me is how he offered to pack the fish in ice in case I was going to be doing more shopping. I didn’t ask; he just offered.  You should never hesitate to ask your fish person to do the same if you are going to be out and about. Fish is expensive and you want to keep it as fresh as possible. A little ice costs them very little and the service will keep you coming back.  As a back-up plan, always bring a small cooler and some ice packs with you on your trips to the seafood market.

Tarragon

Did you know tarragon is in the sunflower family? It has a bittersweet flavor and smells a lot like licorice.  The flavor intensifies when heated, so be careful how much you use.  Most of us have heard of tarragon infused oil or tarragon chicken but it is also good with fish, rabbit, veal, pork and potatoes.

I will tell you 1 tablespoon of fresh tarragon = 1 teaspoon of dried but for this dish try to use fresh only. It really makes a huge difference in flavor, because the oils in dried tarragon dissipate and mellow.

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons pumpkin seed oil (olive oil will work fine but it is close to Halloween)
• 1 lemon, cut in half (don’t worry—you’ll use both halves)
• 2 pounds of cleaned wild striped bass
• 4 sprigs of fresh tarragon –  3 for stuffing the striped bass cavity and one for mincing
• Salt & freshly ground pepper –  I like using course sea salt or kosher salt, easier to handle
• 1 medium eggplant, cut into ¼  inch slices across
• 3 large or 6 small shallots, sliced
• 12 kalamata olives, pitted and cut in half
• ½ cup dry white wine

How to Prepare Roasted Striped Bass with Eggplant and Shallots

Preheat your over to 425° F.

If your fishmonger did not thoroughly clean the fish cavity, I recommend you give it a good cleaning, making sure to remove any blood that may be present. Of course, you will want to scale the fish too if that wasn’t done.

Combine the juice from half of the lemon with the pumpkin seed oil and rub all over the fish inside and out.  Season with salt and freshly ground pepper, and place three of the tarragon sprigs inside the bass cavity.

In a roasting pan big enough to hold the fish, line the bottom of the pan with the sliced eggplant.  Then, add the sliced shallots. Add the wine to the pan, and then the wild striped bass.

Place the olives and lemon slices on top of the fish. Sprinkle with the minced tarragon, and roast in the oven for 25 – 30 minutes until the fish reaches an internal temperature of approximately 135° F. - 140° F.  The flesh should be opaque and flake easily.

Presentation

I suppose in a restaurant they would serve this dish tableside whole and have the waiter remove it from the bone in perfect portions. I’m not that good, so I am asking for any and all suggestions on alternative ways to serve the fish at home.

After I let the fish rest a few minutes, I removed it from the pan and took out the backbone in one fell swoop.  There were still some rib bones left, which were not a problem for my wife or me, but even microscopic bones would be enough to cause my girls to stop eating.  You can be sure I was careful to serve them only boneless pieces!

I cut the fish in half following the backbone line, removed bone-free pieces for the girls and served the rest to my wife and myself.  I served the fish on a bed of couscous and topped it with a few olives. I served the eggplant and shallots on the side. A drizzle of pan juices over the fish finished the plate. Everyone loved the fish, and I can’t wait to try it again with some other ingredients.

I used shallots and eggplant but onion and yellow squash would have worked and I encourage you to try ingredients you enjoy and would like to serve with this dish.

Food & Wine

My wife brought home a 2006 Australian white wine called The Money Spider made from Roussanne grapes. This is a Rhone styled wine that is made to be drunk with food and not alone. I couldn’t figure out the connection with the name so I went to the winemaker’s web site and learned the following,

The wine has a “orange blossom” nose with an apple taste on the palate. I found it big enough to go with the meaty striped bass and was a nice alternative to the Chardonnay we normally would drink with a meal like this. My wife had a glass after dinner and thought it wasn’t a good as with the meal but we both enjoyed it with the dish.