Sunday, October 18, 2009

Tuna steak pasta with pesto and cheesy red pepper sauce

Everything else is raw, except the tuna steak slightly seared. This is a quick and easy recipe packed with flavor. I try to make a slightly fancier meal for us at least once a week, set the table especially nice and light candles. It's a good way for couples like us with a small baby to enjoy a romantic dinner together. Let the baby play by him/herself for a little while (in sight of course!) and take the time to really talk about something else than baby poop :) Here's what's cookin':

For the pasta:
50:50 ratio of fresh parsnips and sweet potatoes

Spiralize peeled veggies into linguine/tagliatelle shape. Dehydrate for a little while, mostly just to get a little tenderness and warmth into the dish. I had them in 110F for as long as it took to make the sauces.

Creamy cheesy red pepper sauce:
1/2 C soaked cashews (30min-1h)
1/2 fresh red bell pepper
Cold-pressed olive oil
Himalayan salt, freshly ground black pepper
Paprika-spice/mild chili powder

Blend cashews and chopped bell pepper, add olive oil until desired consistency and spice up. This is not supposed to be hot and spicy, but rather have a subtle spicy undertone. The sauce gets sort of a mac and cheese type flavor.

Traditional but raw pesto:
1 huge bunch basil
3 tbsp pine nuts
1 clove garlic
1 tbsp nutritional yeast
extra virgin olive oil
Himalayan salt, freshly ground black pepper

Blend and add olive oil until you get the consistency of regular pesto.

Seared tuna steak slices:
2 tuna steaks
2 large cloves garlic
peel of half a lemon
olive oil
Himalayn salt, lots of freshly ground black pepper

Drizzle some olive oil on a frying pan, grate garlic and lemon peel and combine with oil.
Salt and pepper your tuna steaks on both sides, sear on pan until cooked on all sides but raw (pink color) on the inside. Do not cook through (will dry and lose flavor) or brown to create carcinogens. If you have sashimi-grade tuna (i.e. for a fact know that there are no parasites), you could also just slice it thinly and mix it in raw if you like. You can eat the tuna as raw as you like and dare.

Slice up the tuna as thin as possible, combine pasta with cheese sauce. Gently mix tuna slices with pasta, pour a little pesto on top. You could also just mix the pesto sauce right in, that has it's charm as well. If you don't eat fish, I recommend having just the pasta with cheese sauce and enjoying it like mac and cheese.

2 comments:

Jael said...

Fresh red tuna is so delicious, just saw it today in the supermarket at about 25 euros kilo,so expensive!,,but a small amount sometimes is really good. If it is really fresh, I prefer it raw. Last week I bought frozen one,which is much cheaper, and only fried it very lightly on a grill pan.Also good but not like the raw one. Sweet potato pasta is really good,but I dislike parsnips due to old childhood traumas.... maybe it is time to try it again...

Aletheia said...

Fresh tuna really is a treat, but you're right the price is agonizing. Somehow still when you bite into it you forget however much you had to pay for it! I also have opted for the frozen one when I can't afford fresh, it works well enough when it is cooked.
I really enjoyed the flavor of parsnips in the pasta, but you could always just use sweet potato or zucchini if you have parsnip traumas :) It's funny though how some things you really disliked as a kid you come to love as an adult (I hated cashews), while some things still disgust you to the core however old you are (buttermilk for me).