Tuna Steak

I love tuna steak.  It's like a magical combination of fish and red meat -- two things I love.  It has an amazing texture, and it's very easy to do well.  I threw this dish together in under 15 minutes, and it came out fantastically, if I do say so myself.

Recipe:

Tuna Steak (The one used here is about 4 ounces)
8-10 Crimini (Baby Portobella) Mushrooms
2-3 tablespoons Malt Vinegar
1 cup Red Wine
Salt and Pepper (to taste)
Olive Oil

Stir together malt vinegar, wine, and seasoning.  Slice mushrooms and add to wine mixture. Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a skillet, and add mushrooms and all of the wine mixture.  Bring to a boil, and simmer 5-7 minutes until the wine is reduced.  Remove the mushrooms and reduction to a separate bowl.  Set aside.
Return the skillet to heat and add 1 tablespoon olive oil.  Add tuna steak and cook on medium heat for 3-4 minutes.  Flip the tuna steak, turn the burner off after 1 minute, and remove steak from pan after 2 more minutes.
Serve tuna steak and mushrooms.

I had this over udon noodles that I tossed with basil infused olive oil and sea salt.  The earthiness of the mushrooms and the meatiness of the fish worked very well with the sour tang of the malt vinegar and red wine, and the noodles with basil olive oil provided some needed sweetness.

If you don't like rare meat or fish, cook the steak a little longer.  I like mine rare to medium rare, and the time I used in this recipe will get you this:

Mmmmmm...perfect.

Carrot Cake and Cream Cheese Frosting

I found this recipe on Serious Eats.  I love carrot cake, plus I had a bag of beardy looking carrots that I needed to use up, so what better way to do that than with cake?  I modified their recipe a bit, mostly by cutting back on sugar and putting in more carrots and spices.

Recipe:

2 1/2 cups Flour
2 teaspoons Baking Soda
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1 tablespoon Cinnamon
3/4 cup packed Brown Sugar
3/4 cup Sugar
1 1/2 (3 sticks) Butter, softened
3 Eggs
2 teaspoons Vanilla
4 cups freshly grated Carrots
1 inch piece fresh Ginger, grated (or 2 teaspoons powdered ginger)
1 cup Golden Raisins (optional)

Preheat oven to 350°, grease a 9 x 13 inch baking pan.
In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, brown sugar, and white sugar.
Beat the butter into the flour mixture until well combined, add eggs one at a time and beat until fluffy.  Add vanilla.  Stir in carrots, ginger, and raisins.
Pour batter into greased baking pan.  Bake 40-50 minutes.

Cream Cheese Frosting:

8 ounces Cream Cheese
1 1/2 cups Powdered Sugar
1/4 cup Butter, softened
1 teaspoon Vanilla

Cream together butter and cream cheese, add powdered sugar and vanilla.  Beat until smooth.

This cake was surprisingly light, considering how dense the batter looked when I was putting it in the pan.  I also had some misgivings about the recipe because I was adding the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, which is usually the opposite of what one does, but it came out really good.

Instead of using all white flour, I used 2 cups regular flour, 1/4 cup whole wheat flour and 1/4 cup flax seed meal.  Also, since I don't have a box grater or a grater attachment for my Kitchenaid, I used the food processor to shred the carrots and fresh ginger and it worked great!

This cake was very flavorful, light, and not too sweet.

Peanut Butter Popcorn Balls

I'll be honest -- I'm not a fan of popcorn.  I don't especially dislike it, but I don't choose to eat it often.  Usually, at the movies, if I have a taste for popcorn, I'll just snag a handful of someone else's (that I'm with, of course) and that satisfies my popcorn craving.  Well this afternoon I was at a movie, I had a taste for popcorn but was by myself, so I actually ordered a thing of it.  And ate less than a quarter of it before I was totally over my craving for popcorn.

Being thrifty, I brought it home thinking that I'd just eat it later, but then I realized it would be totally gross by the time I felt like eating it.  So I hit the internet, hoping to find a way to use up a giant bag of movie popcorn, and found this.

Recipe:

4 cups Popcorn
1/4 cup Honey
2 tablespoons Sugar
1/4 cup Peanut Butter
1 teaspoon Vanilla

Measure the popcorn into a large bowl.
Melt honey and sugar in a medium saucepan.  Bring to a boil and simmer 2-3 minutes.  Stir in the vanilla and peanut butter.  Mix until smooth.
Pour over the popcorn.  Stir to coat the popcorn.
Form into small balls while still warm, and store in an airtight container.

Now, I wore a pair of surgical gloves while forming the popcorn balls and this served two purposes.  First, it provided some protection from the hot peanut butter mixture, and second, I was able to form the balls without getting my hands all messy.

Quick, easy, and delicious!  And yes, apparently I'm also the kind of person who has surgical gloves around.

Sweet, salty, buttery, peanuty...yum!

And I had enough popcorn left to make a double batch.  Yes, 8 cups of popcorn.  Because my local theater has psychotic servings.  Seriously, a small drink is 32 oz.  Ridiculous!