Daily Dinner #7: The last supper

We've been showing off our "daily" home cooked meals and figured we'd continue while we were living in Barcelona for August -- to see what we could turn out in this small kitchen devoid of all our knives, tongs, and other tools.

2015-08-28 Ñora blackened Tuna

I've been working long hours and knew we wouldn't be able to get out in time for dinner, so we picked up some deeply-red tuna from the fish monger.  I've not had flavorful tuna in the states in decades; I suspect all the good stuff is sent to Japan, or our consumers are happier to pay less money for farmed stuff from Asia (oh, the irony of transnational shipping). This tuna looked awesome, a deep almost beef-like red, glistening garnet.

The moon was rising as I took a break from the laptop and started to prep; cooking relaxes me, a good change from coding.

I cast around to see what we had bought that we needed to use up or toss before we left. Ah, some Spanish ñora peppers, dried like chilis are. I whizzed them up in the house's blender, which made a racket like someone threw frozen turkeys into a jet engine.

It turned out ok: I was looking for a fairly fine powder to dust the tuna with.

We had also picked up some small potatoes. Irene par-boiled them, then finished them in the last of the schmaltz (rendered chicken fat); sadly, I can't find a translation in Spanish -- they meaning the dictionaries provide is for "sentimental", not yummy fat.

We bought some asparagus from the market, too. I need to learn to be a more attentive shopper: these were not local at all but from Peru, and their quality had suffered on the long trip here. I should have known better: it's a spring vegetable, not a deep summer crop.  Irene par-cooked these too.

The mise-en-place at the ready:

I gave the tuna steaks a good slick of nice olive oil, then pressed the ñora powder into it evenly. Then I heated a skillet with some more oil until barely smoking, and slapped those steaks onto the hot surface where they quickly developed a bit of a crust.  We used to do this all the time -- blackened pork chops -- but haven't used the technique in a while.

While the potatoes browned, I gave the asparagus some skillet time with just a touch of oil and some lashings of good sherry vinegar that we'll have to abandon here.

On the plate the steaks had a char-looking blackness from the chilis and a a sheen from the oil.

We sat out under the nearly-full moon and finished off the last of the wine with dinner.

Unfortunately, I had overcooked the tuna steaks. I'd hoped to get an exterior crust and leave the interior pink-to-red. Nope, this was gray throughout. I apologized to the tuna for disrespecting it; I'm not used to this electric cooktop's lag-time.

The tuna, however, and an intensely fish-y flavor. It was meaty, almost bordering in a liver-y taste. Holy crap, that's some seriously tasty tuna. I'd love to do this again, but with more care on the cooking.