Tuna with pineapple salsa & snow peas

Fresh tuna is such a delicious treat. It couldn’t be more different to canned tuna. I have nothing against canned tuna – it’s a great pantry standby but it just doesn’t compare to the melt-in-your-mouth deliciousness of a good tuna steak.

This meal was so fast to prepare – I made the salsa a few hours before hand so that the flavours could mingle so it was just a matter of heating the fry pan and then all the cooking was over with in about 5 minutes. You couldn’t lodge your order at the fish ‘n’ chip shop that fast – fresh food wins!

The salsa recipe is by Jess at Cheese Please and is sweet with just a little bit of heat. It makes a light and refreshing accompaniment to the tuna and is also very fast to through together. To flavour the tuna, I massaged it with sesame oil before cooking then added a splash of soy sauce and lime juice to each side before flipping, making a glaze.

Pineapple Salsa Recipe (from Cheese Please)

(serves 1)

Pan-fried Tuna Recipe

(serves 1)

Ingredients

• 1 yellow-fin tuna steak
• 1t sesame oil
• 2t soy sauce
• 1t lime juice

Method

	1. Massage tuna steak with sesame oil so that it is completely covered
	2. Fry tuna over a high heat for 1.5-3 minutes on each side until desired doneness is reached (I like mine rare to medium-rare which takes about 2 minutes on each side). Be careful not to overcook the tuna or it will be dry, it should be still pink in the middle.
	3. Add half of soy sauce and lime juice 30 seconds before flipping tuna, then the remaining half of the soy sauce and lime juice 30 seconds before removing the tuna from the pan. This will form a glaze on both sides of the fish.
	4. Let rest for a few minutes before serving with pineapple salsa and a green vegetable.

 

 

Lemon and Blueberry Mini-cakes with Lemon Honey Glaze

I made this recipe a few weeks back and had to post it before it got lost in the hundreds of recipe files in the depth of  my hard-drive. This recipe was inspired by Mimi’s Raspberry and Lemon Muffins and scaled back to yield two mini-cakes. I love freshly baked treats and hate things going to waste so I like to experiment with dessert recipes for one or two.

I am super impatient and there is no way I was going to wait for these mini-cakes to cool so that I could ice them so instead, I made a sticky glaze to pour over them. Delicious!

Lemon and Blueberry Mini-cakes with Lemon Honey Glaze Recipe

(serves 2)

Ingredients

Cakes

• 1/8C low-fat vanilla yogurt
• 3/4TBSP canola oil
• 1TBSP lemon juice
• 1 egg white
• 1/2C flour
• 1/4C brown sugar
• 1/2tsp baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 1/4C blueberries

Glaze

• 3TBSP icing sugar
• 1TBSP lemon juice
• 1t honey (melt if using creamed honey)
• 1t vanilla essence
• 1/8C low-fat vanilla yogurt

Method

1. Combine dry mini-cake ingredients in a small bowl and mix with a fork until well combined
2. Whisk wet ingredients in a separate bowl into mixed
3. Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and fold together. Try and handle the mixture as little as possible and stop mixing while there is still streaks of flour through the blend.
4. Add blueberries to the mix and spoon into two ramekins or two holes in a muffin tin
5. Bake for approximately 20 minutes
6. While the mini-cakes are cooking, prepare the glaze by mixing the glaze ingredients together until smooth

Single Serve Blueberry Cobbler

I have an epic sweet tooth and love few things more than a hot, sticky pudding to end my day’s eating. However, I don’t trust myself to make entire cakes or puddings because I know I will not win the fight against my will-power so I’m always on the lookout for recipes that can be adapted to make just one serving. When I saw the recipe for Blueberry Cobbler on food.com I knew I had to make it my own!

Single Serve Blueberry Cobbler Recipe

(serves 2 not-so-hungry people or one hungry eater)

Ingredients

Filling

• 3/4C blueberries
• 1/8C sugar
• 1tsp arrowroot powder (I’m pretty sure cornflour or normal flour would work also)
• 1 tsp margarine or butter
• 1TBSP water
• 1TBSP lemon juice

Topping:

• 1/4C flour (could use white, whole-wheat, or a blend of the both flours)
• 1/2TBSP sugar
• 2/3tsp baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 1TBSP margarine or butter
• 1TBSP skim milk
• 1/4 egg (I just stole some egg mix from the frittata I was making)
• 1/3tsp almond essence (could substitute vanilla essence)

Extras (optional but delicious)

• 1TBSP sliced almonds
• 1t demerara sugar (brown sugar would work fine but I used organic demerara sugar from Edible Planet)

Method

1.Preheat oven
2. Combine filling ingredients in a microwave safe dish and mix until the mixture is boiling and thickened, stirring every minute or so. This took about 5 minutes in my microwave.
3. Mix together dry ingredients in a small bowl with a fork until well combine.
4. Melt margarine or butter and mix with wet ingredients in a separate bowl.
5. Mix wet and dry ingredients until doughy.
6. Spoon dough over blueberry filling in blobs
7. Sprinkle extras on top
8. Bake for about 15-20 minutes until the extras are caramelised and the topping is cooked through and fluffy.

I served this dessert with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and it was fantastic.