Junglefrog Cooking » tuna

Oriental tuna on a bed of cucumber

Simone (junglefrog) — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 07:00:55 +0000

Oriental tuna on a bed of cucumber

We have an addiction… Well, we have more then one but for the sake of argument let’s focus on this one – fairly harmless one. The addiction is that we love to watch cooking shows. It’s probably a good thing that we do not have something like the food network or the BBC food channel to watch or we would be stuck to the tv screen all day long… But there are still enough cooking shows to enjoy here and I thank the creators of digital television for the option to watch missed shows with the click of a button. Before this lovely invention you had to browse the entire tv-guide and make sure you taped any shows that you wanted to see. These days, we just install ourselves in the chair and on the couch and press a button to browse through the missed shows. How convenient is that?

So we have “cooking shows” evenings, where we watch the episodes of one week all in one evening. One such show is ‘Over de Kook’ which is a daily show featuring amateurs that get a chance to cook in a real restaurant for a week overseen by a two star Michelin chef called Robert Kranenborg. Not everyone likes the guy as he can be quite harsh, but ultimately he is the expert and the chef so they just have to listed to what he says… But the reason we watch all those shows is that they are also quite informative and educational. And on occassion we see recipes that we just have to try out for ourselves. Today’s recipe is one of those and originally from Jakob Krabbe (brother of Martijn Krabbe)

Let me start by saying that we could not find the right ingredients on short notice (meaning we will have to go to Amsterdam to get them) so we sort of improvised a bit. And I think that was not necessarily the best idea… The original recipe calls for tamarinde, which we could not find, but we found tamarind syrup which I am sure was totally different (meant to be making lemonade!) and we forgot to buy sesame oil (ran out of our last bottle and forgot to replace… sigh) so we made our own with sesame seeds and oil. Interesting flavors but it lacked a bit in taste. But…. having said all that, this is definitely a recipe we will be giving another try once we find the right ingredients as it has all the potential to be a real winner. On the show, the chef gave it a 9, which is just about as rare as it happened three times before. But let me give you the recipe so you can give it a go for your self! It does look pretty doesn’t it?

ORIENTAL TUNA ON A BED OF CUCUMBER (original recipe by Jakob Krabbe as featured in Over de Kook by RTL4)

45 ml limejuice
1/2 tbsp of freshly grated ginger
1/2 pcs of chile pepper, finely sliced
1/2 tbsp of kaffir limeleaves
1/2 tbsp of ground sereh
1 cucumber
1/4 bunch cilantro (coriander)
1/4 bunch of mint
1/2 tbsp fish sauce
180 gr tuna filet
1/2 tbsp of java sugar
30 ml tamarinde water
1,5 tbsp sesame-oil
45 gr peanuts
1 tsp salt

Make tamarind water; mix 1 to 4 in warm water and put through a sieve. Or use ready made tamarind water.

Add the lemonjuice, sugar, sesameoil, ginger, fishsauce, chili, kaffir lime leaves and sereh to the tamarind water en stir.

Chop peanuts finely.

Cut the cilantro and mint finely and mix the two together.

Peel the cucumber and cut into slices of about 0,3 cm thick.

Tuna filet (about 1 cm thick) quickly sear on both sides for about 45/50 seconds each side and season with salt and pepper.

Cut the tuna into cubes or rectangles of about 10 gram each and put them on the cucumber slices. Cover with some of the sauce, top with the peanuts and last with the cut herbs. Serve immediately.

Lunch pita and an award!

Simone (junglefrog) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 22:00:39 +0000

Healthy lunchpita

I know I’ve talked about health and weight and more of those boring subjects more often, but I keep wanting to be a better person, so … yes, it’s time again to eat healthy and (a little) fatfree. (but not too much mind you) And this week while I was busy running around this perfect little healthy and filling lunch was all that I needed to get me through the day.

It was very quick to throw together and I saw the idea in a book of which I unfortunately cannot remember the name (cookbook overdose??) but I will write it down if I find the book again. To make this pita you ideally use wholewheat pita if you can find it (I could not) and then roughly add some of the below:

yogurt (use fulfat or greek yogurt as that has more flavor then the skinny yogurt)

canned tuna on water

cherry tomatoes

dried apricots, sliced

lamb’s lettuce or another kind of salad you like

red onion, very finely sliced

Add together in a bowl the yogurt, tuna, onion and the apricots and season with salt and pepper to your liking. Warm the pita’s and fill them with lettuce, add the tunasalad and some pieces of cherry tomatoes and enjoy! I mean, how fast is that for a good and healthy lunch!

I also received an award from the lovely Trissa, at Trissalicious, who was kind enough to give me the ‘Over the top” award. Trissa and I have only recently met but I fell in love with her blog and beautiful photos right away. She is a lovely person and writes amazingly witty stories, so if you haven’t checked out her blog, be sure to do so soon!

For this award I have the daunting task to answer 35 (!) questions with a one word answer…. Yeeezzz… that is hard, but I’ll give it a go!

Where is your cell phone? Here
Your hair? Blond
Your mother? Sweet
Your father? Handsome
Your favorite food? Pasta
Your dream last night? Cooking
Your favorite drink? Water
Your dream/goal? culinary photographer
What room are you in? Office
Your hobby? Cooking
Your fear? Failure
Where do you want to be in 6 years? Famous….
Where were you last night? The Hague
Something that you aren’t? Tidy
Muffins? Yes
Wish list item? Too much
Where did you grow up? Netherlands
Last thing you did? TV
What are you wearing? Jeans
Your TV? Ugly
Your pets? Cats
Friends? Yes
Your life? Wonderful
Your mood? Tired
Missing someone? No
Vehicle? Volkswagen Lupo
Something you’re not wearing? watch
Your favorite store? Duikelman
Your favorite color? Blue
When was the last time you laughed? Hour ago
Last time you cried? Almost this afternoon
Your best friend? Jacqueline
One place that I go to over and over? supermarket…
One person who emails me regularly? Mary
Favorite place to eat? Home

Pheww… Ok, I sort of cheated on a couple and have more then one word, but that’s ok right? Now for the hard part, I have to pass this on to 6 favorite bloggers, but I have so many that it is hard to pick and choose, but here are some of my favorites!

Valerie of The Chocolate Bunny

Ben on What’s Cooking

Sophie on Sophie’s foodiefiles

Jamie on Life’s a Feast

Lisa on Lisa is Cooking

Reeni on Cinnamon Spice & Everything Nice

Christmas cooking part 3, the fishy bit

Simone (junglefrog) — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 23:09:03 +0000

While searching for recipes for christmas I came upon a very tasty looking recipe that is kind of like a tuna sashimi. Raw tuna that is.

Now there are a couple of things you need to know; first of all; I’ve only very recently discovered that a good fish is not a fishy fish… At my parents home we never ate any fish and to be quite honest my mom wasn’t the best of cooks. She never liked cooking and would not go far beyond the traditional cooking of that time and age which – in Holland – was very much vegetables, potatoes and a piece of meat.

The only fish we ever got to eat was on a saturday lunch where we always had herring in tomato sauce. You know the type that comes in a tin. O and sometimes the sour variety which we call “Rolmops”. No idea if there is an english word for that so if anyone knows it, let me know.

So I did not grow up thinking I might actually like fish. In fact I have thought for the majority of my life that fish stinks terribly and tastes equally disgusting.

I am not sure when it slowly started changing, but I believe we were on holiday in Greece when we sat at a little restaurant by the harbour and they were preparing fresh fish at the BBQ. It tasted delicious so I – very bravely – decided to give it a try. And I was so pleasantly surprised that I found it delicious that from there on I slowly but surely started to eat more fish. I am still a bit cautious as there are still a few fish I really don’t like to eat but in general I can now safely say that I love to eat fish.

Tuna is another matter. Not that I don’t like it, but there seems to be very little sustainable tuna available so in general I try to not eat any tuna, as I try and eat only the sustainable ones such as tilapia and salmon. Ofcourse I am no expert on the matter so if the fishman tells me it is sustainable I can only believe him right?

Anyway, to make a long story short; we selected a tuna dish for christmas. Part of the reason being that I know that one of our friends who come for dinner loves tuna and in general doesn’t like most other food. (can you believe that by the way??? She eats macaroni, that is what she likes and some fish. That’s about it. Hates cooking too… I love her dearly but can’t understand why she doesn’t like to eat!! I can understand people that don’t like to cook, but how can you not like soooo many things that are soooo good? Well, I did end up with a boyfriend who doesn’t like cheese…. )

I’m getting a bit sidetracked here; so tuna… Now as for tuna. I am not a big fan of the raw tuna as it just doesn’t have enough taste for me.

Which is probably weird and maybe something to do with how it looks more then how it tastes. I just don’t think it looks appetizing. It has this weird dark red color which almost looks like regular meat. Regular raw meat that is.

Anyway, we picked the recipe and Tom prepared this one as he loves it and I don’t. But I was a bit disappointed by the flat taste of it. Now we had all of our little dishes one after the other so that might have been the problem. We had the salmon first which has a very distinct taste and then the tuna which tasted – well – like nothing much really. Maybe it needs more seasoning (the recipe called for soysauce, chili, chives and limejuice. Nothing more. So I am still not convinced we should be having that for dinner. I will try some other things tomorrow. I am thinking about having little filled cherry tomatoes with shrimpcocktail.

Anyway, here is the recipe for the tuna tartar

Tuna tartar

Print recipe

Serves	8
Prep time	10 minutes
Cook time	5 minutes
Total time	15 minutes
Meal type	Appetizer
Misc	Serve Cold

Ingredients

120g tuna (sliced into cubes)
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon limejuice
chiliflakes (from the grinder)
2 chives (finely chopped)

Directions


Mix the tuna cubes with the soysauce and the lemon juice. Add salt and chili to taste. If you don't like it hot, then don't use too much chili. Divide the tuna over 8 glasses and sprinkle with the chives.

And that’s it; you can hardly call it a recipe right?

Junglefrog Cooking » tuna

Oriental tuna on a bed of cucumber

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Christmas cooking part 3, the fishy bit

Tuna tartar

Ingredients

Directions

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