August 14th, 2009

one surprise dinner that almost did not happen :)

Finalmente! A food post! Can’t believe how much I miss cooking. The thing is, when I move to a new place, it takes me a while to start cooking again, I need to do ingredients research before I start. Unbelievably, it is hard to find good ingredients in Indonesia, let alone organic produce. I thought living in a village, most of the fruits and vegetables are (almost) natural, but they are not. I have been trying my best to find ingredients here, and if I really could not I have to drive 1,5 hours to the nearest city where they have organic vegetable shop or drive 4 hours only to get a bag of miso. It is that hard here. But during this ingredients research period, I found some good things around me that I will share with you soon. First let me tell you what made me cooking after this long long pause: baby tuna, catched by my father’s friend, Pak Rukun, delivered in a huge ice box to our house, directly fron the sea.

It was the day after the second party, I was so tired so I stayed at home when everybody went to the Kelud volcano. The baby tuna was very fresh and beautiful, made me want to make dinner for everybody. After hours preparing the tuna (I could not clean it myself, could not bring myself to cut head…too sad, imagining nemo and all the baby tuna family in the sea…my tata helped me), I did all the cutting and filleting myself…hard work and I am quite proud of the result, as it was my first time doing this. At 07.30 pm, everything is almost ready, the potatoes, the japanese sweet potatoes and carrots were in the oven, and Marco called: They wanted to eat chinese outside! Mamma mia!

I was planning to cook: Pasta with raddichio, Baked baby tuna with roasted vegetables…for 9 people! Who would eat all of the food?

In the end, I did not cook the pasta, but the vegetables and baby tuna were already in the oven. Everybody arrived at 9, Marco felt so guilty that he only ate a little at the chinese restaurant, so he could eat my food. Lorenso, Bruno and my sister ate with me as well, having the second round of dinner. I must say, in the end it turned out fine, the food was simple but delicious! and Marco brought back some firework as the bribe :) Love you!

Baked Baby Tuna with Roasted Vegetables

For 9 people

Cooking soundtrack: Nightmare on Wax

9 Fillet of baby tuna, around 150g each

5 potatoes, wash and cut into 2 cm cubes

3 japanese sweet potatoes, wash and cut horizontally, 1 cm width

5 carrots, wash and quartered lengthwise

Extra virgin olive oil

Sea salt and pepper

A twig of rosemary

Pistachio oil

Himalayan pink salt

Preheat the oven to 220 C

Marinate the baby tuna with olive oil, sea salt and pepper. Transfer to ovenproof dishes and cover with baking paper.

Transfer all vegetables to a big bowl, drizzle with olive oil, add salt, and pepper, and rosemary and toss, transfer all to roasting tray, roast until golden. 10 minutes before the vegetables are ready, place the baby tuna on the upper slot of the oven. Baked for 10 minutes.

Remove the tuna and the vegetables from oven, leave it for 5 minutes before transfer to serving plate.

Transfer the tuna and vegetables to the serving plates, drizzle tuna with extra virgin olive oil and drizzle the vegetable with pistachio oil (optional). Grate some pink himalayan salt on top (optional).

Buon apetito!

Filed under: food, life