Crispy chickpea and tuna salad

This is a variation of a recipe I saw on Serious Eats that I thought had some good flavors, but didn't combine them in the best way to really bring them out. You might disagree so take a look at the original too if you think you might want to make it. ... Now that I look back on that recipe, I see that they adapted from Nami-Nami who got it from Pertelote who posted what I presume to be her original creation back in May '05. Her version; with its dried chickpeas, copious roasted piquillo peppers and smoked paprika; is rather different than what I made, but sounds pretty darn good, so clearly this is a dish amenable to variations. Here's mine:

Ingredients:
1 15-ounce can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
5 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons whole cumin seeds
1 teaspoon whole fennel seeds
1/2 teaspoon chili flakes
1 handful small red and yellow bell peppers (or one standard-sized pepper), thinly sliced
1/2 roasted red pepper, chopped
1 medium onion, diced
2 teaspoons hot paprika
1 4-5 ounce can tuna, flaked and, if not packed in its own juices or olive oil, drained [I'm a recent convert from supermarket pouch tuna to canned bonito del Norte tuna from the local Spanish market. The top brands, like Ortiz, can get pretty pricey, but the cheaper ones are still pretty good.]
2 Tablespoon champagne vinegar
1 large handful flat-leaf parsley, stems removed and leaves chopped
Salt and, optionally, pepper

1. Heat half the olive oil in an 8-inch non-stick or cast iron pan over medium-high heat. When the oil is shimmering, add the whole spices, chili flakes and the chickpeas. Cover with splatter screen because all three will start to pop. Cook, stirring frequently, until chickpeas are a deep toasty brown--maybe five minutes. Remove to a bowl, including the spices, but leaving as much oil as possible. Add a good pinch of salt, mix well and try to restrain yourself from eating them like popcorn. Or forget the rest of the recipe and eat them like popcorn; That's a fine choice too.

2. Turn the heat to medium-low and add the rest of the olive oil, the onion, the fresh peppers and another pinch of salt. Sweat for ~10 minutes, until the onion is soft and translucent, turning down the heat if it starts to brown. Add the roasted red peppers and paprika a few minutes from the end.

3. While the onions and peppers are cooking, put tuna, parsley and vinegar in a large bowl. When the vegetables are ready, dump them in and scrape out the pan into the bowl. Stir to combine. Mix in the chickpeas just before (adjusting the seasoning, and) serving to maintain their crispiness.


Both the chickpeas and the whole spices give a nice extra crunch to the textures of the salad, and the cooked chickpeas have the light, slightly puffed texture that good french fries can get from the escaping steam. It's personal preference if you prefer that to the creaminess of raw chickpeas; I know what my choice is, particularly against the softness of the soft sweated onions and peppers and the unctuousness of the olive oil.

The salad is fragrant with spices and bright with the vinegar and fresh with parsley. Those three elements are blended together into a backdrop to the earthy chickpeas, whose flavor have been deepened and rounded out by the toasting, sweet tuna and savory peppers. There are nice moments when you crack open a fennel or cumin seed, boosting that flavor and changing the whole character of that mouthful. I also suspect that the sauce would be a mucky sludge if all those spices were in powder form so I'm pleased to have avoided that.

If there's a weakness here, it's the tuna which has a little trouble standing up to the other elements and only pokes up its head when you find a particularly large piece. There's nothing about these flavors that requires fish; beef or lamb would be a nice substitutions. Or, if you wanted to go vegan, firm tofu's texture would work and it should absorb the flavors nicely.

Teriyaki tuna and tofu

Here's a dish I threw together tonight that I think turned out well enough to share. I now compulsively photograph everything I cook so even though I didn't know I'd be posting about it until it's done, it's fully documented.

Ingredients:

1 tuna steak, about 1/3 pound - cut in 2 inch cubes
1/3 pound extra firm tofu - cut in 2 inch cubes

marinade:
a few glugs of soy sauce
half as much sake
a generous pinch of brown sugar
finely grated ginger
white pepper
red pepper
(obviously, I didn't measure so I'm not going to make quantities up now)


2 scallions, sliced thin - white and green separated
4 leaves bok choy - sliced thin - stem and leaves separated
1 carrot, in very thin strips

2 eggs

squeeze of lemon
drizzle of sesame oil

white rice, cooked however you cook your white rice


1. Mix the marinade ingredients. Add tuna and tofu. Marinate one hour, turning half way through.

2. Drain marinade into a small bowl and set aside. Pat tuna dry.

3. Heat a Tablespoon of oil to nearly smoking in a medium non-stick pan. Sear tuna for no more than 30 seconds, flip and sear again. Remove.

4. Repeat with tofu for about the same time. Remove to bowl with tuna. Keep someplace warm.

5. Add a bit more oil to the pan as the previous Tablespoon is now all over your stovetop, shirt and glasses. Actually, you might want to go wash your face at this point.

6. Give the oil a moment to heat up then add the bok choy stems and the white part of the scallion. Stir fry until wilted. Add the rest of the vegetables. Stir fry briefly. I let the cabbage get a bit browned for some extra flavor, but it's up to you.

7. Remove pan from heat. Crack in the two eggs and stir to lightly scramble. When eggs are not quite dry, remove to bowl.

8. Pack a bowl with white rice. Top with four cubes of tuna and four of tofu. Add a third of the vegetable mixture. Pour a third of the marinade on and finish with lemon and sesame oil.

If you want a proper restaurant-style teriyaki sauce, you'll want to make a bit more of the marinade, bring it to a boil in a small pot, add no more than a Tablespoon of cornstarch (dissolved in cold water) and let thicken. Personally, I didn't want to let everything else get cold while I did that. But if you're keeping everything someplace warm as I suggested above, it would probably be an improvement.

The tuna and tofu absorbed plenty of flavor from the marinade but still maintained their own character and texture. You could use meat or shrimp instead but then you'd definitely want to boil the sauce for a while. Or you could use all tofu. You could mix and match the vegetables, too. Mushrooms or peppers would work well. Maybe even broccoli, but I think that would throw off the quick cooking and you wouldn't the bright fresh flavors I got.

So, quick, easy and tasty. Fresh and fairly healthy. I'm rather pleased with it.

CSA week five - tuna avocado salad

I really did intend to make the beer battered avocado, and I may still (although a fritter version with shrimp and hot peppers looks appealing too), but I forgot that beer batter needs to rest for an hour to two and I was hungry now. So I scanned over the the California cuisine recipe list to try to get a sense of it so I could adapt its general culinary zeitgeist to whatever ingredients I could scrounge up. Here's what I came up with:

Tuna avocado salad

1/2 Monroe avocado, chopped coarsely
7 oz. tuna (packed in a pouch not a can. The pouch tuna really is worth the extra cost.)
2 T finely chopped onion
1 T finely chopped jalapeño
2 T finely chopped black olives (I don't really know what kind. They taste kalamata-esque but they're not pitted or as dried)

dressing:
1 T lemon juice
1 T champagne vinegar
2 T olive oil
1 T Dijon mustard

salt and pepper to taste. And herbs if you can figure out what might go with all of that. Basil maybe? Or parsley? (I settled on parley, which I mixed into the leftovers. It added a nice herbal note without overwhelming the other flavors.)

mix the dressing, mix the salad, mix the dressing into the salad. And you're done.

Serve over greens or in a wrap. That would be appropriately Californian.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I think the various flavors matched nicely, although that may have been helped considerably by the relatively bland Monroe avocado. Visually, it's quite striking with the chunks of black and green against the tan tuna background. Some nice textural contrasts too or I could mash it up a bit and make a sandwich spread out of it.