my alternate scholarship entry: seared ahi tuna

gwendolynalley — Fri, 6 Mar 2015 18:19:00 GMT

It starts with fish, fresh ahi tuna to be precise. And it starts with a whisper:

“Did you hear the tuna boat is in town this weekend?”

This tuna comes from the ocean that I see each day when I walk along the beach—the Pacific Ocean embraced between Channel Islands National Park and the Ventura and Santa Barbara county coastline.

The tuna boat goes out each month during the season from December to April and returns with its catch. Not just ahi but other fish as well, although the ahi is our favorite. When they have their limit, they pull in to the Ventura Harbor, less than five miles from my house. They join the Saturday fisherman’s market where each week we can pick up lobster, Santa Barbara spot prawns, shrimp, fish, crabs, whelk, and other delights when they are in season.

People hear about it come from all over southern California, and they line up to buy whole fish or fish that’s already butchered.

We usually buy a whole fish right off the boat—sometimes 20 pounds, sometimes 60, depending on how many friends we will be sharing it with. We let them clean it, and cut it into 2-3 pound chunks, and we take the belly. One day I will take the carcass and make soup but I have not been that adventurous a cook yet. I am, however, a very adventurous eater.

Often we have a huge tuna feast with friends. Someone will carve the toro for sashimi while we gather and tell stories. Some drink wine, others drink beer.

When the pan is smoking hot with coconut oil, we sear the thick ahi steaks for 30 seconds or so on each side. We slice the steaks to reveal the hidden succulent ruby red flesh, and lay them on the greens from our gardens using special “fish” plates. On the head of the plate, we mound brown rice with a blueberry for an eye. We scatter local blueberries, and walnuts, and some white stilton with dried apricots. We drizzle sesame oil on the fish, and use an orange champagne vinegrette and walnut or olive oil.

And then we gather around the table and let the wine and the stories wine flow.

To serve 3-4

Slice into 4 1” thick steaks:
1 pound fresh sushi grade ahi

Melt 1 T coconut oil then
Sear ahi steaks in smoking hot iron skillet
30 seconds each side

To Plate:

1” field greens
1” slices tuna drizzled with sesame oil
1T white stilton with dried apricot
1 T walnuts
2 T fresh bluberries

Champagne Citrus vinegar
Walnut or olive oil

Passport & Plate - Pecan/Walnut Rum Chocolate Chunk Pie

gwendolynalley — Fri, 6 Mar 2015 13:59:11 GMT

Ingredients
1 pie shell (if you make your own use vodka instead of water; if you buy the crust, avoid those with lard—you want one with butter)
3/4 cup dark corn syrup
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses or sorghum or honey
3 large slightly beaten eggs
1 3/4 cups shelled pecans/walnuts (halfs or pieces)
1/4 cup chocolate pieces
1 tsp vanilla
1 T dark rum
2 T melted butter
1/4 tsp salt

How to prepare this recipe
Anyone can make these easy pies! Cooking can be easy and fun so give them a try!

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Beat the eggs lightly with a fork in a big bowl. Mix in the in this order: brown sugar, corn syrup, salt, molasses, rum, vanilla, butter.

Spread pecans and chocolate chips across the pie shell (best if cooked in a glass pie pan) and bake at 350 degrees for an hour or until a knife stuck in comes out clean.

If the pan is overfull, you can put the extra in to any oven safe baking dish and cook it for a shorter time with the rest.

TIP: You can usually find glass pie pans in a thrift store. Buy crusts already prepared (check to see if they use lard! you want butter) and roll them out then lay them out in the glass pan; be sure to “marry” any creases or cracks by blending the edges together with your fingers. Crimp the rim for that homemade look.

The story behind this recipe
The Depression and the Dust Bowl sent my grandparents’ families to California, but they never changed how they ate: fried chicken, flour gravy, biscuits and cornbread with sorghum molasses—and pecans. My grandpa grew his own pecans because store-bought were too expensive. He and my grandma–with her beautifully gnarled arthritic hands– spent hours watching TV and shelling them so come Thanksgiving and Christmas, we’d have pecans for pecan pie and candied yams. I remember gray fall evenings climbing the trees with my cousins, shaking limbs until pecans rained down. We’d tell stories while shelling them together.

In my hometown, they used to grow walnuts. I grew up on Burl Street, so-named after walnut burls. Every house had a walnut tree in the yard; some even launched walnuts for us to find on our walk to school. We’d crack them open with our teeth, then check for spiders.

My mom made the crusts for pies, and I filled them. I used the pecan pie recipe from the tattered Betty Crocker cookbook but we replaced some of the corn syrup with sorghum molasses connecting us back to the family farm in Missouri.

When I moved away, I started experimenting. When I ran low on pecans, I added walnuts. When we were cooking and drinking rum spiced cider, I added rum. Another time, I added chocolate chips. And so my pecan pie recipe evolved and grew with me.

One Thanksgiving, I set housemates to shelling pecans from a huge jar my grandparents had given me. The house smelled of the oven warming, butter melting, and fresh nutmeg. Nutmeg? “We can’t find the pecans,” they complained. “It’s all shell!” They’d opened the wrong jar, but we found a laugh and a story.

I live with my husband and my son now, my grandparents are gone, and so is my mom. But each time I make a pecan and walnut pie, the love and the stories we shared are with me--and they travel with me too.

Art Predator

my alternate scholarship entry: seared ahi tuna

Passport & Plate - Pecan/Walnut Rum Chocolate Chunk Pie