Fishy Otti

By chance rather than by design I ended up cooking a lot of fishy meals this week. The star meal of the week was definitely Tuna with a Pistachio Crust and papaya salsa, taken from the Ottolenghi cookbook. I used tuna chunks instead of a loin piece simply because it was cheaper! Instead of coating the piece of tuna with a crust of pistachio and mustard I scattered the crust over the top of the chunks. It seemed to work just fine that way.

The salsa was really very pretty, and tasted just as lovely as it looked.



I served this dish on steamed new potatoes with peashoots. It was a good dinner, but the salsa does take quite a while to prepare because of all the peeling, chopping and mixing. On the otherhand, you could make it a day or two ahead. Next time I may swap the mustard in the crust for wasabi which I have a hunch may work a little better with the salsa.

A close runner up in the week's favourites was fillets of fish served with green tahini sauce and pomegranate seeds. I dished this one up with roasted aubergines and couscous. Another Ottolenghi special. It seems I'm cooking my way through the book! Again I used a cheaper piece of fish than was recommended; haddock worked perfectly OK so who need sea bream?!



Papaya Salsa
1/3 Papaya, diced
1/3 Mango, diced
1/3 cucumber, peeled, deseeded and diced
1/2 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
3g fresh ginger, grated
1/3 red onion, finely chopped
grated zest and juice of 1/2 lime
2 tspn thai fish sauce
2 tspn olive oil
1 tspn caster sugar

Mix everything together, season with salt and pepper, then chill for at least an hour before serving.

Super quick post this week. My sister's getting married on saturday and we're catering it ourselves so there's not a whole lot of time to spare for blogging!