Monday, August 08, 2011

Garden Pasta with Grilled Tuna

Garden Pasta
Mmm no recipe here, it was the kind of night where you grab a glass of wine, head out into the garden and say, "whatdaya got for me?" this night the garden gave me two japanese eggplants, two squash, two zucchini and a handful of San Marzano tomatoes to I took all the vegetables and sliced them the long way into thirds, put a little olive oil on them with salt and pepper and grilled them each side four minutes. I also took some tuna steaks and gave them the same treatment at the vegetables. 


While those were cooking I took a red onion from the garden along with a handful of basil and tarragon - I sauted the onion in a bit of butter and olive oil, added some garlic and when they were soft added two spilt of champagne  - when that had cooked down a bit I added the herbs to make a nice champagne herb sauce - yes, it tastes as good as it sounds. 


While the sauce was doing its thing I boiled a box of rigatoni to all dente. When all were cooked I cut up the vegetables and tune, and in a large bowl combined the veggies, tuna, pasta, and herb champagne sauce - mixed it all together gave it a little salt, pepper and parmesan cheese and a great dinner was on the table - so simple, so easy, so awesome to get almost all of it out of the garden. I must, repeat must move to a state with a longer growing season, one that has fig trees - that will be my barometer of the locale...


Me: "excuse me, realtor person, would it be possible to have a flourishing fig tree in the backyard here?"
Realtor: "No ma'am, this zone would not allow a fig tree to grow here year round, you'd have to cellar it in the winter."
Me: "I've seen enough - we'll continue either south or west from here, thank you for your time."


I got a manicure today - so of course I cut the nail with my big knife while chopping swiss chard, that's the way things always go, I never stub my toe unless I've just paid $30 for a manicure, and you always have the best hair dat of your live the day you are going to get it all chopped off.


Rating = Damn Good (and local too)

2 comments:

Allison said...

My grandmother had a fig tree outside the back door of her house in Bessemer Alabama. There are fig trees on the UofA campus in Tucson. Both places have pretty miserable summers, however. Figs don't ripen in Seattle. I miss the figs, we'd sit outside and eat them off the tree until she'd holler at us to stop or there wouldn't be any fig preserves for us. Your garden sounds delightful.

Allison said...

How are things? I've been reading you at Wine Snitch. We thought of you today as we were wine tasting in Walla Walla. It's unbelievable how many wineries there are here. Hope you're well.