Polenta Puttanesca

This turned out really great, but the polenta made it quite heavy. After one serving I was feeling quite fat and happy.

Polenta
2 Anchovy Fillets
3 cloves garlic
3 TB Olive Oil
1/2 cup pitted olives (I used kalamata, but wanted to use black)
2 TB capers, drained
1 28oz can whole tomatoes, drained, seeded (at least somewhat)
1/2 Cup Red Wine
red pepper flakes
1 can tuna

I went straight from How to Cook Everything for the polenta, but a recipe isn't hard to come by. This one is pretty close to Bittman's, except that I cooked it soft, so really only about 20-25 minutes, and spooned it into bowls.

The sauce was an amalgam of Bittman and a similar one in Cooks Illustrated. I heated up the oil, medium low (I didn't really have a good size skillet for this, so I actually used our stir-fry pan...), crushed the garlic, and cooked it and the anchovies until the anchovies were entirely broken up and the garlic was golden (3-4 minutes, maybe). Add the wine and reduce it about half. Crush the tomatoes, and add with the remaining ingredients. Increase heat to medium-high, cook until saucy, add a touch of oil.

We spooned the sauce over the polenta. We used the remaining polenta for breakfast the next morning (just topped it with a fried egg). Then we tossed the remaining sauce with pasta for a quick dinner.

Tuna Cabbage Rolls

This goes down as one of my more spectacular failures. We had about half a cabbage head left from some potstickers A made over the weekend, and I thought trying to come up with a cabbage roll recipe would be fun. I hold that, conceptually, this was a good idea, but there was one fundamental flaw: Napa Cabbage.

Long, narrow cabbage leaves do not rolls make. You need a wide-leaf cabbage instead. It quickly became apparent that the size simply did not allow for rolling anything. That, and I think I over-boiled the leaves, so it wouldn't really roll without tearing anyway. What we were ultimately reduced to was a plate of a tuna/rice mixture with bland, boiled cabbage on the side. All in all, a depressing dinner.

But... the theoretical recipe, that I still believe can work...

1 head Cabbage
1 can Tuna
about 2 c cooked Rice
Lime
1 Onion
Ginger
salt and pepper
red pepper flakes

Boil the cabbage for 5 minutes or so - get it tender and rollable, but not overcooked. Steaming might work as well.

Drain the tuna, dice the onion. Mix tuna, minced ginger, salt, pepper, red pepper, and any other spices that might marry well with the flavors. Squeeze a lime wedge or two over it. Sautee the onion over medium heat for 3-5 minutes, increase the heat, add the tuna and sear for a couple of minutes. Remove from heat, mix in rice.

Heat oven to 375.

(I didn't get to this part, so I'm just speculating here, extrapolating from some recipes I consulted) Put a little tuna rice mixture on a cabbage leaf, roll tightly and place in a baking dish. Add liquid about an inch deep to the baking dish and cook for 30 minutes. Water would work as well as anything, but I bet white wine with some vinegar, maybe, would work great, too.

I also had plans for a sauce that was kind of like a mayonnaise. I had reserved some of the onion, and had a couple of egg yolks I needed to use. I was going to whisk the yolks with some champagne vinegar and salt, then slowly add in a little oil (maybe sesame). Then I was going to flavor it with onion, some minced garlic, maybe a touch of soy sauce and some lime. It was going to be delicious... A is suspicious of anything that involves uncooked egg yolks, maybe moreso egg yolks that have been sitting in the refrigerator for 3 days, and the whole thing had collapsed by this point, anyway, so we went without the sauce.

It could work, though.

Tuna with Tomatoes, Parsnips, Spinach, and Chickpeas

This is one of those "clean out the pantry because I don't want to go to the store" kind of recipes, but it's pretty good, easy, and made almost entirely of stuff that I typically have on hand. A. was initially suspicious of this, but seemed to like it.

2 cans Tuna
2 cans diced Tomatoes
2 cans Chickpeas
2 Parsnips
Spinach
Onion
Garlic
Rice

Steam parsnips. Sautee onion and garlic for about4-5 minutes. Add tomatoes, parsnips, and chickpeas and bring just to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 5-7 minutes. Add tomatoes and a couple handfuls of spinach and simmer, covered, for another 5 minutes or so. Serve over rice.

We had 3 good-sized servings leftover; could probably have stretched it into four. The parsnips were the one thing that I added that weren't standard on-hand ingredients, and I didn't actually steam them beforehand. I would steam them the next time, though, as they didn't get as tender as I would have hoped.