Grilled Tuna with Honey Pepper Sauce

We had some tuna steak in the refrigerator that I wanted to cook already, and a recipe for honey grilled salmon by Sarina Fores in the Assumption Cookbook. I tweaked the recipe a little bit (we didn't have pineapple juice so I brought out a small can of tuna chunks instead), and this is what I came up with.

Ingredients:

1 slab tuna fillet (good for two)
vegetable oil
salt and pepper

Honey Pepper Sauce:
3/4 cup honey
1/3 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
a small can pineapple chunks
juice of 1 lemon
2 tbsp vinegar
2 tsp olive oil
2 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 tsp paprika (we actually didn't have any paprika on hand so I used a steak rub that had pepper and paprika in it)
1/4 tsp garlic powder

1. Rub the tuna fillet with vegetable oil and season with salt and pepper. Grill around 2 - 3 minutes on each side.

2. In a saucepan combine al ingredients for honey pepper sauce and cook over low-medium heat. Stir occasionally until sauce begins to boil. Turn down heat and simmer for 13 minutes or until slightly thick.

3. Pour some of the honey pepper sauce and the pineapple chunks over grilled tuna and serve with extra sauce on the side.

The sauce was yummy, although it would've been okay with less sugar (it was quite sweet!). We also had a lot of sauce left over, so the sauce is probably good enough for 3 or 4 people.

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Chinese Panfried Chicken Fillets

Sorry for the uncreative title. This dish started out as a craving for Hainanese chicken. True Hainanese chicken, however, takes a couple of hours to prepare and cook, and we were already hungry, so that was out of the question. Meanwhile, Mike wanted to do something with the 9-Minute Marinator. And this is what we ended up making.

Ingredients:

2 pieces filleted chicken breast (total of 350 g)
pinch of salt
1 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tsp rice wine
.5 inch piece ginger, bruised
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1/4 onion (we should've used spring onion, but we didn't have any)
sesame oil

We put the first seven ingredients plus 1 tsp sesame oil in the marinator and allowed it to marinate. After that, we pan-fried the chicken in a generous amount of sesame oil on a low-medium flame, five minutes uncovered on each side. Then we turned the fire to low and covered the pan, frying it for an additional 6 minutes, turning once.

After that we set the chicken aside, and we poured about 3 tbsp of water into the pan and scraped up all the chicken fat into it to make a sauce. We poured the sauce over the chicken fillets.

We served it with a dipping sauce of minced ginger, chili garlic paste, a drop of sesame oil and light soy sauce.

The dish was quite yummy and was gone in about 5 minutes. :) The thinner parts of the fillet were slightly dry, though, so the next time we'll take the chicken out of the pan a little earlier. Mike also suggested we try adding a teaspoon of Chinese black vinegar to the marinade.

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The 9-minute Marinator

I have a confession to make. I really get a kick out of watching Infomercials, especially the ones about products that have to do with the home (kitchen gadgets, cleaning gadgets, and furniture-related items).

Mike doesn't share my enthusiasm for Infomercials (I suppose few people do) ... except for ... the Infomercial on the 9-minute Marinator!

So last weekend, I decided to bite the bullet and shell out the money for an early boyfriend-girlfriend anniversary gift for my husband. And I ordered it. It was the first time I'd ever ordered something from an Infomercial.



(While looking for the above picture, I got jealous when I found out that the Canadian company that sells it offers a chopper and two vacuum-seal food canisters along with the marinator! The only thing that comes after "And wait, there's more!" on the Philippine version of the Infomercial is a pair of bendable chopping boards. Grrr.)

It arrived at home yesterday.

So last night we made tuna steaks. We threw in some lemon juice, butter, salt, and pepper along with the tuna, in the Marinator for 5 minutes, and grilled the tuna on our electric grille.

Tonight we'll try real steaks.

Yummm ..... I can't wait to get home.

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Restaurant reviews: In-yo and Galileo

It was my birthday last week, so in a span of a few days, we got to celebrate at two supremely delicious restaurants.

Restaurant number 1 was In-yo, a house converted into a restaurant along Esteban Abada, parallel to the part of Katipunan Avenue fronting Ateneo. I'd passed by there several times before and had heard good reviews about it, but given that it's priced out of our normal everyday-fare range, I'd never stopped to eat there. Until last week.




The place is very nicely decorated, classy and cosy, but it's the food--fusion--that you'll be writing home about. My husband was skeptical at first: "At these prices, the food had better be good," but he was definitely not disappointed, and the food in fact exceeded his expectations.



The prices are close to hotel prices: P1000 for the degustacion (a set meal where you get to taste several different courses), and around P400 for an entree, but to be quite frank, the food was better than I'd eaten at many hotels. The pumpkin soup was the best I'd ever eaten, the halibut pasta was divine, and the lamb shanks made our eyes grow big with delight at the first bite.

Needless to say, we were raving about In-yo for days after, and we'll definitely be back.

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Restaurant number 2 was Galileo, a little Italian deli and restaurant along Calbayog Street in Mandaluyong. The restaurant is decorated to make guests feel like they're walking into the wine cellar of a monastery, with ceiling-to-floor bottles of Italian wine, and simple wooden benches to sit on.




For what you get, the food is quite reasonable. The set meal is P450 (VAT included), for which you get a glass of house wine, antipasto (a platter of cheese and cold cuts), pasta (your choice among the day's specials), and a cup of coffee or tea. We each got a set meal and also shared a salad and an order of bruschetta and with all that, plus the bread basket we'd started with, we were absolutely stuffed. The a la carte entrees are less than P300.



The food is scrumptious!

In-yo Fusion Cuisine: Estaban Abada St., Loyola Heights, QC, 9286459, closed on Mondays. Galileo Enoteca: 80 Calbayog corner Malinao St., Mandaluyong, 5344633 or 5320482.

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