Spicy Balinese Long Bean Salad with Pan-Seared Tuna

Tim and I tried another recipe from my Lobong culinary experience in Ubud, Bali since many of the ingredients overlapped with the chicken satay and peanut sauce...  tonight's recipe was a pan seared tuna steak on top of a spicy, fragrant long bean and cabbage salad.  

And by "spicy," I really mean, "burned our faces off."  Oops.

Despite the excessively pedas salad, this dish was still good.  Perhaps next time I would use fewer chilis.  Far fewer. 

The recipe seems to be Chef Dewa's riff on the traditional Balinese dish, ikan bakar sambal matah, which is grilled fish with a raw chili sambal.  He put the sambal and fish on some veggies and made it into a healthy and fresh tasting salad.

Here's the recipe, adapted and with my notes:

Ikan Bakar Sambal Matah Salad

Adapted from the Lobong Culinary Experience

Ingredients:

100 grams of tuna (Tim and I upped the tuna factor and got one super fresh tuna steak each)

15 shallots, halved and sliced super thin (This measurement is for the tiny Indonesian shallots... if using regular French style shallots, maybe more like 4 or 5)

10 bird's eye chilis, minced (Based on my experience, I would recommend fewer unless you want to lose functionality in your lips and tongue) 

5 kaffir lime leaves, shredded

4 lemongrass stalks, tender center white part only, thinly sliced

1 piece torch ginger (My grocery store was out of this, so I improvised by grating/micro-planing about an inch long chunk of regular ginger)

100 grams of cabbage, shredded (Chef Dewa says crunchy romaine is a good substitute, too)

100 grams of long beans, sliced into pea-sized pieces (You could substitute regular green beans here)

Handful of cherry tomatos, halved

90 ml of coconut oil (I used the fresh coconut oil made by the Lobong family, which was delicious. The only problem: it had solidified in our air conditioned apartment, so I had to dip the bottle in warm water to loosen it up... didn't that problem when cooking outside at the Lobong compound... don't substitute this with another oil, though, as the coconutty flavor is essential)

Squeeze of lime juice (my addition)

Directions:

1. Toss all ingredients except tuna together in a salad bowl.

2. Lightly salt and pepper tuna steak, then sear both sides briefly in vegetable oil over medium-high heat.

3. Either top the salad with the tuna, or break the tuna up and gently toss it with the salad.

4. Enjoy and cross your fingers that you don't blow up from the heat of the chilis.

Roasted Cabbage with Lemon

I'll admit it: cabbage is far from my favorite vegetable.

I bought a head of green cabbage from the CSA this week because the winter veggie selection is getting pretty slim... I wasn't super interested in a slaw of any sort. I wanted something warm, and this roasted cabbage recipe from the other Martha, via foodgawker, via eat.repeat, looked like a potential winner- the photos looked really tasty.

It was a winner! Super simple: cut the head of cabbage into eighths, brush with olive oil and salt and pepper, roast at super high heat and sprinkled with lemon juice. I bet it would like some garlic and/or red pepper flakes, too. This is basically the same recipe I use for roasting broccoli and cauliflower... makes sense since they're all in the Brassica family.

Give it a try! We served it with simple sauteed chicken in wine sauce, a la Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything."

Sweet & Spicy Coleslaw

Slaw -
1/2 cup golden raisins
1 small head napa cabbage (2 pounds) thinly sliced (I used basic red & green cabbage)
2 carrots, shredded (2 cups)
1 granny smith apple cut into 1/2 inch cubes

Dressing -
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup honey
2 tablespoons spicy brown mustard
1 jalapeno pepper, seeds and stem removed, minced
2 teaspoons coarse salt
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Soak the raisins in boiling water for 15 minutes. Drain them and toss together with cabbage, carrots and apples.

Mix the dressing.

Throw them together and you're good.

Actually came out pretty darn good...brought it to a friend's house...but she was too tipsy to give an opinion of it.