Valentine's Day

All afternoon off to prepare tonight's romantic dinner. And mind the two boys and however many of their friends drop in.
First stop is the ever excellent Connolly's of Finglas, the smallest and best fishmonger in Dublin (lads, when this blog goes stratospheric a few fresh John Dorys will guarantee plenty of fish recipes, if you get my drift).
Result, some fresh tuna. I toy with the idea of gilding the lily with some scallops or prawns but decide to go large with tuna, since larger boy will be over it like a rash.  Haven't had tuna for a while as it's not sustainable, mmkay?
But romantic meals call for indulgence, stuff the planet and sod the grandchildren, so something endangered is getting eaten tonight.
On the bike home the meal starts to come together - seared tuna, a Vietnamese type noodle salad, chilli jam and, get this, tuna tartare as well! I'll serve a chilli jam seperately so the other parts can be child-friendly.
Then a Tiramisu to follow.   No sense getting over elaborate, I've done the seared tuna many times before and how hard can any of the other components be?
First off, pick up smaller boy and forage the remaining ingredients in the Fairview locale. Ta da!

That was Fresh Market for the veg, Kennedy's for the Italian stuff (refer to Connollys above regarding sponsporship opportunties).
Now some might say it is a bit sad photographing and blogging about your shopping, but it could have been worse - I found another bag of stuff after putting the above away and only just resisted the urge to lay everything out again.

First up is the chilli jam. I can't find any definitive version of it so have to wing an amalgam: 2 dutch chillis, 1 red onion, garlic and ginger and some tomato puree.
Larger boy wants to help, so what better test of knife skills and hand hygiene than chilli and onion brunoise?

Sweat them off for a 20 minutes then add the wet ingredients and let stew down (not going for a pectin based "proper" jam).

Quick taste and it's surprisingly hot.  I presume all that fat and sugar has extracted all the essential chilli oils, so maybe deseed the next time. While she's cooking down time to get the salad ready.  Ideally it would have been the Tiramisu first or next but to start it I need to free up a mixing bowl currently soaking the rice noodles.
(aside here - the chef at Saba had this top tip to soak noodles in warm or even cold water rather than boiling them. I've been getting mixed results with this even after going beyond his times, and to cut to the chase, these noodles end up being described as "crunchy" after 40 minutes in warm water).
Here's the salad ingredients:

And here, gulp, lurks the mandoline, like a flesh shredding ski-jump of doom

I am slightly apprenhensive about this as I want to julienne the carrots and cucumbers so won't be able to use the guard, and will have the vertical blades deployed as well as horizontal.
Plus, this has only just healed after 2 weeks

and I've just gone and done this to my right (dominant) hand.

Wonder how busy casualty get's on Valentine's Day?

Somehow survive and produce this

This gets salted, left for 30 minutes, rinsed then squeezed in muslin and blotted on kitchen paper. Incidently, highly recommend a bit of muslin in the kitchen as it comes in very handy for draining frozen spinach, drying salads etc.  Just make sure and have your spell checker on to avoid a visit from Al Quaeda.

That done, mix in the noodles and chillis and basic Thai dressing (pak choi and coriander   parsley go in just before serving to stop them getting too soft).  Basic dressing is the trinity of chilli, garlic and ginger, mixed in sesame oil, fish sauce, sugar, lime juice and/or rice vinegar.  I'll use the same dressing to briefly marinate the tuna steaks before cooking.
So here's the dressing, start of the tartare and Marsala wine reduction: schedules are slipping and it's time get the Tiramisu assembled.
A bit of cursory research finds some child friendly variants, but none appeal so it's going to be old school.
What could be more romantic than small children+alcohol+coffee+raw eggs?
So the kids help make a raw custard with mascarpone and egg whites folded in. Once again the dread yolk spot sullies the whites, but I definitely get it out this time (or do I?)

The instructions are to dip the lady's fingers in the Marsala and coffee, but "not too much". Myself and larger boy attempt this but its the blind leading the blind and we run out of reduced Marsala half way through so have to quickly (i.e. incompletely) reduce some more.
The end result, after less than the recommended hour plus chilling, is a worthy candidate for cooksuck.com

(A dairy based simulation of the Trilobite extinction event)

Back to the entree to save the day. One of the 3 tuna steaks has been firmed in the freezer to be roughly minced and mixed with half a cucumber and 1 shallot:

Time to press the marinated tuna steaks into sesame seeds, sear on the trusty cast iron pan then assemble with the cunning use of my solitary timbale. Voila!

One of my better presentations, the only let down has the jam which I attempted to pipe into artfully casual swirls but instead ended up sploging like ketchup. But it eats well, particularly with a fine 2007 Sonnenuhr Trocken Riesling from Lilac Wines.
Cheers!