Fotocuisine

Grouper is not the only ingredient that’s seasonal in Florida right now. You can’t walk the neighborhood without a mango hitting you on the head. When I lived on the beach in the Tampa Bay area, my neighbor had a mango tree over the fence that divided our property. In June, I’d find dozens of mangoes (I don’t personally believe that mangoes ends in ‘es’ — where did that ‘e’ come from? Does one write of tangoes with one’s amigoes? But my spell-checker, and wikipedia says it’s so, therefore who am I to debate spelling) sitting in my lawn. My current neighbors aren’t as well stocked with mango trees, so I bought a few from my local market. I also found some local scallops on sale, U-12s, so I grabbed a few of those. Mango and scallops might be considered Caribbean, but I wanted to do some Asian spice, so I went for a sriracha-glaze, with a mango-bacon risotto.

As fate would have it, What’s For Lunch Honey is having a mango-themed challenge until July 14th, which is actually Bastille Day in another coincidence which is probably completely irrelevant to mangoes. But, it’s enough coincidence that we’ll play along and have a lot of fun.

Is Mango the next Tango?

MMMmmmmmm, Tuna. So, the whole seared tuna thing is about as cliche as you can get these days. Even Nebraska steak houses have a seared tuna appetizer, and there’s not much originality you can present with the fish these days.

On the other hand, why is that different from a steak bearnaise or a shellfish bisque? It’s relatively new, but it is somewhat of a fusion classic in modern cuisine. It could be worse — it could be fried mozerella sticks or something.

My favorite restaurant in South Beach Miami is Nemo’s (which opened long before Pixar). One of their signature dishes is a softball-sized chunk of tuna, rolled in nori seaweed, seared, and presented with a sesame seared rice-ball. It’s too good for words.

Today, one of my fish suppliers had AAA-grade sashimi yellowfin tuna on sale, ruby-red and glistening, and the muscle grains were tight and compact. So, I did my part to riff off of the Nemo’s.

I made a honey-lime-soy glaze, and served the tuna over a glaze-wasabi stir fry of vegetables and pad thai noodles.

toooooooona