Tuna Two Ways

Browsing through my recent posts I realize that the vast majority are cookbook recipes, as though I don't cook anything of mine - at least, nothing worth sharing with you. And that's not true, it just happens that when I make something off the cuff I don't pay much attention to what I am doing and so when requests come from my husband or friends to remake a certain dish I attempt to retrace my steps and, more often than not, am left with a blank. I am sure I am not the only one! But for the past couple weeks I have been watching MasterChef America and MasterChef Australia (which, by the way, I think is much better than the American version) and decided that, damn, I need to cook my own recipes more often and earn my keep.

And then the Sultan Center had fresh Saudi tuna on display so I decided I would also tackle my fear of cooking fish. Never a recipe for disaster, right? I am not uncomfortable with all seafood: I love shellfish and find preparing them fairly easy, except for maybe scallops and lobster. Fish, on the other hand, just seems tricky and temperamental. Maybe it will come out dry, maybe raw, maybe with hidden little bones - and what's this poaching in oil thing I've heard about? Fascinating.

Lemon Mint Drink

 If there is one thing a dry country does well, it's fruit juice. (And coffee, but that's another post.) Juices here (not just Kuwait, but all the Gulf states) are amazing; I had a watermelon-cherry combo in Dubai that made me throw back my head in surprised delight. Maybe (probably) it's the lack of the HFCS, but when I drink apple or orange or guava juice, it tastes exactly like the liquid form of those fruits. Which, you know, is the point.

And that brings me to mine (ha!): several weeks ago the outside temperature had cooled enough to make an evening walk enjoyable, so Seth and I wandered down to a shisha joint about a mile from our complex. (Can I take this moment to comment on how cheap it is to smoke shisha here? One hookah cost 750 fils - less than three dollars. Compare that to the 20 euro Seth and I spent at one place in Cyprus. Gah!) Anyway, I ordered a lemon mint juice and between the two of us, it was gone in about sixty seconds.