Weekend Herb Blogging #33! Strawberry Tomatoes and Grilled Tuna with Cherry Tomato Salsa.WHB Goes On the Road!

Let me just say right up front that these tomatoes are from Costco, a fact that I hope won't distress the Eat Local people too terribly, since some of my very favorite food bloggers are quite abuzz with the idea of eating local right now. Let's be realistic, in Utah the farmers markets don't even open until June, so there is no chance I could be doing that much eating local at this time of the year. Never fear, in July, August, and September I'll be eating produce from my very own garden, about as local as you can get.

Maybe it was planting all those tomato plants last weekend that made it so I couldn't resist these strawberry tomatoes when I saw them at Costco. They had that good tomato smell, which is the first thing I look for when I have to buy tomatoes, and the flavor was wonderful. They're slightly bigger than a cherry tomato, and with more of a strawberry shape.

The recipe for the Grilled Tuna with Cherry Tomato Salsa comes from my good friend Trudy, a talented cook herself. She made it for me at her fabulous loft in downtown Salt Lake, and this weekend when I ended up having a friend come for dinner I knew this was what I wanted to cook for him. Trudy used grape tomatoes in her salsa, and my friend agreed with me that next time I should cut the strawberry tomatoes a bit smaller for the salsa, but we both thought this version of a fresh tomato salsa over grilled fish was fantastic. Of course, since I'm The Woman Who Never Followed a Recipe In Her Life, I changed the proportions just a tiny bit in the salsa, mostly so I could use up a whole can of sliced olives. Trudy used a spicy rub on her tuna, but it was Friday night and I was feeling a bit lazy, so I used my old standby Pride of Szeged Fish Rub. Trudy's spicy rub was fantastic though, and you can be sure I'll share that recipe another time.

Grilled Tuna with Cherry Tomato Salsa
(enough salsa for 4-6 servings of fish)

tuna steaks, one per person
olive oil to rub on fish
Pride of Szeged Fish Rub, enough to rub over tuna

Cherry Tomato Salsa:
2 cups chopped cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, or strawberry tomatoes
1 can (2.25 oz.) sliced olives, chopped
3 T capers
1/4 red onion, chopped very small
juice and zest of one lemon
2 T extra virgin olive oil (use your best olive oil for this)

Combine all salsa ingredients, and let sit at room temperature about one hour for flavors to combine. After 45 minutes, start preheating grill to medium hot, then remove tuna from refrigerator, rub on both sides with olive oil and sprinkle with fish rub. Let fish come to room temperature before grilling. (This could easily be cooked on a ridged stove-top grill pan if you don't have an outdoor grill.)

When grill is medium-hot (you can only hold your hand there for a few seconds) grill tuna until medium rare, about 4 minutes per side. Cooking time will depend on the thickness of the tuna, but be careful not to overcook it. Serve tuna with salsa spooned over.

Weekend Herb Blogging Announcement:

Starting next weekend, WHB is going on the road every other weekend. The first guest host will be the incomparable Ilva from Lucullian Delights, one of the most faithful participants in WHB and the first person to offer to host if I was away traveling. Ilva will post the recap on Monday (in Italy) which means if you send her your contribution by the regular time (Sunday afternoon in Utah) you should be fine. (Send your links to i_beretta AT yahoo DOT it). Also be sure to link to Ilva in your post with the words Weekend Herb Blogging so people can find the recap on Monday (http://lucullian DOT blogspot DOT com). Of course I will forward any entries that come to me if people have not seen this announcement.

I think it will be great fun to see how other people interpret the recap, and I promise not to feel bad if people are more creative than I am in reporting about all the interesting herbs, plants, veggies, and flowers that people have been blogging about! There are currently five other people who have offered to be guest hosts, and I'm happy people like the idea of the event being hosted all around the world. If you might like to host sometime in the future, just send me an e-mail (kalynskitchen AT comcast DOT net). I'm keeping them in a folder in the order they have been received and I'll contact you a few weeks in advance to confirm a weekend that works for you.

Whether I'm hosting or not, I'll include all the recaps in the Weekend Herb Blogging Archives so people can check them out. (Thanks to another incomparable blogger, Farmgirl Susan, who noticed that I screwed up big time and the link for the archives wasn't working. It's fixed now!)

Of course, if you're more into animals than plants, check out Weekend Cat Blogging at Eat Stuff or Weekend Dog Blogging at Sweetnicks.

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