Saturday, August 7, 2010

Missing Aitutaki

This week I tried to catch up on editing photos rather than going out in the rain and now we have visitors. Where has the summer gone?! I'm slowly making my way through the zillions of photos from the Cook Islands.

The underwater photos take a while to look at because I desperately miss snorkeling through and seeing so many beautiful fish. Nature never ceases to amaze me. We also have a lot of blurry underwater shots - taking photos of moving creatures in water is a challenge, but we managed to capture some really spectacular things.

I felt a bit bad checking out the fish through the day and then eating them for dinner, but I guess that's the island way of life. This is a photo of some Chaetodon Auriga Butterfly Fish and 3 stripe Damsel Fish.

Since I was feeling nostalgic I wanted to surprise Stefan and create Ika Mata, which is a fantastic dish that is very typical to the area.

The ingredients + instructions are relatively simple:

Sushi grade yellow fin tuna
lime juice
tomatoes
onion
cucumber
coconut cream
salt + pepper

Marinate the tuna in the lime juice until it turns slightly white.
Dice up the vegetables while the tuna marinates.
Mix the ingredients together with the coconut cream.
Add salt + pepper.
Serve and reminisce over missing those gorgeous beaches.

2 comments:

WaffleW said...

That recipe sounds so easy and delicious! How long, approximately, did it take to marinate the tuna? Is this something that only takes 30 minutes, or is it something you leave in the fridge for a couple hours?

Emily said...

Believe me - it is!

The recipe I was given said to marinate it while you cut up the vegetables, so it's not very long. I also cut the pieces to be about 1cm each. I think it's kind of fail proof.

You can also sear the tuna if sashimi isn't your thing, but I think it tastes better raw.