Dinner for two...

The tuna was fresh out of the local waters and too good to cook.

I paired raw tuna with cruncy pomegranate, Iberico Bellota from Extremadura in Spain, a glorious region and home to the fabulous Atrio restaurant and hotel where we stayed... I digress.  The Bellota from Extremadura is the best of the best in my opinion.  A little dressing of pomegranate molasses, pomegranate juice & walnut oil.  Worked very well.  The sweet nutty ham made the tuna even more luscious, the red jewelled fruit gave crunch and a gorgeous acidity.

Raw tuna, iberico bellota and pomegranate

Main course was my favourite of duck breast cooked rare, sticky duck sauce, beetroot and turnip.

Duck with duck sauce

Dessert from Rasio (good old Vineet Bhatia again), saffron cream on chocolate cake with cardamon icecream encased in dark chocolate set on top.  Actually I played around with the recipe for this one, the Rasoi recipe called for cumin chocolate cake and I simply thought 20gms of cumin (that's about 2 tablespoons) was too much but I tried it anyway and it just tasted of cumin.  I decided to adjust and do a chocolate cake with coffee to give the earth the cumin would offer but a taste that I preferred.  This is a gorgeous dessert.  I do not know whether it is a misprint in the Rasoi book re the cumin or whether it's just supposed to be more of a cumin cake than chocolate cumin cake as is indicated.  Mystery but the other elements of this dessert were utterly perfect as I've come to expect from Vineet Bhatia hence my confusion regarding the cumin element.

Saffron cream cheese sitting on coffee chocolate cake with cardamon icecream wrapped in chocolate.