Of course I miss my beautiful eternal city, its sky, its buildings, its streets and its atmosphere, but what I like better about London is the chance to meet people from all around the world.

We met these guys a few years ago, now we can say that we are good friends. He is from Naples and she is from Mumbai. I don’t think there might be a couple so well matched as this one, even if she is Indian and he is Italian.

Maybe it’s only beacause they both love coffee, (at least, apparently, in South India coffee rules the roost! Is it Mombai South of India?!) but in fact they have a lot in common: big and lovely families, carpet-salesmen attitude (!!) and of course a strategic way of driving their cars!!

We love to have them over for dinner, drinking and eating with them is always great fun.. and the best thing is that Mr M always tries his best to please them. So, here we have some new recipes:

Ingredients for 4 people

1 tuna steak

1 clove of garlic, not sliced

3 tbsp olive oil

100 ml white cooking wine – or 3/8 of a glass… he is a trader! but then it depends on your glass 😉

1 aubergine, sausage shaped is better

10 gr breadcrumbs (better if home made – roast your leftover bread and blend it until very fine) 

1 small bunch of pine nuts

1 pinches of salt

toothpicks

Method

Turn the oven on at 180° (might be 200°, depending on your oven).

In a  pan, heat the olive oil together with the garlic.

Cut the tuna steak into small pieces, around 1.5cm cubes. When the garlic is golden, remove it from the pan and add the tuna pieces for a couple of minutes.

Pour in the wine and simmer gently until it is all gone.

The tuna doesn’t have to be totally cooked, otherwise it gets too dry in the oven.

Set the tuna and the sauce that you got aside, separately.

Cut the aubergine in small slices, around 4mm thick.

Pop them in the pre-heated oven until soft when pierced with a sharp knife, then grill them for  3  minutes to have them crunchy. (Do not switch the oven off).

Blend the salt, the pine nuts, the breadcrumbs, 3 slices of aubergine and a few tuna pieces together.

Lay the mixture onto the aubergine slices, add some pieces of tuna.

Roll each aubergine slice up and fix it with a toothpick.

Place the rolls on a baking tray and cook them in the oven for other 10 minutes.

When ready to eat, pour the tuna cooking sauce on top of the rolls and serve it.

If the sauce is still too white-ish, it means that there is still too much wine in it, so reduce it a bit more.

Categories: Savouries, uh!

Tags: Starters,