The year’s focus on eating healthier continues right along with a renewed focus on fusion cooking, my favorite means of taking flavors and textures to new heights.  Our weather has been unseasonably warm and the market had the most beautiful baby bok choy, so I had to find something that would go well with it and salmon just seemed to fit the bill.  Add some pan fried noodles and not only do you have yourself a wonderfully healthy and filling meal, but one you can feel good about eating.  no compromises here!

The inspiration for the salmon came from an episode of Gordon Ramsay’s F-Word, but only loosely, as I couldn’t remember exactly what he’d done to his salmon, just that he’d used soy to glaze the fish, which sounded wonderful.  The rest of the dish was whipped up on a whim with ingredients I had on hand, but the combination was perfect for a firly warm evening and a lovely meal with my wife.

The recipe may sound complicated, but in actuality it doesn’t get much simpler than this.  There are only three primary ingredients and a few accompaniments that can be found at nearly any supermarket in the Asian section, so even if all you have access to is a BigScaryMegaMart, you should be able to get everything needed for this recipe in a single trip and for just a few dollars.  It really is worth it, trust me.

Read more…

Popularity: 5% [?]

The morning started with a simple email. It’s one I try to send my wife at least once a week, and goes something like this:

Me: …blah blah blah… Would you like anything in particular for lunch?

Mrs. CbsoP: … Yadda, Yadda, Yadda… Yes, I would absolutely love to have a little stir fry over white rice.

Me: I think I can handle that request. Any particular kind of stir fry come to mind?

Mrs Cbsop: Stir fry: how about something with snow peas no sesame oil, but definitely soy.

Snow peas, eh? No problem! … except that I didn’t have any. A quick run to the store would fix that since we’re on base now, that’s a 5 minute trip, including getting Mr. Seat of his Diaper ready to go.

No sesame oil?!? O.K. I’ll admit that I’ve been on a sesame oil kick. You may remember that the last time I made snow peas I used sesame oil as well. I suppose too much of a good thing is just too much, so we’ll skip it this time. A quick check of the freezer to see what veggies are hanging out and…

Yuck. Some frozen medleys, great for a side dish, but lacking at the flavor and perkiness required for a stir fry. It looked like I’d have to handle everything on one store run. The only problem with that was I had no idea what I’d be using, other than snow peas.

Luckily the produce department was there to help me out. We were lucky enough to have fresh snow peas on the shelf, so I figured I’d turn to the other bins in the area for inspiration. The boc choy looked good, so a small head of that went in the cart. Bean sprouts, fresh from California. Couldn’t pass that up. (It’s a joke between my wife and I. She though all Californians lived on bean sprouts, and was a little amazed to find that I didn’t.) some carrots and scallions to round out the day, and we’re all good to go. Less than 20 minutes later I was on my way back to our little kitchen, having spent a total of $6.50. Not too bad.

Stir Fry is less about measurements than about combinations, so the amounts given below may be either a) a guestimate, or b) just a vague idea, but that’s the joy of the thing, you don’t have to be precise and you can use whatever you can find, as long as it plays well with the other ingredients.

Read more…

Popularity: 1% [?]