Sablefish (Black Cod)

The silkiest sablefish, with roasted veggies and pea puree. Drool.

One Claw Crab

With ginger & Chinese black vinegar dipping sauce.

Poached Salmon

I adapted this recipe for a main course last night. I subbed in morels for truffles and unfortunately skipped out the shrimp and shrimp butter. I used truffle salt and brown butter whenever I could, didn't bother with the cognac, and added a side of linguine liberally tossed in the very delectable sauce. Next time though, I'm definitely going for the shrimp.

Odds and Ends

The last eggs in the carton, the ends of the loaf of rye, and lox trimmings = eggs en cocotte.

Crab Cakes

I love crab cakes and I've made them several times before using various recipes, but none to my satisfaction. Recently I was craving them and used some canned crab meat I picked up at Costco. I improvised adding leeks, mustard, mayo, garlic and worchestershire sauce. Baked, then fried. Liberal drizzle of lemon-paprika aioli with some more on the side. I must admit they're still not the perfect crab cakes of my dreams but they're the closest yet.

Quick Pasta

Prawn linguine with a rose sauce.

Tub Salad

Doesn't sound very glamorous, but "tub salad" is what I'm calling this excellent lunch I made the other day. I based the recipe on the Smoked Salmon with Egg Salad and Green Beans recipe from Gourmet magazine, substituting thin, steamed asparagus for the green beans. Using three free range extra large eggs, dill and extra mustard, I made egg salad which topped off this four layer salad. Packed nicely in a 3-cup Gladware container, it was a compact and immensely satisfying patio lunch on a sunny afternoon.

And More Fish

Fish is really the protein I forget to eat. It's not that I don't enjoy it--it's just that when I think of meat, I think of the rich hearty texture of beef, the tasty fat from pork, and let's face it, the ease of cooking chicken. Time to change my ways. I've had the Chopped Lemon Bagna Cauda recipe from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook in the back of my mind for a long time, so I tried their suggestion of serving it with fish.

In the bagna cauda, I substituted anchovy paste for anchovy fillets. For the main, I grilled a fillet of snapper in a pan with olive oil, salt, pepper and fennel seeds. I also toasted some crostini as per the book's direction, and topped it with roasted tomatos, garlic and onion. Spoonfuls of the bagna cauda all over everything. Success! The bright lemoniness went well with the licorice taste of fennel, and the tomatos were sweet like the fish. I still had some of the sauce left over after the meal, which prompted me to quickly blanch some spindly asparagus, which I then used to eat up the rest of the bagna cauda.

Tomatos and Fish

Inspired by this post for an easy fish meal, I made a simple snapper meal last night. Using:

- chunks of fresh snapper
- about 2 cups grape tomatos, halved
- 2 large shallots
- 3-4 cloves of garlic
- a giant handful of pre-washed baby spinach
- 1/2 cup white wine
- 2 tbsps of tomato paste
- olive oil
- dash of dried oregano
- salt, pepper

Heat the olive oil in a skillet on med-high heat, then crush the cloves of garlic and throw them in. As it gets fragrant, thinly slice the shallots and throw them in, stirring until they get translucent. After that, the tomatos and then let the mix sautee slowly until the tomatos get really broken down and mushy. Add tomato paste, salt, freshly cracked pepper, oregano and keep stirring and add a more oil if needed. After about 10 more minutes, add the white wine (this is always my favorite part because I just love the splashy, bubbling sound it makes). While it's reducing, quickly blanch the spinach in a small pot of lightly salted water. Drain and remove the spinach as soon as the leaves get bright green. Set aside. Return to the skillet and throw in the snapper, turning the pieces around every so often to make sure it cooks evenly. It shouldn't take more than another 5 minutes, because you don't want dry, overcooked fish. Scoop the mixture onto a bed spinach and serve.

This would be great using a whole fish, and another good variation on the recipe would be to use lots of fennel instead of oregano.

Fish and Chips

Another belated post, among many. I came home one night craving fish and chips, so I picked up a snapper fillet and breaded it with a mix of breadcrumbs, panko, salt, pepper and paprika and baked it along with those easy but excellent frozen fries. I scarfed the meal down with a generous side of garlic and lemon aioli.

Proscuitto-wrapped Snapper with Greens

Belated post--I made an impromptu recipe to clean out my fridge. I had a quarter of an onion left in my fridge, which I chopped and sauteed with a clove of garlic. While that was cooking, I used two last pieces of proscuitto to wrap a small fillet of snapper. Sprinkle some pepper and top with the leftover dill in my fridge that would start to wilt soon. I threw this in the pan with some juice from half a lemon and covered it. After the fish was ready, I threw in a bunch of pre-washed baby spinach, pinch of salt, and stirred it with the onions for two minutes. 20 minutes for a meal and a cleaned-out fridge.

Mussels

I'm craving a quick meal after a long day so I grab a pack of frozen half-shell mussels from the freezer (yes, I keep emergency mussels on hand). White sauce--sautee onions and mushrooms with a little butter, throw in white wine, chicken broth, fresh dill and spinach. Serve with toasted garlic bread.

Quick Weeknight Meal

Got home late, so I made a quick dinner with salmon and leftover veggies I found in the fridge. Put them all together in a foil packet and stick in the toaster oven. No brainer.

Moules!

How can I say no to mussels? A few weeks back, me and my sister got together to make a meal. The mussels weren't as large as the ones I picked up at Granville Island on Canada Day, but they still hit the spot. Sauteed onions, garlic, shallots, mushrooms and leeks with butter and white wine. Sprinkle of dill. My sister made veggie sides with some produce she picked up at a farm market. The real revelation were the English peas she hand-shelled. They were amazing! I've never known what real peas tasted like, having eaten only frozen or canned peas all my life, and they're merely a bland imitator of the real thing.

Thursday Night Scallops

This was Thursday night's dinner after an exhausting day. I had frozen some fresh scallops about a week ago, so I thawed them in a bowl of warm water while I grabbed some boxed greens and made a quick vinaigrette with olive oil, white wine vinegar, a smidge of dijon mustard, salt and brown sugar. Top off the greens with seared scallops and sprinkled chopped chives and black pepper.

Ciopinno

Success! I braved the Canada Day crowds at Granville Island today and picked up a few pounds of fresh mussels for dinner. I adapted this easy Cioppino recipe, subbing in salmon, prosciutto, and used leftover cabernet. Few meals of mine are wholly without carbs, so I just had to throw in some capellini as well to soak up the thick stew. And buttered bread on the side, too.

Takoyaki Party

What do you get when you put together six people, two takoyaki machines and shochu? A room full of very happily sated friends.

Our takoyaki were made with eggs, baby octopus, cabbage, pickled red ginger, green onion, drizzled with kewpie mayo, ottogi sauce (Japanese pork cutlet sauce), and topped off with a sprinkling of bonito flakes and strips of nori.

Ideally, Osaka-style takoyaki are grilled crisp on the outside, but not overdone, with a slightly mushy center that's supposed to melt in your mouth. Takoyaki can also be consumed dipped in miso soup.

Mussels Linguine

Mussels linguine with a garlic butter sauce. Bell peppers, onion, cream, basil. I picked up the fresh mussels at T&T's seafood section, which also had some jaw-droppingly large lobsters. The size of cats, I tells ya!


We stuffed ourselves and the mussels didn't last long. Next time I'll try to make some pomme frites to go with them.

Pizza Night

I'm still in the midst of unpacking and unsorting my place after the last move, and my sister was nice enough to suffer through collaborating on a pizza dinner while a randomly giant futon frame sat right in the middle of my kitchen/living room/workspace, awaiting removal.

We had come up with the idea of making an Indian Butter Chicken Pizza and an Okonomiyaki Pizza some time ago during a random conversation. So we used the thin crust recipe from The Kitchn and experimented with toppings.

Butter Chicken Pizza

1 portion the thin crust dough, rolled out to 10" diameter
2 cups diced cooked chicken
1/2 cup sauteed onions
1/2 cup sliced mushrooms
1/2 cup diced yellow and red bell peppers
1 large chopped roma tomato
1 cup President's Choice Indian Butter Chicken Sauce
2 tsps minced garlic

I highly recommend ditching the President's Choice brand sauce in favor of using Sharwood's Butter Chicken sauce, if you are to use a jar sauce to save time. Partially, the reason I only came up with the Butter Chicken Pizza idea was that I had this leftover sauce in my fridge that needed to be used up. The PC brand just doesn't do it--it smells terrific out of the jar, but somehow tastes completely watered down. I would also veto Patak's brand butter chicken sauce if you're looking for something closer to an authentic South Asian flavor.




Okonomiyaki Pizza

2 cups shredded, sauteed cabbage
1 cup chopped baby cuttlefish
1/2 cup sliced mushrooms
1/4 cup diced red peppers
1 cup Okonomiyaki sauce

For garnish:
1/2 cup shredded dried nori
2 tsps dried bonito flakes
2 tsps chopped green onion
a sprinkle of toasted sesame seeds
a generous drizzle of Kewpie mayonnaise




Didn't have any okonomiyaki sauce on hand, so we raided my fridge and mixed tonkatsu sauce, Worchestershire sauce and ketchup to make a reasonably tasty approximation of it. I'm sure numerous variations of okonomiyaki pizza can be made--minced pork, scrambled egg, soba noodles, mashed potato, octopus, shrimp, dried anchovies can all be added or substituted. The hard part is fitting everything in--our okonomiyaki pizza was more of a mountain, as we observed the cuttlefish and mushrooms slowly cascade downwards in the oven! Oh yeah, and it tasted really really good.

Today was a seafood chowder kind of day

Vancouver's having a dreary start to spring this year. Though the cherry blossoms are in full bloom on my street, the weather has been rainy and worst of all--cold. I left the apartment this morning wondering where I put my mitts. It's nearly April!

So I decided to get out of the pouring rain and cheer myself up with some seafood chowder. I had some leftover giant scallops sitting in my freezer as well as half a yellow onion, an opened package of cooked & smoked salmon, and a small carton of cream in the fridge. I went to the market to pick up a few more ingredients and I was set.

Seafood Chowder
(serves 2-4)

I took:

- 4 jumbo scallops
- 2 small Yukon Gold potatoes
- 1 celery stalk
- 2 white button mushrooms
- 1 package of oyster mushrooms
- 1 small tin of smoked oysters (on sale for 79 cents)
- 1/2 can of baby clams
- 1/2 yellow onion
- a handful of cooked, smoked salmon
- 250 ml carton milk (I used 2%)
- 250 ml carton heavy cream
- 1 tbsp butter
- salt, pepper, pinch of thyme, 3 pinches of chopped parsley

I put the potatoes in the microwave to nuke and diced the onion. I only ended up dicing about 3/4 of the half onion (seemed like it was enough) and threw it in a medium sized pot with the butter. While the onions were saute-ing, I diced up the celery and sliced the white mushrooms as well as 2 stalks of the oyster mushrooms. When the onions turned translucent, I turned the stove down just short of simmer, and poured in the milk, cream, and threw in all the mushrooms. I opened up the can of baby clams and threw about half of it in the pot. I cut the smoked mussels and scallops into chunks, ripped up the smoked salmon, and tossed them all in. The potatoes were done by this point, so I peeled them (here's a novel way to peel them), diced them and added them to the pot. At this point, concerned with how thick it was getting, I added half a cup of water and turned up the heat a little...I wanted it bubbling, but not boiling. Last but not least, I put in the thyme and parsley. As for salt, I sprinkled some in, but not too much, as there's already quite a bit of sodium from the canned stuff and the salmon.

While it was all bubbling, I sliced up the french bread I had bought. The market had them at 99 cents, seeing as they expire tomorrow. And the best thing to do with old bread is to make croutons. I saved a few slices for toasting and a tomato & brie sandwich I plan for breakfast tomorrow, then cubed the rest of the loaf. I filled two cookie sheets with the bits and drizzled olive oil all over, then sprinkled some generic "Italian mix" herbs on them. Stuck 'em in an oven preheated to 375 for 5 minutes or so, and they're done. Now I've got a big box of croutons to use in soups and salads.

Chowder's also done now. I toast up 2 slices of french bread for dipping, sprinkle some fresh ground pepper, slice a few chive slivers for presentation...and I've got a fuckin' awesome meal for a rainy afternoon.