How can I be sad when I have breakfast, lunch, and dinner?
First of all, I've replaced the old header text on the site with a new handmade graphic! You can tell it's handmade because it looks like a 5 year old wrote it (well, a 5 year old that likes loopy l's). Even so, I took an embarrassingly long time working on it. I'll probably try to make a nicer graphic in the future, but this is good enough for today. Oh, but it only shows up on larger screens, so if you're on a phone, please check out my site on your computer!
Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled programming...
Shortly after my dad's and cousin's visit to help me move into my apartment, I was left with a slightly-larger-than-usual amount of ginger. And I was talking to my sister about it:
It's like, too much ginger for most stir fries, and not enough ginger for chicken, but the right amount for salmon
Jeje姐姐 - big sister, I know exactly what you mean
I'm glad she gets it, because I'm not sure anyone else would.
I normally buy ang heu紅魚 - 'red fish' (salmon) from Aldi, but I was feeling a little fancy (and a little lazy) and I wanted to actually be able to eat the skin. The Aldi skin-on salmon is never de-scaled and de-scaling fish is kind of a mess. So I went to Giant Eagle, and I saw that their frozen sashimi grade salmon was on sale for $4.99 for an 8oz fillet!
I'm used to eating steamed salmon with ginger, but I decided I would try something a little different and cook it on the pan. I followed this crispy scallion ginger salmon recipe from Woks of Life because it sounded pretty straightforward, and I swear I've successfully luah烙 - pan fried salmon before, even though I cannot find evidence of it on this blog. 🧐
Well, I must have forgotten, because I totally burned these. I think I was still getting used to my new stove being hotter than I expect. I also didn't make it easy on myself because I used my stainless steel pan instead of my non-stick. I was so worried about it sticking to the pan (but it didn't!) and I think the recipe calls for way more oil than you need because I ended up with a splatter-y mess and I was kind of freaking out.
Okay, maybe the mess was actually because I didn't let the salmon fillets fully thaw before cooking them 😬 Man, what am I even doing?!
Hey, but when you throw all the toppings on top, you don't even notice how burnt it is! And even though the skin is overcooked, I actually way undercooked this salmon. It's basically raw in the middle. But this is the same salmon that I use for poke so I don't really care. In fact, it's preferable this way. (Side note, I dislike seared tuna. Why even bother searing it at all)
I thought the recipe was way saltier than it needed to be, but the fish itself was ho jiah好食 - delicious.
I wanted to try making this again, with adjustments. I figured it would be easier if I just cooked one piece of salmon and cut the recipe in half. But when I got to Giant Eagle, the sashimi grade salmon was on sale for EVEN CHEAPER! It was now $3.99 a piece! pin si便死 - extremely cheap! I had to buy two!
I still only cooked one of them though. I had to make this a little easier on myself. But I still used my stainless steel pan, and I really should have just gone with the non-stick. So I completely omitted the salt, and I also cut the amount of oil in half, and I think those were good changes! But I still ended up burning the salmon!
I did some researching on Reddit afterwards, and it sounds like it might have been better if I cooked the salmon on medium-low instead of medium-high or medium. I'll have to try that next time, but e jua下匝 - next time might be a while from now because I got a little sick of seared (burnt) salmon. I did still have that extra salmon fillet though, so I made some poke! I could never get sick of poke.
And I didn't want to be wasteful, so I took the unused piece of salmon skin and I even fried that up! Using my non-stick pan!
It was hoh sou好酥 - quite crispy and a very nicely cooked piece of salmon skin.
