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.
Salmon. Brussels sprouts. Two things that I make so often, that I almost wasn't going to write another post about them. But I want to share more of my meals (and more photos of me prepping the meals!) so here I am.
I decided to make some brussels sprouts because I had some bacon left over from that pork sticky rice dish I made. And when I have a few strips of bacon, my mind always turns to brussels sprouts.
And then when I went to Aldi to pick up a bag of brussels sprouts, I saw that there was a bunch of salmon for 50% off, and I had to get one. That meant it was less than $5/lb! You don't see prices like that any more! Somehow I ended up buying like twice as many things from the grocery store as I intended to.
Of course that also meant that I had to cook it that day, because it was getting close to its sell-by date. That's okay. I can always come up with a way to prepare fish.
I decided to make a brown sugar rub for the salmon, similar to how I prepared it way back in this entry. Except I didn't include any of the citrus. And if you're wondering why I only zested half a lemon, it's because we didn't plan well, and we threw out the first half of it before I started zesting. But that's okay! Half a lemon is better than none.
We also had some white rice on the side. Very good meal.
Still on my quest to clear out everything in my kitchen! I'm making progress!
I have finally used up all of the two curry packets that my aunt gave me several months ago. I think I used 1/3 of a single packet each time I cooked some curry, and one dish would last me four meals. Kenji's kare raisu recipe has been my go-to way of preparing curry, even when my curry powder is Malaysian and not Japanese.
When I made spring rolls a couple of months ago, I had some leftover vermicelli (because I always have leftover noodles), so I made some Singapore noodles with them. I sort of referenced this recipe on Budget Bytes, but I didn't measure anything, so I'm sure I used more curry powder and soy sauce than what it called for. Noodles were a little soggier than I'd like, but that was to be expected, and it was still delicious.
Something else that I had leftover from the spring rolls was toasted rice. I was looking up other ways to use toasted rice, and I saw that it's used in larb! I've never made larb before, but my aunt makes it (and hers is delicious), so I wanted to give it a try. The Woks of Life recipe said that you can serve it with some sticky rice, and I just happened to have a bag of in my pantry. This was tasty, but not nearly as good as my aunt's.
Finally, I had a little bit of cornmeal still sitting in my pantry, so I decided to use it all up and make some cornbread. I just followed the recipe that was listed on the container, and I had exactly the amount of cornmeal that it called for! I also figured this was a good reason to use my square muffin pan. The cornbread was easy to make, but it did have some weird volcano-like action going on while it was baking, and each piece had a little point at the top which was not what I expected.
Oh, I impulsively bought some "Mediterranean spiced salmon" from Aldi because it was half off, even though I'm pretty sure I've had more than one person tell me that the pre-marinated pieces of fish at grocery stores are terrible. Well, I had never tried one myself, but uh, I have to agree. It was really bad. It would have tasted better if I had just baked a piece of plain salmon.
I also had spinach leftover from that sad chicken alfredo pasta, so I decided to go full-on Boston Market and make some creamed spinach. This was pretty bad. I should have just made a salad and eaten the spinach raw.
But look at the bright side. I'm getting closer to having empty kitchen cabinets 🤩
So, I originally wasn't going to make a blog post just for this salmon, especially because the photos I took are...not great. But I just had to tell you that I spent so much time de-scaling this piece of salmon, having the scales fly everywhere and making the sink all gross and fishy, only to end up with the salmon skin sticking to the foil! I don't know why I thought it wouldn't stick. I always buy salmon with skin on it, because I figured the skin would stick to the pan and I'd easily pull off the meat from it.
Well, at least I remembered to cook the salmon skin side down.
Two years ago, I had attempted to make this same salmon dish, and it was a complete failure. I must be getting better at this whole cooking thing, because I tried to make this again earlier this year, and it was so good and so easy. I didn't even have to measure anything! In the past, I wouldn't know what to do with just a list of ingredients, but I think I'm getting more comfortable with just sprinkling and pouring things and going by feel.
So, I wanted to take it up a notch by also de-scaling the salmon. Next time, I'll actually spray some oil or butter on the baking pan and hopefully it won't stick. And eventually I will post this recipe on the blog! But today's not that day.
I also made a salad using some leftover iceberg lettuce, and I even blended up some carrot ginger salad dressing. It was a very good meal despite some wasted efforts.
Some time last year I cooked salmon for my boyfriend, and even though I've prepared salmon so many times, and it's one of the easiest things to cook, I ended up totally overcooking it, and it was terrible. ): I bought that salmon from Aldi, and since then he's been convinced that Aldi salmon is bad. I wish he had just concluded that I did a bad job cooking the salmon.
I think Aldi has great salmon, and now I'm determined to make some delicious salmon from Aldi.
Today I went with something really simple: Salmon with Dill. I used to use a recipe for this, but at this point, I know that it's just a bunch of seasonings sprinkled onto salmon. Here's what I put in this one:
These were pretty thin pieces of salmon, so I only cooked it for about 12 minutes at 350°F. This was about the right amount of time. I thought the thinner part of the salmon was a little overcooked, and the thicker part was a little under, but I like my salmon a little under.
I also decided to make green bean casserole because my aunt gave me two cans of cream of mushroom, and I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with that except make green brean casserole. I also happened to have a container of fried onions that I kept snacking on (and later regretting), and I really needed to use it in a dish before I ate the whole thing by itself.
Green bean casserole is one of the first foods I ever tried to make on my own, and I can't believe I haven't really featured it in any blog posts yet! I actually have my own recipe for it, but I didn't follow that for today's meal. Today I made the most basic green bean casserole. Green beans + cream of mushroom + fried onions. That's it.
It's exactly how my aunt makes it, and it's always delicious. Overall, I'm really happy with my dinner.
