Salad, Seafood

Honey Ginger Glazed Salmon Salad

I never learned to appreciate a good salad until I began going out for lunch. While richer, more substantial entrees usually take the spotlight for dinner, the salad really takes the stage during lunchtime. Plus, salads these days have gone full blown gourmet; long gone are the days of wimpy side salads and packaged caesar salads that take more time to assemble than eat (I have on more than one occasion gotten to the bottom of my salad only to find an unopened bag of bacon bits or almonds, completely drenched in dressing). Nowadays, you can find soft shell crab, flank steak, dragonfruit and so many interesting new combinations to try. With increasing awareness and demand for organic, farm-to-table food, the age of the salad has finally arrived.

As a self-proclaimed foodie, I not only love how salads allow me to experiment with several unique flavors and ingredients simultaneously, but I also love that they are easy to make and scale well. It can be tough to make a high quality, time consuming homecooked meal for one, especially if you’ve been working all day, but a fancy salad allows me to treat myself without spending too much time in the kitchen. This Asian salmon salad is wonderfully light for summer and only takes 15 minutes to make!

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Appetizers, Vegetarian

French Onion Soup Dumplings

I’m a sucker for comfort food, even when I don’t actually need any comforting. I especially love when I can combine multiple comfort foods into one. After another work trip to San Jose this week, I was determined to make some dumplings this weekend to satisfy my craving for some good Asian food. However, I ended up feeling under the weather and just as I was about to head to Panera Bread for some soup, it hit me: french onion soup dumplings. True, they are neither authentic Chinese nor typical sick food fare, but I was too hooked on the idea to stop. Despite how gourmet and complicated they might sound, these dumplings actually require very few ingredients – an onion, beef broth, shredded cheese and some dumpling wrappers and we’re pretty much good to go. A couple things to keep in mind for this recipe:

As with making traditional french onion soup, the secret to perfect, melt in your mouth onions is time. By letting them simmer in beef stock, herbs and spices for 45-60 minutes, the onions soak up all the flavor and liquid, making them tender and savory.
caramelized onions

As for preparing the dumplings, although this was my first time making them from scratch, much to my surprise and delight, they were incredibly easy to make and turned out just as pretty as the ones you see at dim sum (or the frozen ones you get from Costco). Follow these steps for perfect dumplings every time:

  1. Place no more than 2 teaspoons of filling in the center of the dumpling wrapper. Adding more than this amount will make the dumpling difficult to seal completely and if you’re cooking with meat, it will take longer to cook. 
  2. Brush the edges of the dumpling wrapper with a whisked egg before folding in half. Doing so will help you seal the dumpling tightly and keep it from falling apart while cooking. 
  3. Make “z” shaped pinches along the top of the dumpling. Start by making one pinch in the center of the dumpling and hold down the pinch for 5 seconds. Make additional pinches along the sides, holding down each pinch for 5 seconds as you go. 

how to make chinese dumplings

Finally, when you’re ready to cook your dumplings, first sear them in a nonstick pan until the bottoms are golden brown. This will prevent the bottoms from becoming soggy and breaking apart. After the bottoms are seared, add water to your pot to steam the dumplings. Make sure the amount of water you put in the pot doesn’t touch the seams of the dumplings, only touching the about 1/4 inch of the dumplings.
seared potstickers

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french onion soup dumpling
french onion soup dumplings

 

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Seafood

Curry Paella Curry / Ginger / Sticky Rice / Shrimp / Vietnamese Sausage

As much as I love to cook, I find that cooking can be a bit of a pain during the summer months. Generally speaking, the sweltering heat can put quite a damper on my appetite and I’ll always prefer to be doing something outdoors instead of staying inside slaving over the stove or cleaning up a huge mess (I will use up every square inch of counter space no matter how much I am given). In such times, I especially appreciate simple one pot meals that aren’t labor intensive but still incredibly tasty. Enter paella. Paella, which literally translates to “pan” in Catalan, is a popular Spanish dish prepared by simmering rice with broth, herbs, spices, vegetables and various meats and seafood in a large pan (traditionally over an open flame) until rice is cooked, resulting in an aromatic, hearty meal. Sigh, if that description wasn’t motivation enough for you to make some ASAP, here are a few more reasons why you should be whipping up your own paella tonight:

  1. That layer of crispy, toasted rice that forms at the bottom of the pan is absolutely to die for. The Spanish call this socarrat and it’s often the defining mark of good paella. If like me you also don’t have a classic paella, a good ole cast iron skillet will do the trick marvelously.
  2. Making paella is a great way to get rid of leftovers or experiment in the kitchen. A few measly sprigs of rosemary on that plant you totally forgot to water? That bell pepper you swore you would chop up as a snack but ended up reaching for the Cheetos? Some leftover Costco rotisserie chicken? Sure why not!
  3. It’s so simple to make, and it sounds kinda fancy! Throw everything in one pan, pour yourself a glass of wine and let the heat do the rest. Your dinner date will think you’re quite the cultured chef. Plus your house will smell like the Catalan countryside.




curry paella
curry paella

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Seafood

Spicy Coconut Curry Mussels

We just finished up another Restaurant Week in Madison and I noticed that nearly every place we visited this year offered mussels on the menu. Not wanting the Restaurant Week fanciness to end, I was determined to craft up my own mussels recipe for the weekend. To my surprise and delight, I learned that not only are mussels incredibly cheap (they’re only $2-3 per pound and a pound is more than enough for one person), but they are even easier to prepare. These days farmed mussels arrive at the supermarket cleaned and debearded so the preparation is even quicker. Upon further research, I discovered that mussels are actually one of the most sustainable seafoods we can consume. Mussels are filter feeders, meaning they feed on plankton and other microscopic nutrients, actually cleaning and filtering the surrounding water where they are farmed. Moreover, farmed mussels are grown on ropes that never touch the seafloor, eliminating the need for destructive dredging. Affordable, sustainable and delicious? Count me in! I boiled my mussels in a spicy coconut curry broth, toasted up some baguette slices and voila – a 5 star meal in half an hour.

Spicy Coconut Curry Mussels

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