(Belated Again) Chinese New Year Meal #7: Crispy Pan-Fried Noodle Cakes with Seafood

Guess what?  We finally finished our week of Chinese New Year meals!  It only took a couple months...  When I first started posting a week's worth of Chinese New Year meals on the blog I spent hours pouring over recipes trying to represent the different regions and cuisines of China.  I wanted seven meals made from different ingredients, some spicy, some meaty, some vegetarian, some noodles, some dumplings...  It was quite a process.  This year I didn't have a lot of time to plan.  And since I was so behind the ball in getting started I rushed into things a little.  Fuchsia Dunlop is always a good source for a few Chinese New Year meals.  I love all three of her cookbooks.  In the past year or two I have come to rely more and more on Serious Eats for new recipes.  I love that they make up their own recipes in addition testing out cookbooks.  I also love that their recipes run the gamut of different types of Chinese cuisine.  Four out of the seven Chinese New Years meals I made this year (including this one) were from Serious Eats.  There were a few other recipes I found elsewhere, but for one reason or another they didn't make the cut.  Some were a little too fusion-y, others involved ingredients that I couldn't find.  But what tended to happen was that I stumbled across a recipe that I wanted to make more.  This recipe for pan-fried noodles wasn't one that I originally planned on making.  I don't typically make more than one noodle dish, but I really love pan-fried noodles.  But other than the double-up on the noodles, I think we did a pretty good job of diversifying our meals.  We did one Sichuanese dish with beef and another with chicken, one Taiwanese dish with pork belly, one Xinjiang dish with lamb, one Cantonese dish with seafood...  

This dish was surprisingly successful.  I was pretty happy with it.  When we tried to make pan-fried noodles in the past we always ended up with burnt noodles that stuck to the wok, which resulted in burnt noodles and made it far more difficult to transfer the noodles from the wok in order to flip them over and cook the other side.  But these worked out pretty well!  There was some sticking on the first side after we added the water, but the second side worked perfectly.  And the process of parboiling the scallops and blanching the greens worked out really well because both ended up perfectly cooked.  The original recipe on Serious Eats calls for the addition of calamari and fish balls, but the grocery store was out of calamari and I don't really like fish balls so I decided to leave them out.  I really liked the combination of bay scallops and shrimp, but I might try the calamari next time if it was available.

Recipe after the jump!

Rodrigo-Style Fish Tacos

I wanted something healthy and easy for dinner tonight after feasting on black and white cookies and other baked goods today and immediately thought of seafood.  So I sent Alex off to pick up some chicken for tomorrow night's dinner and headed to the seafood counter.  Fairway had some wild striped bass fillets that looked really nice and decided that we should make fish tacos.  I love tacos.  And I love seafood.  So it is natural that I try to combine the two fairly regularly.  I found the recipe for Rodrigo-Style Fish on Serious Eats several months ago, but we never got around to making it.  I looked at it while at the grocery store and decided that we could make some variation on it and turn it into tacos.  I didn't read far enough to see that the author already suggested serving the fish with corn tortillas, but clearly we were on the same wavelength.  Since the striped bass I picked out looked so nice I adapted the cooking method to basically season it with salt and pepper and sear it using another recipe/cooking method that I found online for perfect seared fish.  I highly recommend trying the cooking method for the fish.  Our striped bass was beautifully cooked, with a wonderfully crispy skin and a moist, flaky flesh.  It was perfect.  This fish would have worked with a just a squeeze of lemon, but I thought the sauce was a really nice touch - full of citrus and herbs.  I never would have thought to use Maggi sauce because when I think of Maggi sauce I think soy sauce and Asian food, but it added a nice saltiness to the fish.  I'm a huge fan of this recipe.  I would definitely try both the fish and the tacos again separately and together, and also with other types of fish depending on what is fresh.

Recipe after the jump!

Pan-Roasted Swordfish Steaks with Peppercorn Butter

When I work too much (which happens a LOT this time of year), I end up craving seafood and veggies.  While charging delivery from Seamless to the client sounds like an interesting way to try new restaurants without having to foot the bill, it gets pretty old after awhile.  There are a few decent restaurants that I order from on occasion, but after awhile all I want is a home-cooked meal consisting of less starch, less meat and more seafood and veggies.  Alex is pretty used to it by now and given that he eats toaster oven quesadillas, peanut butter crackers, pizza and fried rice while I am gone, I would imagine that he doesn't mind when I go on one of my seafood and veggie kicks.  My current veggie obsessions are broccoli and brussels sprouts.  I was on a cauliflower kick earlier this fall, but that ran its course by mid-November.  After I eat a few good seafood and veggie meals I then switch over to craving salad, but more on that later.  This swordfish recipe was one that I found online after coveting (and then buying) some really nice swordfish steaks at Fairway.  I originally wanted to make this Sicilian-Style Swordfish, but we decided to mix it up a bit.  The amount of butter originally weirded me out (and we did end up using less of the butter than called for), but I was intrigued enough to give it a shot.  And I'm glad I did because it was good.  The swordfish was nice and moist, which is always my first requirement for good swordfish.  There is nothing worse than dried out, leather-like swordfish.  It also had nice flavor - the compound butter is rich, but it retains a really fresh and bright flavor because of the herbs, the pepper and the lemon zest.  I think I slightly prefer the Sicilian-Style Swordfish, but this is a lovely, fresh alternative.

Recipe after the jump!

(Belated) Chinese New Year Meal #7: Ginger-Scallion Lobster

First things first - I know that I have been awfully delinquent with my final Chinese New Year meal.  I wanted to make seafood but I couldn't find any seafood recipes that really appealed to me.  Then I tried to make salt and pepper squid (aka salt baked squid) at home and failed.  The potato flour breading we tried to use on the squid just fell off and gunked up the oil.  The flavor was fine (if a little oily) but it was definitely not worth posting.  I spent hours poking around in our various cookbooks and online to find another recipe that I really wanted to make but nothing really appealed to me or if a recipe did appeal to me, it either required ingredients that were difficult to source or required entirely too much time and effort.   I seriously considered buying a new Chinese cookbook (either Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo or The Hakka Cookbook: Chinese Soul Food from Around the World by Linda Lau Anusasananan) for some inspiration but decided that was a little silly.  I might still buy them at some later date, but buying an entire cookbook to come up with one last Chinese New Year meal seemed a little extravagant.  It is entirely possible that I am in a cooking rut (but that's another post altogether).  I briefly considered making lobster (both because I have never made lobster at home before, and also because it seemed luxurious enough to make up for the fact that I have been MIA on this final Chinese New Year meal for over a month now), but discarded it as being too expensive.  But this past weekend we had a rental car (that I booked to visit a friend in Westchester) and I decided that a trip to Costco and Target was in order.  While at Costco I saw some (relatively) inexpensive lobster tails and decided to go ahead and bite the bullet and try to make ginger-scallion lobster.  I poked around online for a little while and ended up watching a video of Ming Tsai and a Chinese chef making ginger-scallion lobster.  I also found a Rasa Malaysia recipe for ginger and scallion crab that I was about to use until I decided that fish sauce just didn't belong in my final Chinese New Year meal.  So I went ahead and improvised, using the video for basic guidance.  

I will be the first to admit that this dish wasn't perfect.  I wish more flavor from the ginger and scallions permeated the lobster, particularly the ginger.  I also wish we hadn't (slightly) overcooked the lobster.  But such is life.  As a side note, the reason that our lobsters aren't the fire engine red that you expect from Maine lobster is because the lobster tails at Costco were either Caribbean spiny lobsters or Brazilian lobsters (our two tails looked substantially different from one another and one had serious spines on the shell) and not Maine lobsters.  So this certainly wasn't a restaurant-worthy version of ginger-scallion lobster but I was pretty happy with it considering (1) we didn't follow a recipe and (2) this was our first attempt at cooking lobster.

Recipe after the jump!

Salt and Pepper Salmon with Herbs and Meyer Lemon

I am happy to report that spring is finally making an appearance in New York.  Today was the first day since last fall that I came into work and didn't need a jacket of any sort.  It was marvelous.  And over the past two weekends the farmers' market has been growing more and more populous (both in terms of the number of customers and the number of vendors), which is totally exciting.  Right now the produce selection is still fairly limited, but I bet that in a few short weeks I will be able to buy all sorts of yummy spring veggies.  I can't wait.  With spring approaching, I have been craving lighter fare, like seafood and veggies/salads.  I'm sure if you went back through the blog you could track the seasons relatively well by what I am cooking and right now, I'm all about fish.  We make a lot of salmon at home because it's relatively easy to find at any grocery store and it's a great blank canvas.  This salmon was a riff on our favorite Salt and Pepper Salmon from Tyler Florence.  We had a bunch of Meyer lemons laying around the apartment so we have been on a Meyer lemon kick.  First I made roast chicken breasts with a Meyer lemon and thyme marinade.  Now that I think about it, those two recipes for salmon and roast chicken breasts represent the two dishes on the blog that we make all the time.  We also made a number of Meyer lemon vinaigrettes, but there's nothing new or earth-shattering there.  Since we had the lemons and an abundance of fresh herbs, I decided to make our standard salmon, but top it with a Meyer lemon and herb compound butter.  It was springy and best of all, it was easy.  Once the butter melted down over the salmon it created a really nice delicate sauce.  In a lot of ways think this would be the perfect salmon recipe for people who are on the fence about salmon - you taste the flavor of the salmon but it's layered under the flavor of the compound butter. 

Recipe after the jump!

Red Snapper Tacos

 

I will be the first to admit that these tacos were initially conceived of as a guacamole-delivery system.  The thought process went something like this - I wanted to make guacamole, tacos taste good with guacamole, so I should make fish tacos.  And that my friends was how lunch was planned.  I have always had a soft spot for fish tacos.  When my mother and I went to San Diego a few years ago for a mommy-daughter bonding weekend I gorged myself on fish tacos of all kinds.  One night we went to happy hour at a restaurant called South Beach Bar & Grille on a recommendation from a friend of mine and it had perhaps the best fish tacos I have ever tasted.  They were so fresh and delicious.  I love baja fish tacos (lightly battered and fried fish with a crunchy cabbage topping) and theirs were totally perfect, but I also liked their grilled fish tacos.  Every once in awhile I decide to make fish tacos at home and when I do they are always grilled.  I have tried a number of different types of fish including tuna, mahi mahi and snapper (and my usual seafood taco default is shrimp because it's cheap and easy), and they have all worked well.  I totally believe that certain types of fish lend themselves better to fish tacos than others.  Salmon and swordfish are both too meaty and heavy for me.  When I want a grilled fish taco I want something light and fresh.  These red snapper tacos fit the bill perfectly.  We have several different types of chili powder in the apartment so I picked two and seasoned the fish lightly before grilling.  I wanted to top the tacos with something (in addition to the Mango Pomegranate Guacamole) and we had some cherry tomatoes in the kitchen so I threw together a quick tomato salad.  It all came together relatively quickly and easily.  I'm not saying that these fish tacos can in any way compare to those at South Beach Bar & Grille, but they weren't half bad for some lazy fish tacos in an UWS apartment.

Recipe after the jump!

Korean Cod and Sesame Kale Salad

 
We are currently on a bit of a Korean kick.  We made six (Belated) Chinese New Year meals (I know that I still owe you guys one (Belated) Chinese New Year meal) and then a bunch of southeast Asian meals.  Now we have cycled through to Korean or Korean-inspired meals.  Randomly enough, we even went out to dinner at a Korean restaurant last night.  The inspiration for this meal actually came from a vegan food truck that I like called The Cinnamon Snail.  About a month ago I tried one of their dishes that they served with a kale salad.  I liked the dish, but I liked the kale salad better.  And two weeks ago I tried another of their dishes (Korean barbeque seitan) that also had kale in it.  The kale in both dishes had a spicy vaugly Korean flavor to it.  When I noticed how nice the Tuscan kale looked at Fairway last week I decided to buy a few bunches and try to make a Korean-y kale salad.  And then I started thinking that if I was going to do a Korean-y kale salad I could probably figure out some sort of Korean-y seafood recipe to go with it.  Cod immediately came to mind and I went home and did some Google research and came up with these two recipes.  The kale salad (recipe available here) wasn't eactly what I was looking for, but I figured it was easy and would give me somewhere to start.  I wanted to add some salted cashews but by the time I got home and went for the cashews Alex told he he had finished them off as his afternoon snack.  Oh well.

Both dishes were a little salty for me, but otherwise good.  I thought the cod had nice flavor - a little spicy, a little sweet.  I liked it.  Our cod fell apart when I tried to flip it but we have a pretty good habit of ruining fish so there is nothing new there.  Alex massacred one of our Dover sole filets the other night too.  At least he only destroyed one fillet - I managed to destroy both here (although I reassembled one of them nicely for the photos).  I am going to keep working on the salad to perfect it.  I like kale salads better when the kale is cut into thin strips (I find it easier to eat that way), although I left the kale in larger pieces for this recipe because it was going to be sauteed briefly in the warm dressing.  In the future I would probably skip the step of sauteing the kale in the warm dressing and if I wanted to wilt the kale down, I would make a warm dressing and pour it over top of the kale (like this Korean-Style Romaine).

Recipes after the jump!

Dover Sole Almondine with Brussels Sprouts

I am currently trying to wean myself from too much dairy in my diet.  I have been mildly lactose intollerant for years (which is no surprise given that my Chinese mother is violently lactose intollerant) but I think when I hit 30 it started getting worse.  Or maybe it started getting worse when I started drinking cappuchinos to keep myself awake in the afternoon after working all night.  I have discovered that coffee is a very sneaky dairy delivery system.  I have been trying to cut back on the cappuchinos (or switch over to soy milk in my cappuchinos, even though I think the taste of soy milk leaves a lot to be desired), but I'm also trying to cut out more gratuitous dairy.  The first things I thought about cutting are yogurt and Polly-O string cheese.  I know that the probiotics in yogurt are supposedly good for you, but eating a yogurt a day for breakfast might not be the best move if you're lactose intollerant.  And it's not like I love the taste of yogurt (whereas I do love the taste of Polly-o and a lot of other cheeses) so it seemed like a relatively painless sacrifice to make.  I'm in the process of trying to find good dairy-free yogurts and that effort has taken me to Fairway, Trader Joe's and Whole Foods.  Not surprisingly I discovered that most of our local markets don't stock many dairy-free options.  Thus far I have discovered the following - I do not like the taste of soy yogurt, some coconut yogurts have a really weird texture but taste okay (whereas some have a weird texture and taste), and almond yogurts seem to be the best of the bunch (at least for me).  I tried Almond Dream's low-fat strawberry and coconut yogurts over the weekend and thought both of them were pretty decent.  So Delicious also makes some almond milk yogurts that I thought were pretty good, but they are harder to find. 

While on my dairy-free yogurt hunt I decided to hit the fish counter at Whole Foods and ended up with these Dover sole filets and some cod filets.  And then I had to figure out what I wanted to do with my Dover sole that would be light and fresh and springy, but still hearty enough to withstand the neverending winter.  With spring stubbornly refusing to appear, I really needed something reminiscent of the warm temperatures and the good times to come.  Did I mention that it is currently snowing outside?  It's late March.  I mean honestly.  I settled on sole almondine because it is easy and quick and I think delicate fish like sole benefit from very simple preparations.  Dredging sole filets in flour and then sauteing in butter and topping with a squeeze of lemon is a very classic preparation for a reason - it just tastes good.  We have been eating a ton of kale lately (and I was already planning on serving a kale salad with the cod) so I wanted to use another vegetable that would still be seasonally appropriate, but would allow me to mix things up a little.  Brussels sprouts seemed like a good fit.  Rather than roasting the sprouts I decided to shred and saute them because pairing such a delicate fish with hunks of roasted brussels sounded weird.  I don't have a ton to say about this dish, except that it was nice, easy and tasty.  It was also perfectly springy.  I liked the combination of the browned butter and almonds with the delicate fish and the sauteed Brussels sprouts.  I also liked the brightness and flavor from the white wine and lemon juice.  It is a very simple dish, but sometimes I like simple.

Recipe after the jump!

Hake with Hazelnuts and Capers

 
It's not often that I get to experiment with new varieties of fish.  But when I picked up the trout fillets the other day I asked the fishmonger for suggestions on what was particularly fresh and he suggested either the lemon sole or the hake.  I decided that we had never made hake (and we have made sole before), so why not go with the hake.  I was originally planning on using the hake instead of cod in this Roasted Cod on Large Garlic Croutons recipe, but decided to stick with this recipe instead because we had everything we needed at the apartment.  Plus we had a ton of hazelnuts that I picked up for another recipe and never used, so it just made sense.  So it seemed like the perfect fit.  But the recipe was just kinda... ok.  The fish was beautifully cooked and I liked the texture of the toasted hazelnuts, but I thought the red wine vinegar and the capers would give it more pizzazz.  And they just kind of got lost.  After the brightness of the trout, it couldn't quite compare.  Overall I thought it was a nicely-cooked piece of fish that needed some acidity and also needed something else to really make it shine.  I'm not sure what I would add to the recipe to make it stand out more (maybe some lemon zest in the hazelnut mixture?) but I would definitely need to make some serious changes before making it again. 

Recipe after the jump!

Pan-fried Trout with Lemon and Herb Stuffing

Few things strike me as being as light as trout.  For some reason, a nice trout fillet is the epitome of light to me.  And once you add in lemons and herbs it just... gets lighter.  I'm not saying it makes any sense, but that's how I think.  So when I was trying to think of a light, fresh dish to kick off a few nights of home-cooked meals, this recipe seemed perfect.  It looked easy, it didn't require a lot of ingredients and it sounded tasty.  I was so set on this particular recipe that I didn't come up with a contingency plan; luckily the grocery store had some nice rainbow trout fillets so I didn't have to figure one out.  

Some recipes are exactly what they sound like and no more - this was one of them.  The "lemon and herb stuffing" provided the fish with a nice, bright flavor that is nicely offset by the flavor of rich browned butter.  I wish we had toasted the bread a little more, but if we had it would have been hard to cut the bread into a fine enough dice.  In the future I would probably toast the bread lightly, cube it, and then toast the cubes again to get them nice and crunchy.  In order for it to retain some texture you should get it pretty crunchy before tossing with the lemon segments and the herbs.  Otherwise it all gets a little mushy.  Even though our bread wasn't toasted enough and the skin didn't get as crispy as I would have liked, I would still call this dish one of the most successful trout recipes we have prepared.  It was also exactly what we needed tonight after a week of dining out at restaurants.

Recipe after the jump!

Grilled Swordfish with Lemon and Oregano

 

This swordfish was the last of the fish I picked up at Citarella last Saturday and it is probably the last seafood dish we will make this year.   It isn't the most successful seafood recipe we have tried this year, nor is it the most successful swordfish we have ever made.  But it was light, fresh and very easy to put together.  Speaking of the other fish recipes we made this year, my favorites were probably the Swordfish with Chile Pesto, the Pistachio-Crusted Halibut with Spicy Yogurt (this halibut was my favorite new fish recipe of the year) and Mark Bittman's Roasted Salmon with Butter.  If we broaden the category to include seafood other than fish, one of my favorite recipes from this year I have to mention these Moroccan Baked Scallops.  But this was a nice seafood recipe to close out the year with and it was an excellent counterpoint to the duck breasts we are going to have tonight and the pork belly we had last night for dinner.  I bet if we had a grill and had been able to grill the fish to give it that extra smoky flavor, it would have made a big difference.  It is the type of fish dish that it is reminiscent of lazy evenings at the beach in summertime - I think it's the bright/summery combination of the lemon, herbs and evoo.  I have never been to Greece but the swordfish feels like it should be eaten on a white sand beach in Greece. 

Recipe after the jump!

Steamed Snapper with Ginger, Lime and Cilantro

All of the late nights eating dinner at my desk mean that I end up eating a lot of pan-Asian (the easiest thing to share with a bunch of coworkers, including one that has a gluten allergy, is Thai or pan-Asian).  And there is the occasional pizza or burger thrown in at 11 pm for good measure.  After I finish one of those work benders all I want is vegetables and simple home-cooked meals, including lots and lots of seafood.  It's hard to order decent seafood for delivery (except sushi, which I order if I am eating by myself).  Since I have a few days off for Christmas I dragged Alex to Citarella on Saturday afternoon for some nice fish.  That night we made some nice rainbow trout (seasoned lightly with cayenne pepper and s&p, before being lightly dredged in flour and pan-fried in butter with a squirt of fresh lemon juice for serving) and yesterday afternoon we made red snapper.  Red snapper isn't one of my favorite fish, but I do enjoy it from time to time (plus it looked really good so I couldn't resist).  Since I was looking for something really light and simple we decided to make this steamed snapper recipe I found on Epicurious except that instead of steaming it we made little foil packets and baked the fish in the oven (which basically braised/steamed it).  The fish was easy and fresh - which was exactly what I needed.  And served with some coconut rice it made a simple, but flavorful meal.  The sauce that you steam/bake the fish in is really nice (the combination of lime, herbs, soy, fish sauce, sesame and soy is right up my alley) and it really helped take the very mild flavor of the snapper and amp it up without totally overpowering the fish.  

Now I just have to figure out what I want to do with the swordfish we picked up at Citarella.  I'm thinking we will stick with simple - lemon juice, some herbs, and evoo are at the top of my list right now.  We need something light to balance out the pork belly we are eating for dinner.  But it's going to have to be a game time decision...

Recipe after the jump!

Mustard-Crusted Salmon

 

Every time we drive down to Maryland to visit my parents we come back with a cooler full of random food and a trunk full of clean laundry.  We also tend to come home with Cost Co-sized bags of toilet paper and paper towels, but that is entirely beside the point.  This past visit I appropriated a few things from the freezer for the trip home - including a salmon filet and some pre-marinated Korean spicy pork.  I couldn't tell what kind of salmon it was, but it looked really red like Coho or sockeye salmon.  Rather than stick with our tried and true salmon recipes I decided to do something new.  This recipe was vaguely inspired by a Rachel Ray recipe I found awhile ago for salmon with a matzo and herb crust.  I started trying to think of creative ways to use up the herbs we bought for Thanksgiving with the salmon and that made me think of the herb and matzo-crust.  I didn't bother to look back at the original recipe but the idea of an herb-y crumb topping stuck with me.  We don't tend to keep matzo around the apartment so I didn't have any matzo to use, but we did have some leftover baguette from the night before.  So we whipped up some fresh bread crumbs and crusted our salmon with a mixture of bread crumbs, mustard and fresh thyme.  Oh and we threw in some butter for good measure.  And since we both love crispy salmon skin Alex and I decided to crisp up the salmon skin in a pan on the stove-top and then broil the salmon quickly to brown the bread crumbs and to cook the top side.  I think in the future I would use finer bread crumbs.  Our crumbs were more like small bread chunks.  I also might trip throwing in some fresh parsley or other herbs.  Otherwise I think it was a really nice and fairly easy recipe.  And our salmon was very nicely cooked.  The next time I pick up some matzo I might try the Rachel Ray recipe, but seeing as that almost never happens, maybe we will just stick with our own mustard-crusted salmon.

Recipe after the jump!

Swordfish with Chile Pesto and Avocado Salad

We really need to make more swordfish in our apartment.  Every time we make swordfish at home (and don't screw it up because we have done that before) I am reminded that I really do like swordfish.  We probably make it about twice a year, but I really think we should bump it up to every few months.  If all of our swordfish recipes turned out this well I think we would definitely make it more.  The swordfish itself was juicy and perfectly cooked.  And the chile pesto was very interesting - it had a ton of chile flavor.  I would use it again with pork and maybe beef.  I would also consider using it with duck.  My one complaint with the pesto was that the texture was a little gritty and in some bites you ended up with a big chunk of dried chili.  But it had a lot of good flavor.  We added a little honey to the pesto because it was initially a little bitter for us, but a tsp or two of honey nicely counteracted the bitterness of the dried chilis.  I would definitely recommend serving with some avocado salad because the creaminess of the avocado works really nicely with the meatiness of the swordfish and the spice of the pesto.  If you were to make the recipe as written and serve the swordish as a topping for tacos, don't forgo the avocado slices.  I wished we had topped the swordfish with a few pepitas for crunch and texture (or perhaps thinly sliced some corn tortillas and fried them until crispy), but even without that additional textural element it was pretty tasty.

Recipes after the jump!

Baked Bass with Spicy Rub

I woke up from a nap last weekend and decided that I was in the mood for seafood.  We have been really vegetable and meat-oriented in our kitchen recently and there hasn't been much seafood in the apartment.  Actually, even our dinners out at restaurants have been very meat and vegetable-oriented.  I am going to try to remedy that for the rest of the year, but I'm not going to make any promises because we all know how well I live up to my blog promises...  I have a shrimp recipe that I want to try (maybe we will get around to that one tonight) and I really want to cook some more fish.  We also cooked some swordfish earlier this week that I have yet to post so stay tuned for that recipe.  Actually, if we make the shrimp this weekend I will consider my blog promise to have been fulfilled - three seafood recipes in one blog week is pretty huge around here.  And given that next week is Thanksgiving I'm not sure how much seafood I am going to be able to squeeze into my diet amidst all of that turkey and stuffing.  I do want to go out and have some nice sushi, but that is going to have to wait until after Thanksgiving.

This fish was really easy to make and pretty interesting.  It wasn't my favorite whole fish recipe ever because I didn't think that it had as much flavor as I had hoped for.  The spicy rub was surprisingly spicy from the black pepper, but I wish it had more lemongrass and cilantro flavor.  If I were to make it again I would cut back on the amount of black pepper and up the amount of the other aromatics.  I might also stuff some lime slices in the belly of the fish with the lemongrass.  Another problem with the dish was how many little bones the fish had - which isn't really a problem with the recipe but is a problem inherent with eating whole fish.

P.S.  I couldn't decide which picture was the least creepy of the bunch (and they were all pretty creepy) so I posted what I considered to be the two un-creepiest and most appetizing looking.  Because really, who doesn't love having fish eyeballs staring you in the eye while you eat?

Recipe after the jump!

Mark Bittman's Roasted Salmon with Butter

I am always looking for easy recipes that you can make with one arm tied behind your back and that don't require a ton of ingredients.  Oh and it helps if those dishes are at least relatively healthy.  This recipe has exactly those qualities.  It really doesn't get any simpler than this - both in terms of the effort required and the number of ingredients.  Including the salmon, the dish only required 5 ingredients.  And since the dish was basically just salmon (with a little butter coating the pan), s&p and parsley, the dish is also relatively healthy.  Hurry omega-3 acids!  Considering how tasty the dish was, it is rather unbelievable that the dish was so easy to throw together.  The salmon was really nicely cooked and seasoned.  We cooked our salmon for 8 minutes and it was perfect - with a pink, slightly translucent center.  And it was so easy!  We served it with a simple arugula salad and watermelon and it was a perfect mid-summer mid-week meal.  This is the second post in a row where I have to thank Serious Eats for a lovely meal!  And Serious Eats also includes various riffs on this recipe using different herbs, or evoo in lieu of some of the butter that provide a few interesting modifications on this recipe, which makes it even more fun and attractive.  So I will have to try some of those out (or come up with my own interpretations) and figure out which is my favorite!

Recipe after the jump!

Moroccan Baked Scallops

I will be the first to admit that scallops in our apartment tend to be epic failures.  Actually, I am being a bit hyperbolic there.  The few times we have tried to cook scallops they have tended to be quietly sad and disappointing.  Sometimes they are overcooked, sometimes they are underseasoned...  They just don't seem to work out for us.  But these scallops were by far the best scallops we have ever made.  They were beautifully cooked and very tasty.  The word that comes to mind is lovely.  The scallops were tender and silky, with a really nice crispy breadcrumb topping.  Texturally speaking, they were flawless.  And the compound butter added just the right level of spice and flavor without overpowering the natural sweetness and flavor of the scallops.  I was a huge fan.  Even Alex, who is generally not a big fan of scallops, was really impressed by this dish.  I think that one of the best things about this dish is that it could be the perfect dinner party dish because it is both elegant and delicious, but it could also be an easy midweek dinner dish because it is so easy to put together.  And the recipe would be easy to tweak to use slightly different flavor combinations.  I'm thinking it would be really easy to do Italian - use some parsley and lemon zest in the bread crumbs and garlic and more herbs in the compound butter.  Maybe add a little white wine to the bottom of the gratin dishes to add some steam and extra flavor?  I don't know.  I just know that I really really liked this recipe.  Thanks Serious Eats!

Recipe after the jump!

Salmon Bulgogi with Bok Choy and Mushrooms

Now that work has calmed down a bit, we have time to cook again.  I'm hoping that this entire month is on the slower side so Alex and I can cook and eat a bunch of meals at home, but we will have to wait and see what happens.  It has been so long since I had the time to really sit down and plan my meals that I find that I am a little rusty.  When I was trying to figure out what to make for dinner this week I literally had no inspiration whatsoever.  I couldn't think of a single thing I wanted to make, so I just dug through the freezer until I found a few proteins, picked up a few veggies at the farmers' market and then searched Epicurious to come up with some recipes.  This salmon dish was what resulted.  I do have an idea for some Chinese-inspired lamb burgers for this weekend, but we haven't made them yet so I can't take any credit.

When Alex took his first bite of the salmon he predicted I would have two thoughts - that the marinade was kind of salty and kind of harsh.  My first thought was actually that the marinade was almost ridiculously gingery.  We kind of eyeballed the proportions here so the abundance of ginger could be Alex's fault (he did the solids) and the saltiness could be my fault (I "measured" the liquids).  My second thought was that the bok choy and shiitake mushrooms were underseasoned.  But I found that when you tossed the veggies in the reduced marinade that the dish worked out pretty well.  The veggies on their own were kind of bland and the salmon with the reduced marinade/glaze on top was too highly seasoned.  When you put them together (and scraped some marinade off the salmon) it balanced out.  I was a little worried about cooking the salmon at such high temperatures, but that worked out pretty well too.  The salmon turned out to be very nicely cooked - still a touch pink in the center (which I like) and not dry like I had feared.  This will never be my favorite way to cook salmon, but with a few tweaks I think it could be a very pleasant weeknight meal since it is very simple to put together and doesn't require a ton of time, effort and/or ingredients.

Recipe after the jump!

Vietnamese Peach Relish and Fresh Green Peas and Sugar Snap Peas in Sesame Dressing

What do you do when you end up with tons of random farmers' market produce?  We had peaches, shelling peas, sugar snap peas, green beans, wax beans, cherry tomatoes and a bunch of other goodies in the fridge, so it struck me that tonight's meal had to involve at least a few of those ingredients.  I thought a bit and came up with this Vietnamese Peach Relish (served with seared halibut) and a green pea and sugar snap pea salad.  And then you make a salad the next night and another salad the night after that...  Anyway, this dish was one that I thought would be interesting, fresh and vibrant.  And it was all of those things.  Plus it looked pretty on the white plate we served it on.  But Alex and I came to the conclusion that this peach relish (for better or worse) could have been served with anything - grilled chicken breasts, shrimp, pork chops...  You didn't need to spend $20 a pound for halibut because it doesn't really do anything spectacular for the halibut that it couldn't do just as well for another protein.  If I had to pick a halibut recipe to make again, I would go with the Pistachio-Crusted Halibut with Spicy Yogurt that we made last week because that dish was phenomenal and really showed the halibut off nicely.  If I make the relish again (and I think that I will because I liked it and found it interesting) I might try it with a meat to see how it works out.  As for the peas, they were nice but I almost preferred them in their raw state to cooked because the soy sauce and the sesame oil obscured some of the natural sweetness and flavor of the peas.  I also think we needed to dry the peas off a little better so that the dressing would adhere a little better and not be diluted with the cold water that we rinsed the peas with.  My bad.

Recipes after the jump!

Pistachio-Crusted Halibut with Spicy Yogurt and Green Beans with Lemon and Parsley

For the first time in a LONG time, I left work at 5:00 pm, which meant I had time to hit the grocery store on the way home, buy nice seafood, take the dog to the park, and then cook a nice meal.  In case you haven't noticed, we have been making mostly vegetarian meals lately, which is partially due to the fact that we have all of this wonderful produce from the farmers' market, but is mostly due to the fact that I can't commit to buying nice seafood or any other proteins when I don't have any idea if I will ever make it home for dinner.  I refuse to buy seafood or meat (both of which are expensive in NYC) and end up throwing it out because of work.  I hate throwing produce out, but that I can stomach because it's generally much cheaper.  Every time I go through weeks/months like this with work we eat a lot more tofu and pasta than usual because they require less planning and far less commitment on our part.  But because of the Fourth of July, this week was blessedly quiet and we actually had the opportunity to make a really nice meal for dinner!

And not only did we have the time to make a really nice midweek dinner, this recipe goes down as my favorite recipe we have made thus far in the month of July.  Actually, why don't we go ahead and include June too (seeing as we barely cooked in the month of June it's not much of an addition, but whatever).  Dinner was delicious.  The halibut was perfectly cooked and the pistachio-crust kept it moist, while adding some lightly crunchy texture.  The spicy yogurt sauce had a great blend of flavors.  It was tart, spicy, fresh and vibrant.  I loved it.  When you ate a bite of halibut dipped in the yogurt sauce it worked together brilliantly.  The green beans were a simple side dish that worked really nicely with the halibut.  They were fresh and green and lemony, and the simple flavors complimented/mirrored the spicy yogurt.  Actually, at the end of the meal Alex was dipping his green beans into the leftover spicy yogurt.  I guess they went with the yogurt even better than I thought...

Recipes after the jump!