Shrimp Fried Rice

Thanks to my migraines, dinners this week ended up shuffled a bit, with me using ingredients differently than planned to keep things easy. Last night's pan roasted chicken with spinach pasta sauce was supposed to be chicken picatta, and the spaghetti & marinara were supposed to be for shrimp pasta tonight. So tonight I instead used leftover rice from last weekend, and veggies from the crisper, to make a shrimp fried rice, instead.

I started with garlic & ginger in some peanut oil in the wok, then once they got fragrant, added some sliced carrots. Once they'd cooked a minute or so, I added chopped red bell pepper. Next, the rice went in, along with a mix of oyster sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil and Sriracha hot sauce. I let that cook up for awhile, then realized there was nothing green in the mix - so I grabbed some frozen peas and dumped them in. Once it was all heated through, I poured the rice mixture into a bowl. Then I tossed the shrimp with a little more sauce into the hot wok, and cooked them through. Quick, easy, and tasty. Perfect when it feels like something's trying to bore it's way out of our skull.

Pickled Fish Tacos

Dan got some delicious mahi mahi from AmazonFresh this morning, and fish tacos sounded perfect to both of us, since were still full from this morning (or maybe from last night!) To make them a little different, I 'pickled' the main ingredients.



I started by cutting the fish into pieces, putting them in a shallow dish, and then adding enough lemon & lime juice to cover all the pieces - creating a ceviche effect, as the acids in the citrus juices cooked the outside of the fish.



Next I grated some carrot and sliced some cabbage (green and purple) thinly, and tossed it together.



I made a marinade for the veggies using apple cider vinegar, some honey, some sriracha, and a pinch of salt - creating a salty/sweet/sour/spicy liquid that I poured over the cabbage & carrot mixture, and tossed.



Next I grated some cheese (just a bit) and heated corn tortillas in a skillet, then kept them warm by putting them on a small plate and inverting another plate over the top.



I mixed together some onion powder, cumin, coriander, chili powder, cinnamon, black pepper and salt, then drained the citrus juices off the fish and sprinkled the spice mixture over the fish pieces.



Finally, I stirred the fish to evenly coat them with seasoning, and tossed them in the hot skillet (high heat and a little vegetable oil) and cooked them until done - a couple minutes.

Topped with a little guacamole and salsa, they were a quick, fresh dinner perfect for Sunday night.

Barbarian Salmon

About 9 years ago, I decided to use some vacation time to spend a week in San Francisco. Largely unfamiliar with the city, I asked coworkers for advice on things to do and places to eat - and my office-mate Peter suggested a little sushi restaurant called Country Station Sushi, in the Mission District.

I visited Country Station on that trip, and my next trip to SF soon after, each time by myself. On both occasions, I ended up chatting with the proprietor - a Japanese Butoh performer in her 50s who spoke about as much English as I spoke Japanese. But we communicated with hand signals and pantomime and what words we each knew - and each time she fed me items not on the menu. The last time I visited, it was a fish head - and she explained through charades and broken English which parts to eat and why they're good - the cheeks because the fish uses it's mouth so much and builds up those muscles, and the eyeball because it gives you strength. And on my first visit, it was Ba-ru-ba-ri-an Tuna.

It took me a minute or two to decode what she was calling the giant slab of tuna - fin and all - that she was slathering with spices, but came to understand it was Barbarian Tuna... another of her experiments that turned out delicious.

Sadly, Country Station Sushi is no more, and I'm not sure what's become of the chefs - but I'll always have fond memories of my visits.

Tonight, in honor of Country Station, I made Barbarian Salmon - mixing crushed garlic & ginger with Sriracha sauce, slathering it all over a fillet of salmon, then broiling it (along with sesame coated asparagus). I was surprised that it wasn't as spicy as I thought it would be - so I could actually kick it up next time with some chili powder or red pepper flakes. But it turned out tasty and brought back memories - which I think is a little appreciated value of food.

Seafood & Veggie Pasta

After a long week at work, and a particularly bad experience as I ended a 10+ hour workday, I got home around 7pm not particularly motivated to cook. Thankfully, my husband's meal planning skills are exemplary, and tonight's dinner was an easy yet satisfying one: seafood and veggie pasta.

The hardest part was getting the water to boil - as our gas stove seems to have trouble in that department. Perhaps the pots that worked well on electric don't do as well with gas? I'll have to research that a bit. But once the water (salted generously) boiled, I cooked up some fettuccine, pulled it out, blanched some chopped broccoli, pulled it out, and then tossed in some chopped kale. While the pasta was cooking, I put 2 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan and melted it down over medium-high heat, then added 2 tablespoons of flour, whisking quickly, then added milk until I got a nice thick sauce going. I added Parmesan cheese and Mizithra cheese, and then realized the Mizithra smelled bad, so I tossed that sauce and started over. 2 more tablespoons each of butter & flour, the last of the milk in the house, and some more Parmesan, and I had a good sauce (seasoned with some salt and pepper to taste, of course).

I also tossed a very little olive oil in a medium high heat pan and cooked some prawns and scallops, just until they changed color.

When everything was cooked, I poured out the cooking water and tossed everything in the big pot to toss it together - sauce included - then dumped it into a big bowl for serving.

The kale could've either used more cooking time or to be de-stemmed first, but other than that I felt the dish was successful.

Salmon Pasta Salad

A quick and simple dinner tonight of pasta salad featuring Pike Place Fish salmon, cucumber, tomato, olives and mozzarella.

Shrimp & Tofu Phad Thai

Sushi Night

After a trip to Uwajimaya to get some fresh sashimi-grade fish, wasabi powder, and other supplies we need, we came home and made up some homemade sushi featuring various combinations of tuna, sockeye salmon, cucumber, avocado, spicy mayo, and wasabi. My favorite was a roll inside a roll I made with lots of spicy mayo. Dan's least favorite was probably the oblong roll that I loaded up with too much wasabi, that he dipped in more wasabi, not realizing just how spicy it already was. Whoops! In my defense, I did put some cucumber in that roll to try to counterbalance it - and I warned him.

Potato Scallop, Salmon Roulade, and Carrot Puree

Tonight we watched Top Chef prior to me going into the kitchen to make what was planned to be a simple dinner - fig leaf wrapped salmon and potatoes.



But often when I watch cooking shows, I get inspired and want to put a little extra effort in. So I started some water boiling and cooked some carrots from our garden until they were soft, and then popped them in a blender with some olive oil and lemon juice until they were pureed. Next I cooked some red potatoes (a housewarming gift from Brent at Olsen Farms) and then mashed them with a little butter and milk. I took a tail fillet of pink salmon from Loki Fish Co., cut it in half lengthwise, and then rolled each half up before wrapping it in a fig leaf from our backyard and baking them for 12 minutes at 350 degrees F. In the meantime, I used a biscuit cutter to create a cylinder of mashed potatoes, which I seared off in a hot skillet to which I'd added some ghee - clarified butter - because it can take the heat without burning. I used a couple spatulas to flip the potato 'scallop' and sear the other side, before plating on a bed of the carrot puree alongside the salmon roulade, topped with some dill.

Crab Enchiladas

I ended up buying twice as much dungeness crab as we needed for the crab cakes Saturday, so we decided to make some crab enchiladas. The filling was the crab meat, plus diced avocado and roasted corn, plus some onion and seasonings.

Shrimp Caesar & Garlic Toast

For our first day back to work, we opted for a quick & easy dinner option - a prefab Caesar salad with shrimp added, plus some whole wheat toast with a little butter spray and garlic powder.

The leftover shrimp got mixed with some homemade mayo, curry, and garam masala for a tasty sandwich for lunch tomorrow.

Shrimp Curry

After getting addicted to the curry recipes in Quick & Easy Thai Cuisine, we realized we hadn't made yellow curry in a long time. Dan found a great recipe in his Best of the Best from Hawaii cookbook, but the last time we made it was nearly a year ago. So tonight, we broke out the old favorite, and thanks to me accidentally reading part of the ingredients on the recipe on the facing page, it ended up being just a little different - but maybe even better. I added a couple tablespoons of ginger paste, and a little extra curry, which just took the flavors up a notch. And we garnished with some shredded coconut, chopped mac nuts, and green onions.

Honey Walnut Prawns & Spicy Green Beans

When Dan & I first moved in together to an apartment on Capitol Hill, we fell in love with the Honey Walnut Prawns from the only Chinese Restaurant we could find that delivered - Broadway Wok & Grill. Their food was great, but it was the Honey Walnut Prawns (and quick, friendly service) that kept us calling. Sadly, they closed, but we've since moved to Beacon Hill, where we found Golden Daisy Garden could support our Walnut Prawns delivery habit.

But much like the drug addict who decides to 'grow his own', we decided to try our hand at making our favorite dish from scratch. We just didn't know how 'from scratch' it was going to be.

The process seemed simple enough. Just 3 components to make and then combine: the prawns, the walnuts, and the sauce. Plus rice, and for us, some green beans. But it was more involved than I anticipated, with the walnuts taking two 10 minute baths in boiling water before being drizzled with honey and then fried and cooled. The prawns just got coated in a egg/cornstarch batter and fried at the last minute. But the kicker was the sauce, of all things. Three simple ingredients, and we happened to be out of the main one: Mayo. But since the batter was made with egg whites, we had egg yolks sitting around, and lemon juice, and oil, and salt & water, so we busted out our copy of Michael Ruhlman's Ratio and literally whipped up our own mayo - trading off who whipped and who drizzled oil when our arms got tired. After a day of working in the yard, we were already beat - so it took a lot of turns to get our mayo, but it was worth it. The dish turned out just like we remembered it, or maybe even a little better

Unfortunately, the spicy green beans Dan made while I was frying shrimp didn't make the photo - because both our cameras had dead batteries and I was a little frantic trying to figure out how to get shots, thus forgetting to plate the green beans before I snapped a couple photos with my crappy cell phone.

Honey Walnut Prawns
1/2 cup walnuts
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups oil
1 lb jumbo shrimp, peeled & deveined
1/2 cup cornstarch
3 egg whites
1/4 cup honey
3 Tbspn mayonnaise
1 Tbspn lemon juice (or white vinegar)
1 Tbspn sweetened condensed milk

Boil walnuts in 5 cups of water for 10 minutes. Drain. Place walnuts & sugar in a quart of boiling water, and boil for 10 minutes. Drain. Coat walnuts with honey. Heat 2 cups of oil until almost smoking, then fry walnuts until they are shiny and brown, about 5-8 minutes. Remove and place on a cookie sheet to cool. Mix cornstarch and egg whites together to form a thick, sticky mixture. Mix in shrimp and set aside. Mix mayonnaise, lemon juice, and condensed milk in a medium bowl until smooth. Heat 1/2 cup oil and deep fry shrimp until golden. Drain shrimp and then fold into mayonnaise sauce.

(Recipe from Recipezaar, because, amazingly, I don't have a good Chinese Food cookbook.)

Coconut Shrimp & Baked Broccoli

We left Friday open on our meal plan (as we usually do), in case we felt like going out or to use up leftover ingredients from the week's meals. When we realized we'd have some extra shrimp around, and we'd be watching the Hawai`i episode of 'Bridget's Sexiest Beaches' on our Tivo, we thought a little Polynesian flavor for dinner would be perfect.

The leftover shrimp became our main dish - coconut shrimp - and to go with it, Dan picked a recipe out of Best of the Best from Hawaii for Baked Broccoli.

After shelling the shrimp (these were the size that come 31-40 per pound, and I used just over a pound), I laid the shrimp out on a cookie sheet to let them dry. Then, I dredged them in rice flour (a gift from my coworker, Martha), and gave them some more time to dry. Then, I dredged each shrimp in a beaten egg, pressed it into a mixture of panko bread crumbs and coconut (about a cup or so of each), and again laid them out on the cookie sheet to dry. While I was waiting, I got the deep fryer going, and set it to 350 degrees. When the oil was ready, I fried 1/3 of the shrimp at a time, for about 2 minutes, to a golden brown. As each batch finished, I laid them out on a cooling rack over a cookie sheet - to allow excess oil to drip off.




Baked Broccoli
1-2 lbs broccoli
2 cans of cream of mushroom soup
1 package imitation crab meat
1/2 cup grated cheddar
1/2 cup grated monterey jack
1/2 cup mozzarella

Cut broccoli inot bite sized pieces. Parboil slightly in a pot of boiling water, til bright green but still crunchy. Put the broccoli into the bottom of a 9x13 pan, and spread evenly. Top with one can of soup. Add a layer of crab meat, and then another can of soup, and finally top with the mixed cheeses. Bake in a 325 F oven until cheese melts - about 15-20 minutes. Turn the broiler on and allow the cheese to brown a bit on top before serving.

Red Curry Shrimp

After work today, Dan cooked up red curry with shrimp over Basmati rice (we were out of jasmine rice), which was delicious. I barely had to lift a finger, which was nice after a long day at work.

One thing we did to alter the original recipe was to add a little cornstarch (dissolved in a little water) just before adding the shrimp, to help thicken the curry up - as we both like a thicker sauce than the original recipe produces.

Dan's sister Midge is whipping up a red curry with the same recipe this week (we gave her a copy of Quick & Easy Thai Cuisine for her birthday last month), so I'm excited to hear how they like it.