Simple meal today. Baked salmon steaks with sautéed white mushrooms as a side. Marinated the salmon steaks in a sauce of honey, oyster sauce, soy sauce, diced garlic, ground ginger, and a Chinese white cooking wine for an hour. Baked on the pan covered for ten, redistributed the sauce, and then for another eight minutes. Came out soft, yet cooked through, and the sauce permeated nicely into the steaks. Mushrooms were sliced in fours, marinated very quickly in soy sauce, then pan fried in oil and butter. After their initial reduction I introduce white cooking wine (the same one), garlic, and thyme. When the white wine boiled off, I stirred in salt and garnished with parsley. Simple, but nicely flavored meal. Quick too, as the marinades take little time and all the actually cooking and prep time minus waiting is around only twenty-five minutes.
There's a new yakiniku restaurant that just opened, so Mrs. A and I will be testing its fare to see if it's worthy of being added to the rotation.
Yakitori is chicken on skewers cooked by a chef. Yakiniku is bite-sized pieces of beef (primarily, although there are chicken and pork options), often marinated, that you cook on a grill in the middle of your table.
Remind me to regale you with my adventures trying to order yakatori vs yakinuku skewer stands from various Japanese/American companies. Been 6 weeks and I can't get a straight answer from anybody.
Something I won't be cooking tonight is a recipe I saw online for Brussels Sprouts and Grapes au Gratin
Everything but the grapes sounds delicious... I'd try it at least. Sprouts are great with some sweetness. Maple syrup is more common than grapes, though. Actually, anything is more common than grapes.
Tried to prepare escargot recently. Texture was terrible—too firm and chewy. I’ll leave it to the experts.
Shells will probably isolated heat better. The way we do it in restaurants is to reuse decorative shells and stuff them nightly with fresh snails. And by "fresh" I mean canned, vacced, and imported. Classic Bourgeone is just garlic, herbs, and butter. Been a while since I've served them, but I want to say the pickup time is maybe 12 minutes in a hot oven convection. Or maybe it's in a low sally oven. Can't remember... my restaurant hard drive filled up a long time ago.
Breaded chicken patty and mayo and lettuce on a lightly toasted Everything bagel, and crinkle-cut fries.
Another frozen beef & bean burrito (hair of the dog that bit me a few days ago, but only one this time). Covered with shredded Mexican cheese blend and red salsa, and I wish I had some shredded lettuce, diced tomato, sour cream and a can of sliced black olives to make it deluxe. But I don't. However, there's cookie dough ice cream for after.
Thank you. I may try to make them again at some point and I'll keep this in mind. Will definitely get shells, too.
toasted slice of french bread and a handful of grapes..... thats the thing i hate about thursdays. the closing shift throws off my eating; its too late in the evening to eat a full meal, so bread and grapes. yay.
Baked stuffed Portobello mushrooms tonight. Turned out rather well and will probably do it again. Coated them in Italian dressing before baking them. Pulled them out early to drain, then stuffed them with an interesting mixture. The mixture included chopped spinach and chard, diced pepperoni, bread crumbs, egg, diced garlic, parmesan, mozzarella, and salt and pepper. Topped with more mozzarella and baked until the cheese browned. Came out soft to cut and chew, yet firm enough to hold together. A very fresh sort of flavor to it that made me excited to make them again. Quite easy as well, so I definitely will give it another go and possibly try another stuffing.
How late is too late? I housed a scallops risotto and a baked stuffed lobster tail at 12:15 am. Either that or starve to death, which honestly doesn't seem like a terrible alternative these days.
