Pan Fried Salmon with Blood Orange Beurre Nantais

One of my joys during the week is coming up with menus and doing grocery shopping. I love planning new recipes, using special ingredients, and seasonal products. Earlier this week I found blood oranges for $1.19/lb at my neighborhood grocery store. I was so excited that I immediately bought some to go into my beurre nantais. The end result was delicious salmon with a buttery sauce that was to die for!

Pan Fried Salmon

Ingredients:

4-6 oz salmon

2 T canola oil

salt

pepper

·      Season both sides of salmon with salt and pepper

·      Heat canola oil in medium pan over high heat

·      Add salmon skin-side down and reduce heat to medium

·      Cook for three minutes before flipping. Cook second side two minutes.

·      Serve with blood orange beurre nantais

Blood Orange Beurre Nantais

Ingredients

1 shallot, chopped

2-3 blood oranges, juiced

¼ cup white wine

¼ cup heavy cream

100 g cold butter, cubed (1/4 lb)

salt

pepper

·      Sauté shallots in small amount of butter over medium heat until lightly browned

·      Deglaze with blood orange juice and white wine, reduce to au sec (almost dry)

·      Whisk in cream and allow to cook for three minutes

·      Whisk in butter, one cube at a time

·      Season with salt and pepper and keep warm; serve with salmon

Bon Appetit! 

The Vancouver Sushi Dilemma

One of the strange dilemmas in Vancouver is sushi.  There are over 400 places to get sushi in this city and they range from $6.95 for a 24-piece combo to $35 per roll. Some have amazing prices, but not the highest quality. Others have great sushi at reasonable prices, but terrible service. Are you willing to sacrifice price, service, or quality? I have yet to find “bad” sushi here. I hope to review a higher-ranking sushi restaurant in a few months, but in the meantime, here is a review of the average Vancouver sushi joint.

Yuko Maki is located on Davie St. next to KFC near the 25-cent peep shows. The sushi is served fresh, albeit slowly and there is unlimited hot tea. My friend L and I ordered four specialty rolls and a seaweed salad. The seaweed salad came out quickly, but then there was at least a ten-minute gap between each of the rolls arriving. Furthermore, L and I were not sharing our sushi, which made it difficult when they first brought my two rolls and then hers. By the time she was eating, I was almost finished.

Despite the mediocre service, the sushi is always delicious. I ordered the golden roll (yam tempura) and the bagel roll. The yam tempura was crispy and warm as always with delicious mayo and cream cheese.  The bagel roll had good quality smoked salmon and was well balanced. It was not the best bagel/Philadelphia roll that I have had, but it still tasted great. Both rolls held together well and the rice was perfect. Overall the food at Yuko Maki is on the higher end of the average Vancouver sushi eatery.

In the end you have to decide if the poor service is worth it at Yuko Maki, given that there are hundreds more sushi places to try. Personally, I will be out trying new places and hoping that good service and good sushi can come together at a reasonable price.

Popping Back in Time

In my family we take popcorn to a new level. Microwave popcorn is considered a sin and movie popcorn always needs vast improvements. Some of my best memories involve homemade popcorn and I still count it as one of my favorite foods. Growing up, my Dad’s two cooking specialties were popcorn and waffles. Since then he has branched out in an amazing way, but to me he will always be the chef of Friday night movies and Sunday brunch. I started out as my Dad’s assistant at a very young age and by the time I was ten, he thought I was ready to learn the family’s secret recipe.  Even now I have friends who remember how amazing this popcorn was and I am here to share it with the world.

Dad’s 100% Best Popcorn*

Ingredients:

½ cup canola oil (optionally can be half chili oil)

2 cups popcorn

¼ cup melted butter

nutritional yeast

soy sauce

garlic powder/cajun seasoning
grated Parmesan cheese

Equipment:

12-quart stockpot (thick bottom)

large paper grocery bag

·      Add canola oil to stockpot with five popcorn kernels; cook on high heat

·      When five kernels have popped, add remaining amount to pot

·      Move continuously, shaking pot occasionally, until there is more than a two second interval between pops

·      Pour popcorn into paper grocery bag

·      Drizzle one third of the butter over popcorn. Drizzle soy sauce. Sprinkle with nutritional yeast, garlic powder, and Parmesan cheese. Shake bag vigorously.

·      Repeat three times or until desired taste and texture is achieved

 *Keep in mind that 50% of the recipe is based on personal taste and is worth experimenting with.

 

Feliz Cumpleaños Nuevo México

On a recent Friday while I was still sick (pretty sure it was the plague), New Mexico celebrated its 100^th birthday. I had originally planned to track down a Mexican grocery store and make tamales and biscochitos. In the end I honestly can’t remember how I spent the day, but I think it involved drinking ten cups of tea and copious amounts of sleep. Now I am finally feeling better and felt like giving New Mexico a belated birthday party. After scouring the internet for the best biscochitos recipe, I chose one from a true New Mexican blog, Gabriela's Kitchen, and got started. What my cough syrup addled brain failed to realize was that when you combine one pound of lard with six cups of flour, you are making a LOT of cookies. Hours of rolling and cutting later and I have two huge plates of cookies. My best guess is that I made over 150 cookies today. They are flaky, sweet, and oh so delicious, and gave me an excuse to share the love with my friends. Happy birthday New Mexico!

Gabriela's Kitchen Biscochitos

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups lard (1 pound box)
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs
3 teaspoons anise seed
6 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking powder 
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sweet white wine (plus 1/4 extra if needed)
1/2 cup sugar + 1 Tablespoon cinnamon

• Cream together the lard and 1 1/2 cups sugar. In a separate bowl beat the eggs and anise, add to the lard/sugar mixture. Mix well.
• In a separate bowl sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add this dry mixture to the wet mixture. Knead well with your hands until dough sticks together, it should be slightly sticky but able to form a firm dough ball. If the dough is too dry add more wine a teaspoon at a time, if it is too sticky add more flour a teaspoon at a time.
• Divide the dough into three large balls and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate overnight so the dough becomes firm and manegable.
• The next day preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Roll out the dough with a liberally floured rolling pin on a liberally floured surface 1/8 inch thick. Cut into desired shapes. Dip one side of each cookie into cinnamon-sugar mixture and place on cookie sheet sugar side up. To ensure all cookies bake evenly, bake each shape cookie in batches of alike shapes and sizes. Bake for 10-15 minutes until the bottom of the cookies are brown and the tops are golden.
• Remove from oven, and immediately dip in cinnamon-sugar again, dipping them while they are warm is key to getting the cinnamon sugar to stick. Store in a cool-dry place or freeze for up to six months.

Comfort Food

On a grey day like this it is hard to motivate myself to do anything. Not to mention the fact that I am either a crazy hypochondriac or I have a double ear infection and the flu. All I wanted today was something warm and comforting to eat. One of my New Years resolutions was to take fewer cooking shortcuts. In Vancouver it is very tempting to just get take-out, but I am trying to cut back. So what is a feverish and dizzy girl to do? Chicken pot pie! I adapted a fairly simple recipe and thought I ought to share it with the internet as a whole before I crawl back into bed and watch another Disney movie.

Chicken Pot Pie

Ingredients

.75 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - cubed
1/4 cup butter
3/4 cup chopped onion
1 cup medium dice carrots
1/2 cup medium dice celery
1 clove garlic minced
1 cup frozen green peas
3/4 cup cubed Yukon gold potatoes
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 3/4 cups chicken stock
2/3 cup milk
Recipe for 2 (9”) unbaked pie crusts

Method

• Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C.)
• In a large pan cook chicken in vegetable oil for five minutes. Drain and set aside.
• In a large saucepan over medium heat, cook onions in butter until soft and translucent. Add celery, carrots, and garlic and cook for five minutes. Add peas and potatoes.
• Stir in flour, salt and pepper. Stir in chicken broth and milk. Simmer over medium-low heat until thick. Remove from heat and set aside.
• Place the chicken in bottom piecrust. Pour vegetables and liquid mixture over chicken; do not overfill. Cover with top crust, seal edges, and cut away excess dough. Make several small slits in the top to allow steam to escape.
• Bake in the preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes, or until pastry is golden brown. Cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Pho Goodness Sake!

It is one of those miserable rainy days in Vancouver. The kind that makes you crawl in bed with tea. The kind of rain that turns Robson Street into Robson Creek. I suppose I should feel lucky that the winter has been so dry until now. And at least there is plenty of good warm food here. This post was going to be about my attempts to make Vietnamese Pho, but Whole Foods is still out of star anise so this post will be about eating pho instead. There is truly nothing better on a rainy day than a steaming bowl of brothy goodness.

My personal favorite pho restaurant in Vancouver is called Pho Goodness and is only four blocks away. This makes it perfect for late night take-out, long study sessions, and crappy mood pick-ups. It is only slightly larger than my apartment and they always have a huge stockpot of pho stock bubbling in the back. Service is fast and friendly with endless hot tea refills. Vancouver overflows with good restaurants, but it is places like this that inspire me to try new things. Now it is time for me to enjoy my hot bowl of pho and watch a rainy day movie!

(Homemade pho post coming soon)