Sushi, Deconstructed

Okay, not really deconstructed. And probably not really sushi. But I'm sick, and I'm bored, and it seemed high time to put up another post here.

My coworker let me try her version of this stuff the other morning, and it was DELICIOUS. Her salmon was way better than mine, and I think she also used some fancy plum paste - umeboshi? It was tantalizing. Mine didn't have the same kick, but it was still very yummy.

Basically, it's a hollowed-out cucumber partially filled with thinly sliced crisp vegetables, and then stuffed the rest of the way with cooked salmon. Next time, I will probably use an organic and unwaxed cucumber so that I feel good about leaving the skin on, since I think that would make the final sliced "sushi" round look even more attractive to the eye.

I have actually made this for myself two nights in a row now. Last night I used a little bit of avocado; tonight I didn't have avocado, but used some green bell pepper instead.

This can serve two people if served with a small soup, noodles, or rice (I think if you serve it with rice, it comes closer to qualifying as "deconstructed"). Tonight, I had it with some udon noodles with the extra chopped carrots and bell peppers.

- 1 cucumber, peeled (if desired), cut in half crosswise, seeds scraped out with long paring knife or some other skinny utensil
-about 3 oz (1/2 tiny can) canned salmon (cooked fresh salmon, or smoked salmon, would certainly be delicious as well)
- 1/2 small carrot, cut into very thin square strips about half the length of the cucumber (you will probably have some extra carrot to snack on)
-some other vegetable or fruit cut into thin, long strips, such as bell pepper, avocado, daikon radish, regular radish, green onion, etc.
-rice vinegar or other vinegar, if available
-soy sauce, plum sauce, anything else you would like to use for dipping
-black sesame seeds for garnish (totally optional)

1) Toss the salmon with a little bit of vinegar in a small bowl (not pictured below - this is just a gratuitous picture of all the ingredients).

Here are the veggie strips (below)

Here are the hollowed-out cucumber halves.

Take each cucumber half and fill the hollow about one-third of the way with the vegetable strips.

Then, stuff the rest of the hollow with the salmon, bit by bit. Take about a half-spoonful at a time and press it down to the bottom of the hollow with the paring knife.

When no more salmon will go into the cucumber, slice off the end with a sharp knife so that the cross-section is smooth.

If desired and if you have time anyway, store the cucumber halves upright (see below) over a towel in the fridge while you get the rest of your dinner ready. I found that my salty salmon helped drain the cucumber and veggies of some of their water even in the short 15 minutes that I had the cucumber halves propped up.

Now comes the fun part - like peeling the backing off a temporary tattoo, or drying your hair so you can see what color you actually just dyed it, you get to slice the cucumber halves into rounds. The portion below came from half of a cucumber.

...that's it! Serve with soy sauce and/or anything else you like to accompany your sushi.

Stir-Fried Plums with Carrots and Red Cabbage

Hey, I'm back!

A lot has happened since the end of August. We moved (end result=bigger kitchen - hooray!), and then I lost the cable that connects my camera to my computer. Not that that's a sufficient excuse for not posting this recipe until now, since I took the pictures back in... July? Whenever plums are in season. Anyway, here's to more frequent posting.
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I have come into a million plums from someone at work who has a plum tree and keeps bringing them in. I think I will have to eat several for breakfast, then make a couple of pans of crisp when I get home, just to make sure I use them all. It's great! And these plums are gorgeous (see below).

Last night, I made a plum cake (which is now gone). Tonight, I thought I'd try to use them in a savory context. Our produce drawer is running low on veggies at the moment, but the plums at least get us in the same general section of the nutrition pyramid - right??

Yeah, I think so. Anyway, here's what I used:

• 2-3T oil (enough to cover part of the bottom of a medium-large non-stick skillet
• 1/4 small onion, halved and sliced into thin strips (if you magically have shallot on hand, that would probably be cooler)
• 1 boneless chicken breast, cut into bite-sized pieces (freezing it for 10-20 minutes makes it easier to cut, IMHO)
• 2 carrots, sliced diagonally
• 4 garlic cloves, sliced
• handful chopped red cabbage
• 3 plums (I used the little Italian ones), sliced into eighths
• enough cooked dried udon noodles (fresh are even more delicious, though!) to serve 2-3. I had planned on this being only enough for dinner, but as it turned out I had leftovers for lunch the next day.
• 2 T soy sauce
• splash of sherry, if you have it
• 1 T brown sugar
• 1 T roasted red chili paste (I use the "Taste of Thai" stuff)
• lime wedges for garnish (you could splash a little vinegar in at the end, instead)

1) First, heat up the oil in the skillet to a pretty extreme medium/medium-high. Then fry the onion for several minutes, stirring a lot, until it is nicely browned. Browner than you usually want your onions. Scoop the onions out into a bowl to save for later, but leave as much oil as you can in the pan.

2) Reduce heat to medium, add chicken to skillet, and cook until no longer pink. Add garlic slices and cook for 30 seconds or so.

3) Add soy sauce, sherry, brown sugar, and roasted red chili paste. If everything is way too smoking hot, you can add some water too, to buy you some time. Cook for a couple of minutes or until it's all melted into a kind of sauce.

4) Add carrots and stir-fry for a minute or so (depending on how thinly they are sliced). Add plums and red cabbage and stir-fry briefly just to coat them with the sauce, and to warm them. Don't let the plums get too mushy.


5) Stir the reserved cooked onions back into the pan. Add the cooked udon noodles to the pan, and stir to combine.

6) Serve with lime wedges, if you have them. If not, put a little splash of vinegar (rice vinegar would be good) in the dish before serving.

Grapefruit Salad with Ground Cherries and Mint Sugar

Title sounds all classy, doesn't it? Well, I already had the mint in the fridge for something else, so this dish was prompted by my officemate leaving me a message on a Friday that she was out of the office, imploring me to find some use for a grapefruit and ground cherries that she had left in her desk drawer, since they wouldn't make it through the weekend and she didn't want them to go to waste.

The ground cherries are to the left, below. I had no idea what they were, but they come from my officemate's garden and she explained that they look like tiny tomatillos, but taste kind of pineappley. They also have little tiny seeds built in, giving them a subtle crunch like figs! Yum.

As per my usual, I didn't make this recipe up: epicurious has something similar that uses grapefruits, oranges, pomegranate seeds or dried cranberries (I used dried currants), and no ground cherries.


Anyway, there's not much to describe. I peeled the grapefruit over a bowls so that I could save any drippiness. I pulled the sections out of the white stuff as best I could. I took the ground cherries out of their husks, washed them, and cut them each in half.



Then I ripped up a bunch of mint leaves (but not as many as you see in the first picture - maybe 8-10?), and smashed them with the leftover grapefruit juice and some sugar in my mortar and pestle.

The currants went on top.

This picture is really shaky!

Zucchini Enchiladas with Pumpkinseed Salsa

Hey, I'm back. It's been a busy August! We're trying to buy a house, so all posts following this one will probably be a little more... uh... economical in nature for a while. For instance, I have some pictures of a salad I made from the contents of my co-worker's desk drawer. I'll post those after this. Anyway...

Zucchini enchiladas. This was epicurious's recipe of the day when I went to their site looking for something to do with the ginormous zucchinis my officemate had given me (thanks, Julia!). So, it was meant to be right from the beginning. The actual title of the original recipe is "Zucchini and Red Pepper Enchiladas with Two Salsas," but come on - that doesn't even hint at the fact that these enchiladas are loaded up with toasted, spiced pumpkinseed puree - by far the coolest element!

These were absolutely delicious, and they held together surprisingly well for our lunch and dinner the next day. I will say that trying to seal these babies together by frying them in oil without having all the goodness drip out the ends and burn was a bit of a challenge, especially in the 100-degree weather we were having that night. In the future, I could possibly be persuaded to leave out the frying and assemble these like soft tacos, just because the frying was such a pain and left me with some finger burns.

The recipe asks for you to grill the vegetables. Yeah... I live in an apartment. I did, however, use this as an excuse to pick up a cast-iron grill pan at Goodwill! I've been very happy with it.

So, the recipe.

Ingredients

For enchiladas:
-1 large white onion, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch-thick rounds
-2 red bell peppers, quartered
-3/4 pound medium zucchini, cut lengthwise into 1/4-inch-thick slices [I had way more zucchini than this, and I used way more - probably why we ended up with enchiladas big enough to eat two, not three of them as a generous meal]
-12 (6-to 7-inch) soft corn tortillas [I used white, and I think they were a little bigger than this]
-1/2 cup vegetable oil
-6 ounces crumbled queso fresco or ricotta salata [I used the queso fresco]

For pumpkin-seed salsa:
-1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh serrano chile, including seeds
-2 garlic cloves, minced
-1 teaspoon ground cumin
-1 1/3 cups raw green (hulled) pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
-1/2 cup vegetable oil
-2 cups chopped cilantro [Mike doesn't like cilantro. I can't remember if I used a little parsley instead, or just ignored this]
-1 1/2 cups water

For tomato salsa [yeah, or you could just use some store-bought salsa]:
-2 medium tomatoes, chopped
-1/4 cup finely chopped white onion
-2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh serrano chile, including seeds
-2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
-Garnish: cilantro leaves

For the tomato salsa: stir together tomatoes, onion, chile, lime juice, and 1/4 teaspoon salt.


For the pumpkinseed salsa: cook chile, garlic, cumin, and pumpkin seeds in oil in a 10-inch heavy skillet over medium-high heat, stirring, until seeds pop, 4 to 5 minutes.



Transfer 3 tablespoons seeds with a slotted spoon to a bowl and reserve. Purée remaining seeds and oil with cilantro, water, and 1/2 teaspoon salt in a blender until smooth.

Start enchiladas:Prepare a gas grill for direct-heat cooking over medium heat.
Preheat oven to 350°F .
Secure each onion round with a wooden pick for grilling. Oil grill rack, then grill vegetables, covered, turning occasionally, until tender (6 to 8 minutes for bell peppers and zucchini; 10 to 12 minutes for onion), transferring to a bowl.

Okay, grilling the vegetables in my little grill pan took many,

many,

many,

many batches.

To make the enchiladas: cut vegetables into strips. Spread 2 teaspoons pumpkin-seed salsa on each warm tortilla and top with some of grilled vegetables, then roll up.

Heat oil (1/2 cup) in a 12-inch heavy skillet over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Fry enchiladas, seam side down first, in 2 batches, turning once, until lightly browned and heated through, about 2 minutes per batch.

Transfer enchiladas to plates, then drizzle with remaining pumpkin-seed salsa and sprinkle with reserved seeds and cheese. Serve with tomato salsa.

Yum!

Spoils of Summer - Daikon-Beet Salad with Mashed Plantain

This heat is killing my produce. I had a plantain, two beets, a shallot, some garlic, and a daikon radish (the size of my forearm). They were all on their way out - even the garlic, which is saying something because my garlic standards are pretty low. I made something that actually resembles potato salad - in taste only, though.

I did a teensy bit of interwebs research before embarking on this experiment. I couldn't find anything that exactly resembled what I wanted to do, but this recipe helped me verify that beets and daikons could go together; this one gave me a recipe for a salad using regular potatoes and daikons (and about a million other tasty things I didn't have on hand), and this one told me how to get the plantain out of its skin. Thanks, epicurious!

I peeled the daikon and chopped them into matchsticks. Same with the beets, after cooking and peeling them (I simmered the beets with a splash of apple cider vinegar for about 20 minutes. About 5 minutes in, I threw in the plantain, with its ends trimmed off and cut crosswise into three pieces).

I minced the shallot, mixed it with some honey, (light) sesame oil, white wine vinegar, yellow mustard, slivered garlic, salt, and pepper, and then stirred in the beet and daikon matchsticks. This part then went into the fridge to chill and wait for the mashed plantain.

Once the plantain pieces looked soft enough for me to get the peel off, I drained the water and pulled the peel off with the help of a knife and fork. I mashed the plantain with a little salt and sesame oil (just enough to get it to more or less stick together - not creamy like regular mashed potatoes) and stuck it in the fridge to cool. I cooled it separately from the beet-daikon mixture because I didn't want the heat to un-crisp the daikon, but in retrospect I probably should have mixed the plantain in when it was still a little warm, so that it would have been creamier. I also would have used one or two more plantains if I'd had them. But hey - for a using-things-up dish, this really did come out pretty well! Mike even ate all of his and said something about "liking" it. Success! And pink, pink leftovers!

Spoils of Summer - Pasta with Raw Tomato-Avocado Sauce

This recipe is based upon one that appears in a tomato sauce book that I have out in the kitchen, or, as I like to call the un-air-conditioned part of the apartment, the inferno. I will go look it up and properly cite the author soon. The author credits her friend, whose name is Flavia - that I do remember.

While your pasta water is heating up, you just dice up some tomatoes and avocados, mince or sliver some garlic, and toss with some torn basil, olive oil, salt, pepper, and a little sugar if the tomatoes aren't on their A-game.

Once you drain the pasta (I always use the long and skinny variety, but have used everything from angel hair to the kind that's so thick that it's hollow - anything seems to work), you can either toss it hot with the pasta, which allows the avocados to almost melt their way into coating the strands, or you can rinse the pasta with cold water and serve the dish cold. Either way, you toss the mixture with the pasta and serve. Yum!

Spoils of Summer - Cherry-Apricot Crisp

I tossed the fruit with a little lime juice, salt, and a little cornstarch. The crisp topping was almond meal, coconut oil, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt. I can't remember if I also used a little bit of quick oats for the version that appears in this picture - we had a lot of cherries to use up and I made several batches of crisp! I baked at 350 - 25 minutes, maybe? Just until it gets bubbly.