146 posts tagged “seafood”

I'm not that familiar with these things, but I've got a feeling that these lattice-style pastries might belong in the domain of desserts... Still, I decided to have a go at it, with this savory pie. It is essentially a quiche: eggs. With a few other things of course — some grated cheddar cheese, chopped scallions, even some finely diced lettuce (yeah, lettuce — quiches regularly feature spinach, so why not?), and various other things I came across.

Well this is an extremely artistic and clever picture — I am a very creative and artistic kind of a a guy. And clever. But not clever enough to actually operate this camera. Gah. Heh, it does look kinda good, though...

Salmon fillets, skinned and diced, dipped in seasoned flour, egg and finally seasoned panko bread crumbs. I used an Indian style curry seasoning. 'Twas pretty damn tasty, I must say.

These suckers were stuffed with cilantro and basted with an oil and lime juice mixture, but it had absolutely no flavor impact at all. Grilling things can severely reduce the potency of the flavoring agents you add to your protein, but this really did catch me by surprise. I love grilling whole trouts, and I'll definetely do it again — but I've got to find a better way to infuse flavor into the thing.

The other bit is an improvised idea: Dutch Stamppot (mashed potatoes with root veggies such as carrots, turnips, and swedes) and Irish Colcannon (mashed potatoes with cabbage or kale, and ham). Mashed potatoes and carrots, with spinach, scallions and garlic.

It would have been excellent — except I over salted it. I hate doing that. It's such a damn trivial mistake. You can always add salt at the table. Adding too much salt during the cooking process is a damn stupid thing to do, and I really get upset when I do it. I'm seriously considering putting a label on the stove that just saying "SALT," to help me keep this simple notion in mind when I'm cooking.

Well, that'll teach me to wait so long before updating my blog. My memory of this meal has long since faded. Obviously, salmon fillet, baked/broiled, along with a rice mixture with carrots and peas — but I have no idea what the sauce might be. It could be some left-over curry sauce that I froze, but I'm not sure at all. The old camera died, so I'm trying to get used to another one right now, but the damn thing doesn't use the flash, so I get these distorted, warm colors. Ugh.

Dagnabbit, that doesn't look good at all. It tasted great though. I've been making Szechuan chicken and Kung Pao chicken (there's a certain overlap) for a long time, and decided to try it with shrimp. It worked a treat, even if it doesn't look too impressive.

This Norwegian dish obviously gets its name from the French au gratin — with bread. Its really a seafood version of a shepherd's pie, except that the Bechamel, veggie and seafood mixture is made firmer by adding a couple of eggs to it, with the whites being separated and beaten to stiff peaks. It creates an almost souffle type texture. Great food. Although in this case I used too much breadcrumbs, mind you.

"Saucy Seared Scallops" from Margaret Johnson's "Te New Irish Table" — a tomato-butter-leek sauce, and the scallops resting on a bed of leeks. I diverged from the recipe on one point: I seared the scallops in a pan, rather than under the broiler, as it called for. This was not a huge mistake, but it was a mistake nonetheless — those blackened bits would never have developed if I'd broiled them.

Haven't done this one in a long, long time. Part of the reason for that is that Thai green curry paste is so damn fiery — to the point that after my first encounter with it, I made my own paste... But this time around, I made a mistake, and ended up having to simmer things a bit, which mellowed the paste a lot. An accident that made the dish better — you don't see that too often. But it happens.

And yeah, the small kaffir lime leaf was for decoration. Of course, them things were used in the dish. They are fantastic.

Now this was absolutely excellent. I used to think of this as "fiskeKrateng" because I'd only ever heard of it — I never saw it written down. My hearing is possibly a little impaired. But "fiskeGrateng" — hey, that makes sense: it's that French au gratin thing, isn't it? Well, I had a try at it a little while ago, and it turned out shit. Well, the "inside" — the filling — was good, but the topping wasn't. And the topping really is the key here. It's gotta be nice and crispy and whatnot.

This time around, I really got it right. The topping, I mean. And (as is often the case, of course), I accidentally used a much bigger pan that required, and ended up with far more crust, than filling. (As a child, I would always try to snag a little more than my fair share of the crispy top, than the filling.)

But the real deal about this dish isn't the "au gratin" part. What makes this a really unique dish (well, as far as I know) is that you mix eggs into the thing — and not just that: you whisk the egg whites separately (to stiff peaks) and then fold them in. So you end up with something that is almost souflé-ish in texture. I've not seen anything similar in any other cusines.

This is very cool. It's my mother's food, and I had to ask my sister for some very vital details on this one. I mean, it is a conseptual thing, and it's so rare to find food that makes use of any radically interesting methods — but this ones does. And what's more, it was part of my childhood.

The original recipe called for the use of coconut meat, which isn't very popular around here, so I just used coconut milk the last time around, but it ended up tasting very coconutt-y. This time, I decided to use toasted, ground cashew nuts instead. I don't know of anything that could replace coconut, but I figured I'd give it a go. It turned out really nice.

The cashew was mixed into a paste with the meat from three stripey Pete tomatoes that were skinned and seeded, and had most of its water removed. This mixture was thrown into the wok after I'd stir-fried some diced garlic, Jalapeño pepper, galangal and lemongrass paste over very high heat. Next, some brown sugar, turmeric (the color of this dish just screams turmeric, hehehe), lime juice and some torn kaffir lime leaves. After about 20 minutes of simmering, I buzzed it in a blender till smooth (galangal takes quite long to go soft) and returned it to the pan, pushing it through a sieve. Finally, I ended up adding some coconut milk, but let it simmer long enough to blend the flavors together.

I stirred in some cilantro towards the end, and served it over rice, garnished with more cilantro and a couple of very thin slices from a very hot Jalapeño. Very tasty. Would work very well chicken also, I think.