Tag: mmm

Sitting in my freezer for weeks on end are a bunch of frozen stuff. There’s frozen fruit for smoothies, frozen chicken breast, a frozen pork belly, frozen soup stock, and some frozen salmon. One of these days I’ll use all of them. Today it’s the salmon.

I made salmon in a bag for dinner. It’s a simple recipe so I just threw it together real quick with whatever I had in the cupboard.

In a parchment paper, I sliced up a fingerling potato and some carrots and onions. I layered them in the paper with some olive oil. Sprinkle salt and pepper to taste. Overtop went one salmon fillet. Then some more olive oil, pepper, and salt. I closed up the paper into a bag and cooked in an oven pre-heated to 375F for 20 minutes.

Voila! Easy-peasy dinner.

Was it delicious? Somewhat. It needs some herbs the next time. O, there will be a next time because there is still some frozen salmon in the freezer.

I bought a 3 lb. bag of onions a couple weeks ago for my chicken stock. I only used a couple, then I was left with a sack of onions that may be going bad in my root cellar AKA the bottom drawer of my kitchen cabinet. So I needed to use all the onions fast. The only recipe I could think of was French Onion Soup.

I’ve never made it but if its a soup its got to be easy: onions, broth, bread, and cheese. Now how to you put it all together? I took my inspiration from the Pioneer Woman’s recipe for French Onion Soup, Serious Eats’ recipe for the Best French Onion Soup, and Good Dinner Mom’s French Onion Soup.

Caramelizing the onions is the key to this soup. I followed the Pioneer Woman’s suggestion and roasted it in my dutch oven in the oven. Serious Eats is correct when they say that enameled cast iron doesn’t brown the onions. I was lucky that the sack onions was yellow onions as Good Dinner Mom recommends. So I started the onions on the stove top with a mixture of EVOO and butter.

I sliced them in my hand mandolin, threw them in the pot with some pinches of salt, and let cook for about 30 minutes. I wanted them to start going translucent while I heated the oven to 400F.

Once at that temperature I put the whole pot into the oven for a cooking time of about an hour. Half-way through I stirred the onions because they were starting to get burnt in spots.

At the end of the hour, I finished it off on the stove. I would spend another 10 minutes getting the onions to be brown. I turned off the stove and added a cup of cooking sherry to deglaze the bits and pieces stuck on the bottom of the pot. I would reduce this mixture and I added 3 gloves of minced garlic and some fresh ground black pepper. This would take another 10 minutes to reduce.

Actually, while all this was going I was heating up whatever chicken stock I had in my house. There was stock I had made a few weeks ago and I had some other in the cupboard. It was only 5 cups, so I finished it off with three extra cups of water to make it 8 cups or 2 quarts of broth. As I heated it up I added some ground pepper.

When the onions looked ready, I added the broth into the pot. I used it to deglaze the pot again so that all the good bits and pieces were in the pot. I added a few twigs of fresh thyme and a bay leaf and let it simmer for 30 minutes. I also added the secret ingredient of few dashes of fish sauce.

Grated gruyere and well toasted sourdough bread finished off the soup.

I must say the time it takes to make this soup — about 3 hours — is worth it. Hopefully, it tastes good at lunch tomorrow.

I had some Sun Noodle ramen in the freezer so I made some ramen this evening. It was some kind of shoyu ramen with chicken. I threw in a soft boiled egg. It was a cooking adventure!

Cooking. Me cooking. I am a mess, because I am an amateur. There’s a lot to juggle to make dinner especially if you are hungry. You have to get everything to cook within minutes.

It was the first time I had 3 burners on the stove going. And I also had the pressure cooker going.

Let’s start with the pressure cooking an egg. I usually steam my eggs after I found out how easy it is to get to the proper cooked state. Hard boiled is just about 6 minutes. Soft boiled? I put it in for 4 minutes, but I think it should be slightly longer. When I peeled it, it came apart. It wasn’t a perfect egg, but it was perfectly soft boiled.

Next the chicken. I fried it. But I suck because I used a regular frying pan. I don’t think I got the oil hot enough. After breading it, I dropped the chicken into the pan cooking it on each side about 5 minutes. When I took it out and sliced it, the chicken wasn’t done. In it went again. I over cooked it. But it’s okay. It’s fried!

The noodles. These are great noodles. I bought the “kaedema” style which is just a smaller package of ramen. I think. The way to cook the noodles is to just get a pot of water boiling, drop the noodles in, and cook for about 5 minutes. Maybe more or maybe less. I got it done enough that I pulled it out of the water early and let sit for a bit in a strainer waiting to go into the broth.

The broth. It’s a combination of store bought chicken broth and my very own mushroom vegetable broth. I made it in my pressure cooker! I just combined both in a pot and brought it to a boil. I added 1 tablespoon of shoyu (soy sauce), a dash of mirin, and a teaspoon of chili garlic sauce. Pepper to taste.

A word about the chili garlic sauce. Scrumptious! It’s my favorite flavor to add to a soup, because it always seems to make the broth so better.

Mmm. Mmmm. Good.

I’m going to keep cooking ramen especially. I just need to use those fresh noodles from Sun Noodles. They are the best.