Author: Jonah

Spicy-Miso Salmon and Citrus Rice Bowl

Salmon rice bowl
Miso Salmon
Miso Salmon

Miso Salmon

This meal all started because Annie gave me a wonderful Christmas present: The Sriracha Cookbook.  You’ve probably seen Sriracha at your local asian restaurant, and you may know it as “rooster sauce” – or if you don’t know it, its basically an asian hot sauce made with chiles and garlic and its ohhh so good.  And you need it for the recipe that follows.

So the Sriracha Cookbook, as one might expect, is chock full of recipes that include Sriracha in them.  I picked the Miso-Sriracha Glazed Salmon recipe for dinner, mostly because we already had miso paste and Sriracha in our house.  The recipe in the book tells you to serve it atop steamed rice, but I wanted to do something more interesting, so I found a great recipe on Martha Stewart.com that I adapted to include the miso-Sriracha salmon.  Its a wonderful rice bowl that includes salmon, orange slices, and sugar snap peas atop some brown rice with a great orange sauce and mint to sprinkle on top of it all.  It tasted so light and substantial at the same time, and was a wonderful meal in a bowl!

A note on the rice: I actually used a rice called Camargue Red Rice, which Annie’s mom brought us from the south of France, where it grows.  The package had no English on it so I actually had to get online and do a little research before cooking it.  Anyway, it was delicious but I don’t think its necessary to make this dish great, so I put brown rice in the recipe below.

Spicy Miso Salmon and Citrus Rice Bowl

Ingredients

Spicy Miso Salmon

1/2 Tb. toasted sesame oil
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 Tb. soy sauce
2 Tb. white miso paste
1/2 Tb. Sriracha
1 clove garlic, minced
1 lb. salmon fillet(s)

Citrus Rice Bowl

4 oranges (I used Valencia)
A 1-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
1 bay leaf
1 tsp. coriander seeds
1 Tb. rice vinegar
1 tsp. soy sauce
1 tsp. honey
1 tsp. toasted sesame oil
1 cup uncooked brown rice
1/2 cups sugar snap peas
1/4 cup fresh mint, chopped, for garnish
sliced green onions, green part only, for garnish

Instructions

Cook the rice according to the package directions.  I added a bit of chopped garlic and butter into 3 1/3 cups of water, brought it to a boil, and then simmered for about an hour.

In a small mixing bowl, make the Spicy Miso Salmon glaze: combine the oil, brown sugar, soy sauce, miso paste, Sriracha, and garlic.  Set aside.

Peel and separate 2 oranges into individual boats.  Now comes the hard part: you are supposed to detach and discard the membranes in order to get to the meat of the orange slice.  I experimented a lot during this step, and eventually found that I could cut down the back of each orange segment, pull it apart, and pull off the membrane from each side.  You could just skip this step entirely, but the orange slices won’t look as pretty, and you won’t get the same taste.  Regardless, put these orange segments in a bowl and set aside.

Remove the stems from the sugar snap peas, rinse, and chop into 1/2-inch pieces (I just chopped each pod in half).  Set aside.

Now juice the remaining 2 oranges into a small saucepan, and add the sliced ginger and bay leaf.  Crush the coriander seeds with the side of a knife and add them to the orange juice mixture, then bring to a boil.  Cook the mixture until it reduces to about 2/3 cup, about 6 minutes.  Take it off the heat and let it cool, then strain into a bowl to get rid of the ginger, bay leaf, and seeds.  Now whisk in the vinegar, soy sauce, honey, and oil.

Preheat the broiler to high. Lay the salmon fillet(s) across an aluminum foil-lined broiling pan (or any baking sheet with a rim).  Take out the glaze you made in step 2 and spread it generously on top of the salmon.  Broil the salmon 6 inches from the flame (or heat coil, as the case may be), until the fish flakes easily, about 10 minutes.  I spread more of the glaze on the fish after 5 minutes of broiling.

Dish the rice into bowls, and top with salmon, peas, and orange segments. Garnish with mint and green onion slices.  Reheat the orange sauce/mixture if it needs reheating, and drizzle it generously over everything.

Enjoy!

Balsamic-Glazed Pork Chops

Pork Chops

I made these great pork chops for dinner the other night (actually, the other week by now). It has a wonderfully sweet-and-tangy dark taste. They were really yummy, but to be perfectly honest, they didn’t look the greatest.  Also to be perfectly honest, I had a little trouble making them, although they came out fine in the end.  This happens to me sometimes when I make meats that you fry in pan (or bake… or prepare with heat in any way) with some sort of sugary sauce.  Sugary sauces always seem to start burning really quickly (because of the sugars, duh!), so when you make them — just watch out for the smoking and potential charring.  Turn on the fan above your stove.

Balsamic-Glazed Pork Chops

Ingredients

2 pork chops
Salt and pepper
2 Tb. olive oil
4 shallots, pealed and quartered
2/3 cup balsamic vinegar
1 1/2 t. sugar

Instructions

Sweet! Only 6 ingredients!

Sprinkle pork with s + p, let it sit out on the counter for 10 minutes to come to room temperature.

Heat olive oil in a skillet.  Add pork and shallots, turning pork until both pork and shallots are browned, about 5 minutes.  Remove the pork to a plate, leaving shallots.

Add the balsamic vinegar, sugar, and some more salt and pepper, and cook.  Stir a lot so sugar dissolves, and let it thicken for about a minute or two.  Put the pork back in there and coat with the sauce.  Cook, turning the pork over once, until its cooked through to your liking, about 3-5 minutes.

Take the pork back out and put on a plate, letting sauce thicken 1-2 minutes more.  Pour sauce over pork, and eat!

30-Minute Chili

30-Minute Chili
30-Minute Chili

30-Minute Chili

I made this for dinner yesterday, and it was the perfect chili for this time of year: hearty, filling, warm, and really easy to make!  Lots of canned foods, so very cheap as well.  This version makes the perfect amount for 2 people with some leftovers.  Double or triple it and you’ll have soup for the whole week!

Also fun fact….it has beer in it!

Its adapted from the recipe for 30-minute chili on marthastewart.com.

30 Minute Chili

Makes 4 servings | 30 minutes

Ingredients

1 Tbl vegetable oil
2 medium onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
salt and pepper
3 oz tomato paste
2 Tbl chili powder (or more if you want more heat)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
4 oz canned green chiles in sauce, diced
1 1/2 lb. ground beef
2 cans (14.5 oz each) diced tomatoes
1 can (14.5 oz) kidney beans
6 oz lager beer (I used PBR!)
cheddar cheese, grated

Instructions

Heat the oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add the onions and garlic and cook until softened, about 3-5 minutes.  Season with salt and pepper.

Add the tomato paste, chili powder, ground cinnamon, and chiles and cook 2-3 minutes. Add the ground beef and cook another 5 minutes, breaking up the ground beef and making sure that it gets browned all over.

Add the cans of diced tomatoes with their juice, the beer, and the can of kidney beans (without their juice). Bring to a boil and then simmer for 5-10 minutes, until kidney beans are nice and tender.

Serve into bowls and sprinkle with grated cheese.  I recommend eating this with corn chips!