Monday 27 December 2010

December 2007 - Wasabi-coated Salmon with Cucumber Salad

Well, it is a ridiculous hour of the night/morning. I had just managed to get to sleep after tossing and turning and then some hoon decided to race up and down the street outside honking their horn. Grrrr. Now I am feeling tired but also unable to get back to sleep presently so I thought that I would get a post done. I had a lovely Christmas, I hope that all of you out there did too. I spent almost all day out, firstly with my aunt & uncle for a lovely roast lamb & veg lunch. followed by plum pudding and trifle.  I then spent the afternoon/evening with friends and their family. It was a lovely day. I even managed not to eat too much. 

From this issue I considered making Ben O'Donoghue's Mexican Barbequed Pork Belly. It looked like a really good recipe where you make your own Adobo marinade. I have been curious about adobo as I have read a number of Mexican recipes that use a "can of chipotle chillies in adobo sauce" and I was never really sure what it was. I knew that I wasn't able to buy the product in the local supermarket, although I know a couple of places to get it online. Ben's recipe seems quite easy. There were two reasons that I didn't do this recipe. The first is that I don't have a gas bottle for my bbq so that makes using it rather impossible. The second reason is that I have used a lot of pork belly recently and I decided that it was time for a change. I do really like pork belly but it certainly isn't the healthiest cut of meat and I really think that it needs to be a very occasionally thing. In fact I probably need to leave making it for when I am having company so that I don't have a heap of leftovers to eat too. 

I also considered making Kate Nichols' Pancetta, Sage & Onion Stuffing (or one of the variations) as part of my Christmas meal. I was, at one point considering making both a glazed ham and stuffed rolled turkey breast. However, I finally realised that as much as it would have been lovely, it would be just too much food for me. So since I had the ham in the fridge and the turkey breast (which I actually bought ages ago) was in the freezer I decided to just do the ham. I will do the turkey at some other time and might do this lovely sounding stuffing for it then. 

When I went through this issue in January I referred Valli Little's lovely sounding Wasabi-coated Salmon with Cucumber Salad. It just looked and sounded so good and lovely and refreshing. I just love wasabi. I have a terrific recipe for rice salad with wasabi dressing. I have also used the dressing on other salads too. I really like snacking on the wasabi peas. They have a wonderful heat to them. It is hot and sharp but doesn't burn for a long time. I really enjoyed this. The wasabi in it was really subtle though so I think that next time I would reduce the amount of flour. The processor didn't do the best of jobs processing the peas up, I think it would have been better if I had done it in batches rather than trying all at once. It  probably would be just as easy to bash them up in a mortar & pestle however I forked out the money for a KitchenAid food processor so I use it as much as possible. The salad that went with it was excellent. I used alfalfa sprouts instead of the bean sprouts as that is what I could get. Plus I much prefer alfalfa to bean sprouts. I have said before that I am not hugely keen on seafood but I did really like this and I really want to start incorporating more seafood into my diet so I will be on the look out for more meals like this one. Tasty, light and fresh. 

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