I love the kitchen because it makes my mistakes lovable. I am a perfectionist in a lot of my mannerisms. Just yesterday I made up a bed with clean sheets and for the first time in my life folded the top sheet in perfect “hospital-corners” like my mother spent my entire youth trying to show me. Get the dowry ready, Mom and Dad, I’m a grown woman now.
When cooking, nearly every botched attempt for one recipe is an opportunity for something new and excellent. A good rule of thumb is that weird cravings can even guide culinary genius. I have a friend who is adamant about how much she loves Soy Sauce and Cheddar Cheese on her pasta. Thinking of those tastes combined freaks me out like imagining Nicolas Cage play the lead male role of The Notebook, but upon having tasted it (the food, not that terrible awful hypothetical casting), it’s not so bad. It could possibly be even considered “alright” by my opinion- or if you ask her: “super good. Delicious. It’s good- like air is good. It just makes sense.”
A week back, I was faced with an ineffably difficult situation. I had purchased both General Tsao’s Marinade and Cocktail Sauce upon my last visit to Trader Joe’s (you’ll hear too much about Trader Joe’s in here, and I’m not even sorry) and I couldn’t decide which one I wanted to have with dinner. The deep, spice infused heat of General Tsao’s flavor sounded so good, but I was simultaneously really jonesin’ for the horseradish bite of Cocktail sauce. I’m sure you can see where this is going, Dear Reader: I mixed them, and created a concoction that inspired the song of a thousand angels. It was, as one could say, totally dope.
So, for tonight’s dinner, blog post, and inaugural recipe for this blog- Salmon in Awesome Sauce.
Here is most of what I put into the sauce/marinade:
from L to R: Soy Sauce(Kikkoman-I’m almost out!), Cocktail Sauce (TJ’s), General Tsao’s Marinade (TJ’s) and Olive Oil
The Teriyaki taste will definitely dominate the flavor of this. I used 60:40 Cocktail Sauce to General Tsao’s, with some soy sauce and olive oil added to thin it out so that it would be less gloopy and cover more noodles.
First and foremost, I boiled some water (in an electric teapot and then poured it into a pan because I’m too impatient to ‘properly’ boil water at a low elevation) and put in a spinach egg nest. Have you seen these things before? I am a huge fan of them because a) they are super affordable b) they taste awesome and c) they are a perfect serving and I never have to measure anything and d) they are so cute so so so so so so cute. So cute.
(via Superstock– SO CUTE.)
They take about six minutes to cook to a nice al dente, so, moving on….
At this point, I put a salmon burger on my George Foreman grill. I acquired this magical contraption from my family’s Christmas Gift Exchange, which means it must have cost <$30 dollars for whomever purchased it. I have used it about $93485783497 worth. I highly recommend picking one of these up for your kitchen, whether you’re a college student or not. It means you have to wash one less pan, it cooks your food faster, and it makes it less crappy for you. I’d take it out on dates if it would answer my calls. I love my George Foreman grill.
The salmon burgers I most recently picked up are from Trader Joe’s, and the packaging looks like this:
(image via Healthy Diva Eats)
They say “caught wild in the US” on the package which makes me feel a little less ecologically shady for eating them, but I will save my meat-ethics-and-why-I-fail post for a different bloggy day. The package says to cook 3-4 minutes on each side so I put my GFG on low and opt to flip it after about 2-3 minutes, considering that the top burner on the little thing seems to have a bit more juice than the bottom one. Flipping meat on it is also satisfying if a 90º turn is incorporated, because then I get exciting criss-cross grill lines. You know.
After my pasta had been 4 minutes in or so, I tossed in ~a cup of tricolor frozen peppers (from Trader Joe’s… later I’ll make a post about why I love them so much). Their package looks like this:
(via What’s Good at Trader Joe’s)
I think that these peppers are wonderful. They last me forever, they go with tons of different cuisine (you’ll see them pop up later in my recipes for Thai Red Curry and SoyChorizo Fajitas, for sure, amongst other things), they are insanely more affordable than buying fresh bell peppers (one of the foods I have definitely had less access to on a college-student-budget), and most importantly, they last. The biggest downside to living alone is that food that is fun to share will expire before you finish it by yourself. My first three months of summer living were sad with constant incidents of throwing out fruits and vegetables that had started to grow white, fuzzy life of their own accord when my appetite couldn’t keep up. Frozen vegetables are loyal, stable, and consistent. There is a relationship metaphor in here somewhere.
After about two minutes mixed in with the boiling pastawater, the peppers were all defrosted and the pasta was cooked through without being soggy. I then turned off my grill after checking to see that the salmon was cooked through the middle, and strained the whole pastamess. It looked beautiful in the strainer! So much colour!
I love food.
Then, once all the water was gone, I put the mix right back into the pot with the majority of the sauce mixture I’d whipped up earlier, pan searing the noodles and restoring some crunch to the peppers. While this was making lots of hissing noises, I flaked and cut up the salmon patty, tossing it in a little of the sauce. Then, I plated the peppers and pasta, with a nice line of the Salmon on top, and a drizzle of Awesome Sauce. Ta-da!
A quality meal, and in under fifteen minutes! Not that I have any witnesses, but this stuff turned out darn good. Sweet, savory, spicy, warm, high protein, and full of lutein and fiber (spinach pasta) and other important vitamins (peppers). Success.
Price Breakdown:
Salmon Patties- $4.50ish for a pack of 4
Peppers- $2ish for a 1lb bag- stupid affordable!
Noodle Nests- $6ish for a bag with >12servings
Total estimated costs: $2 or so, maybe $2.75 tops with sauces
How much you’d probably pay for something like this at a restaurant? $12+, easy.
Dessert:
For dessert, I had a green tea ice cream Mochi. It is American food with a Japanese name-ice cream cradled in a rice ball of love- and it is addictive. Because I am making a blog I properly plated it with Craisins and Hershey’s Dark Chocolate Syrup-
The best part? Eating alone means that I don’t get in any trouble for licking the plate!
(I’m o.k. with being called a brown-noser in the context of Chocolate syrup…)
Thanks for reading! Happy cooking, all. May all your mistakes be awesome sauce waiting to happen.
-Angela
