Fish Teriyaki with Sweet-and-Sour Cucumbers

Fish Teriyaki with Sweet-and-Sour Cucumbers

Fish Teriyaki with Sweet-and-Sour Cucumbers p. 78

Time: 30 minutes

Difficulty: Easy

Reaction: Definitely will make cucumbers again, might try the glaze with beef and chicken.

I haven’t written a blog post in several days but I have been cooking. In my previous posts I focused mostly on the cooking and the food but haven’t mentioned much about the writing. Lately its been much harder finding not only the time to write but also the motivation. I work full time, care for a 3 month old baby girl with my wife, cook and this past weekend enjoyed the great weather so by the end of the day writing a post was the thing that was sacrificed. While I do enjoy writing I think my priorities were in line but I do want to get back in the habit of making posts on a daily basis.Also finding new adjectives to describe the food has also been challenging. I really have to focus on not over using words like fresh and clean even if those are the best descriptions. Repeating sentence structure ia another habit I’ll have to work on. Far too often my sentences have started with “I think…”. I think I’m getting better, opps did it again.

Tonight I made the Fish Teriyaki with Sweet-and-Sour Cucumbers. It’s another Japanese inspired meal and until this challenge I had very little experience with this type of cooking. The techniques are very familiar but the flavors and ingredients are new to me. Daikon radish is one of those vegetables you’d probably seen in the grocery store and completely overlooked because its unknown and cooking with it is an even bigger mystery. The flavor is cool and refreshing and I’d imagine takes on the flavor of other ingedients well. I’d like to find more ways to use daikon in my cooking.The rest of the prep and ingredients was just some simple mixing and chopping. My one real recommendation is to keep a close eye on the fish. Because of the sugar in the glaze it can easily burn. I relied too much on the timer and got a few burnt bits but those were easily picked off the fish.

The first thing I tried was the sweet-and-sour vegetables and I was blown away. These things are freaking good and I was amazed by the flavor of only 15 minutes in the brine. It had a real nice pickle flavor with a perfect balance of sweet sour. Japanese is known for the balance of flavors and this simple dish demonstrates that perfectly.

The fish however was less impressive. I was expecting more out of the glaze. I believe I made everything according to the recipe it just let me underwhelmed. I do plan on trying the glaze again on grilled beef or chicken. The meal was filling and enjoyable just not something that blew me away.

Beer-Braised Turkey

Beer-Braised Turkey

Turkey Tacos in a cast iron skillet

Time: 1 hour, 20 minutes

Difficulty: Medium

Reaction: Defiantly will make again

Beer-Braised Turkey Tacos

Despite the long cooking time you have to try this dish for the wonderful fragrance that will fill your kitchen. The aroma of garlic, onions, jalapeno and cinnamon made it hard to wait for the chicken to fall off the bone.

Our local market didn’t have any turkey so I substituted chicken legs and thighs and slightly reduced the cooking time. I was also not able to get an ancho peppers so I just used ancho chili power instead. I think the flavor still came through. There was a lot of prep work but once again my wife Monica setup our kitchen like the set of a cooking show. All of the ingredients were pre-chopped and measured so all I had to do was put it all together and not screw up. I braised the chicken on one of the most useful things I have in the kitchen, my cast iron skillet. A cast iron skillet is extremely versatile, durable and virtually non-stick. It’s also amazingly cheap, my favorite is Lodge Cast Iron. I braised the chicken in the cast iron skillet to a golden brown. Once the beer and vegetable mixture is simmering the chicken returns to its bubble hot tub of goodness. About 40 minutes later the chicken was falling off the bone and the mixture had thickened. The smells are really intoxicating and the cinnimon is the key. It’s a popular ingredient in Mexican cooking and while most Americans associate it with desert its really adds a complexity of flavor to savory dishes.

The smells didn’t lie, the flavor was smooth but also very complex with a lot of depth. The chicken was tender and moist. As with many other dishes from this issue of Food & Wine the addition of fresh herbs and lime garnish added a needed freshness that lightened the tacos. It really reminded me of tacos from one of my favorite places in Wappingers Falls, Tacocina. Two tacos were more than filling and felt nothing like a healthy dinner. In fact it felt like I was cheating. Despite the longer cooking time I will me making these again but next time probably on a Sunday afternoon instead of Monday night.

Grilled Pork Tenderloins with Vegetable Curry

Grilled Pork Tenderloins with Vegetable Curry

Difficulty: Medium

Time: 40 minutes

Reaction: Might make again, not sure

Friday night dinner got moved to Saturday night. I was missing a key ingredient, the pork. I spent most of Saturday doing work around the house and when dinner time came around I really had no interest in cooking. For the first time in this challenge I looked at it as a chore. My wife was a huge help in pulling this meal off. There is a lot of chopping involved for the vegetables and she tackled that task. We would have had Kraft Mac & Cheese if it wasn’t for her.

This meal was also the first that I modified the recipe. First I used boneless center cut chops instead of a tenderloin. Since I’m just cooking for the two of us it was much more economical to just buy the two chops. The second big change was the elimination of curry from the dish. My wife doesn’t really like it so I used Thai red chili sauce instead. This is not a real substitute for curry paste but I wanted some heat in the dish and felt that it was needed for the consistency of the sauce.  Once the vegetables are sauteed for a few minutes the coconut water is added and simmers for about 20 minutes. I have not cooked with coconut water before so I drank a little just to see what it was like. Now I know how participants on Survivor feel, the water didn’t have as much coconut taste as a I expected and it was rather refreshing. After 20 minutes the liquid should reduce by half. I added the recommended 2 tablespoons of sour cream but wasn’t happy with the consistency of the sauce, it was still too watery. I added another tablespoon and still felt it was too thin. I decided to take matters into my own hands and added a little slurry of corn starch and water. This can be used to thicken sauces but the corn starch needs to be mixed with cold water before its added to a hot dish. Otherwise it will be lumpy and could ruin it. This method worked for me, I’m not sure if the sauce was intended to be this thick but its what I was looking for. I also didn’t grill the pork. The Hudson Valley was hit with a big rain storm and I had no interest in grilling in the rain. I used an under utilized feature on the stove, the broiler. I don’t think people use the broiler enough in their cooking. Essentially it’s an upside down grill. The heat comes from the top and cooks the meat with nice browning as well. Clean up is also easy, just put some tin foil in the bottom of the broiler and you should only have to clean the grate. I rated this dish as medium difficulty because of the challenge of getting the right consistency with the sauce but also the cooking of the pork.  I think most people overcook their pork out of fear. They have been taught that it has to be perfectly white inside and they just cook all the moisture out of the meat. Instead try using and instant read thermometer. This was you can be sure its safely cooked but also not ruined.  The Culinary Institute of America advises an internal temperature of 145 degrees for pork. If you follow this rule your pork chops will taste much better.

While I didn’t follow the recipe closely I still think the flavor of the dish came through. Cilantro is one of those distinctively Thai flavors. The chili sauce added the heat I was hoping for and the meal was very filling. I’d be curious to see how others sauce came out but for my needs this was just what I was looking for. My guess is my sauce was thicker then intended but I enjoyed it.