Coconut Poached Salmon

It’s been 4 days of alone time for me. Okay let’s be real I haven’t been alone for very long in the last 4 days. I’m typically a pretty busy person and it seems while Anthony is away that hasn’t changed. I went to a Cabi clothes party (very cute clothes, but way too expensive for me. I’m a firm believer in buying cheap clothes so that I don’t have to keep them for years!), dinner with friends at The Crab Shack (I had the clam bake), more dinner with friends at Beale Street (pulled pork sandwich), and then helping friends move. I got home Saturday night (after helping with the move) and needed to cook something for just me. The itch to cook was there and when the itch happens I must cook (simply because it doesn’t happen often and I wouldn’t want to pass up the chance to blog something).




I was pretty intrigued with what I was going to be cooking, salmon poached in coconut milk. Anything coconut just makes the salivating start. Poaching is something I don’t do very often. I’ve poached eggs just the one time for this blog and I’ve poached chicken for a soup that I make a lot. But I’ve never poached fish. I’m totally in love with the concept! Poaching means (in The Hesitant Cook dictionary): Letting a protein boil/simmer in liquid of some type and it not getting all dried out.


This Rachael Ray recipe was pretty easy to follow. As is typical, I forgot to buy something, in this case a lime. Oh well you can’t expect me to be on top of everything all the time. I also did not make this entire recipe because I was not in the mood for watercress. There is a possibility that I will make this again next week with the watercress, although by then I might find another way to cook salmon (I have one fillet left in the house. If you have a good way for me to cook it let me know.) Back to the recipe, you boil the chicken broth until it reduces by half. At that point you add the coconut milk, lime juice (which I did have on hand), lime zest (which sadly I didn’t have) and basil. Add the salmon and poach it for about 10 minutes. I’m not good at telling when salmon is cooked and I figured it wouldn’t dry out using this method so I poached it for the full 10 minutes. Meanwhile I used some of this rice (I’m not ashamed, I can’t cook rice!) and added some coconut milk to it and heated it on the stove.


The salmon and rice were both done and plated when I remembered that I still had to make the sauce! Oops! Luckily I had heated the plate in the microwave so my food stayed warm. The watercress part of recipe was throwing me off track and I thought I was finished. I brought the poaching liquid to a boil, dissolved the cornstarch with cold water and added it to the liquid. I whisked it until it was thickened and then poured in onto the salmon and rice.


Final Product: 

    

          (sorry my pictures are going to be sad since 

                      Anthony has the good camera!)

This was delicious. I ate the whole thing and I didn’t even realize I was that hungry! The fish was very moist. There was a flavor to it that I can’t describe, sorry I tried to come up with the word while eating it but I couldn’t. It was salty and a little sweet. Poaching fish is the way to go! I was very impressed with how moist the salmon turned out. I’m an over cooker and typically my salmon is on the dry side. This method of cooking is going to be something that I do more often. I encourage everyone to try it out. Even non-cooks like me can do this!


Now if only I could figure out why my grocery bill was eighty dollars! I’m only one person this week, how in the world could I have bought $80 worth of groceries? No meat was bought, no cleaning products, no shampoos or anything like that. Also I only bought ingredients for 4 dinners. Thinking back on what I bought I still can’t fathom why my bill was so high. One portabella and one eggplant couldn’t have done so much damage. It baffles me. Completely. Looks like this weekend I am going to the public market for my vegetables and seeing if that makes a difference. I’ll post a blog about the experience and let you know what I discover!


Tomorrow's blog post:  Pineapple and Jalapeno Pizza



Healthier Sesame Chicken

Chinese food just doesn’t taste as good if you cook it at home.  Plus it makes your house smell like sesame oil for awhile.  Those are the two facts that I had stuck in my head when I attempted to make a healthier version of sesame chicken that I found in Food Network Magazine.  So going into this I knew this wasn’t going to be the fried, breaded, so yummy sesame chicken that I order from New Fong Kitchen (our local Chinese takeout). 

The first bit of confusion came into play when I noticed that the recipe asked for the snow peas to be trimmed.   I had to Google trimming snow peas, having never done that before.  What I learned was there is some sort of string like bit that is holding the pea together and people said you should remove them on both sides.  There is debate about whether both sides are necessary.  I did my best but it was hard to get that little stringy bit off.  Sometimes it would break and I would just leave it half there half not there.  My thought was as long as these peas are cooked well you can probably just eat the whole thing.  Peeling both sides off seems silly because the whole thing will fall apart.  This is still a mystery to me; if anyone knows anything about trimming snow peas please give me some pointers!  

Now that the snow pea trimming hurdle had been tackled (albeit not very gracefully) lets move on to the rest of the recipe.  First step (this happens before the snow pea trimming, but is not nearly as interesting) is marinating the chicken for about 20 minutes in a mixture of sesame oil, soy sauce and honey.  

 

Once your chicken is marinated you sauté it (do it in two batches so there is enough room in the pain for the chicken to cook properly) until it’s cooked.  The recipe says until it’s browned but you can’t see the color on the chicken underneath all that brown sauce, so just cut a few pieces open to see if it’s done.  Another thing about this recipe that I didn’t like was once the chicken is cooked you transfer it to a plate and then you are supposed to wipe out the pan.  The pan was covered in sauce and super hot so I got Anthony to help me.  This part is ridiculous though.  If I were you I would just use a new pan, you shouldn’t have to wipe pans out while you are cooking.  

The next step is heating up the scallions, ginger, and garlic and then while you are doing that you are supposed to whisk up a sauce containing chicken broth, cornstarch, sugar, rice vinegar, chili paste, and soy sauce.   I read ahead in the recipe and decided to make this sauce while the chicken was cooking.  I don’t like to leave garlic unattended over heat because it tends to burn.  You add the sauce to the pan and stir until it’s thickened.  Meanwhile you can steam the snow peas as you stir the sauce for a few minutes.   Once the sauce has thickened stir in the chicken until heated. 

             

I made basmati rice to go with this because it’s the only rice besides instant that I had.  Cooking rice is the pits.  I just can’t get it right at all.  It was mushy and not very appealing.  When will I ever understand how to cook rice correctly?!  

Final Product:  

This was a flavorful (I might use a little less sesame oil next time) dish.  The rice was a disaster and the snow pea trimming was a pain in the butt, but other than those things this dish was easy to make.  Make this if you have a craving for Chinese, but don’t want all the calories. 

There has been a ton of life going on over here.  I haven’t had any time to cook, which means no material to blog about.  But…there is a challenge ahead of me.  My husband has gone off to Peru (for 20 days) and left me to fend for myself and I can’t afford to eat take-out every night.  So can I come up with meals for one person or will I just give up and eat frozen meals?  The challenge is on!

Coconut Vegetable Curry

This post will be kind of lame. I didn’t do a lot of cooking the last 4 days. I was supposed to share with you the pork roll sandwich picture, but we had an issue with the pork roll. We bought a roll from Wegmans , but the slices Anthony cut from the roll were so tiny! Question for the Jersey people reading this, was that always the case little bitty slices, because that's not what I remember?! We went back to Wegmans yesterday and the pre-sliced is much bigger than the roll slices. What’s up with that?! I did have Anthony fry me an egg and some pork roll for breakfast yesterday. I’m okay with the pieces being smaller for breakfast, but not on a sandwich. Three of those tiny slices barely filled the Kaiser roll we had it on.

Not sure who was watching the show America’s Next Great Restaurant, but sadly Spice Coast (an Indian fast casual idea) didn’t win. I was pulling for it, because I would eat there a lot! It was between Spice Coast (Indian flavors), Brooklyn Meatball Co (meatballs), and Soul Daddy (soul food). Spice Coast would have been the only place I could eat at more often. I have nothing against meatballs or soul food (I love both a bunch!), but that’s not the type of food I can eat often. Indian is! (In case anyone is wondering Soul Daddy won! Congrats to Jamawn Woods! ) So strangely enough I made a vegetable curry last night, the night that Spice Coast lost. I love Indian spices! I’ve even added curry to my tomato sauce before. Yum!

The actual name of the recipe is Indian Coconut Curried Vegetables. Please don’t judge me when I tell you that I had Anthony chop the vegetables. I’m slow and I just wanted to get the cooking over with and Anthony is so fast at chopping vegetables! Not to mention that cooking should be a family activity right?! So the veggies were prepped: carrot and zucchini sliced, cauliflower cut, green beans snapped (is that what you call that snapped? I did the snapping!), onion, garlic, and ginger chopped. I didn’t buy a chili pepper, because I already had chili paste. I put the onion, garlic, ginger, and chili paste in my little food processor and made it into a paste basically. Put this mixture in a skillet with some oil and added the spices:  coriander, cumin, curry, and turmeric and heat it for a couple of minutes. Then I added all the vegetables and the coconut milk. It says to use 1 cup of the coconut milk, but I added a whole can and added some more of the spices in case the milk diluted it. You cover this and let it cook for 20 minutes or until the vegetables are tender.

                                    (I just love the color of curry dishes!)

I made basmati rice and heated up some naan bread to go with the veggie curry.  Overall this meal was super simple to make! The hardest part is chopping the veggies. The result: ah not so great. It was actually quite bland. I don’t think this is due to me adding a little more coconut milk than asked for since I added more of the spices. I’m not sure what the problem with this recipe is. The only thing I can come up with is to add more salt than the ½ a teaspoon it says to add and maybe even more of the spices. Crazy to think with all those spices we still ended up with a pretty bland main dish. Anthony said it needs chicken, but I’m trying to have as many meatless meals as possible. Although I’m sure it would taste better with chicken in it! I’m actually willing to try it with chicken just to see if it will up the flavor.

Not sure what will be on the menu for this week. I didn’t plan ahead. I wanted my meals to be a surprise this week. I need some excitement in my life, so I’m living on the edge. Yes, for me not having a menu for the week is living on the edge. I’m sure some of you do this all the time, but I’m a planner!

Weekend Cooking

Weekend cooking is much less rushed than weeknight cooking in our house. I decided to cook Saturday and Sunday. This doesn’t normally happen, because I would rather go taste delicious food elsewhere on the weekend rather than cook. Alas Anthony had his last two days of clinical so there was no time to go out for dinner. Since we had to stay in, I took on a challenge that I have been meaning to face for awhile now. That challenge was risotto. I’ve never cooked it before, because I’ve heard it’s hard to get it just right. I am not one to try anything hard in the kitchen. I like easy, fast, nothing too terrible can go wrong kind of recipes but the challenge was ON!


I have a Rachael Ray cookbook that only has vegetarian recipes in it and I found a risotto recipe in there. She also had a few variations of it and the one I chose to use was adding asparagus to the risotto. The recipe added a step I didn’t know you should do when making risotto and that is putting the broth in a separate pot on the stove and letting it simmer. That brings me to my next point about risotto, I had to use 4 separate pans/pots for this recipe. One for the broth, one to steam the asparagus, one to sauté the asparagus, and one for the rice! That would never work for a weeknight, so this should only be made when you have a lot of time to clean all the dishes! I believe this is a very traditional risotto recipe, you sauté onion in olive oil and butter. Then you add the Arborio rice and sauté for a few minutes. We added some wine once the rice was sautéed, it was not in the recipe but Anthony said it’s normally in risotto. Now we are at the point where you start adding the broth, start with a cup, keep stirring the rice and wait for the rice to soak the broth up.   

The recipe says to do this until half of the broth is used (3 cups), than taste the rice and if it needs more broth add it in gradually because you don’t want to overcook the rice. Overcook the rice? Is that possible? I used all of the broth and the rice was still a little bit crunchy. There wasn’t any broth left so I just had to call it quits. I stirred in the now sautéed (with garlic) asparagus and the parmigiano reggiano.

Final Product:

You know what? It really wasn’t all that bad for a first effort. I assumed it would be inedible. The flavor was good; it was just a bit crunchy. My idea for next time is to sauté the rice (before broth is added) for a little bit longer and to heat up more broth. This rice needs a lot of liquid! Those are my tips and I hope you will try to make risotto. It’s really nowhere near as hard and time consuming as people always say it is. You just have to have a little patience. I’m not known for my patience in any situation, but I managed to overcome that while making this risotto.


The other meal I cooked this weekend was, Tuscan Salmon with Rosemary Orzo. Not nearly as difficult and it’s pretty healthy. Once again I have a Wegman’s complaint. Don’t hate on me! Sometimes to make things easier I buy the frozen salmon club pack. There is a disclaimer if you follow the link that states: Although We Have Made Our Best Efforts to Remove All Bones, it is Possible That on Rare Occasions Small Bones May be Found. Would a rare occasion be at least 2-3 bones in every single piece that I serve? We find bones (okay it’s almost always in Anthony’s piece) every time we eat these frozen salmon fillets. That would not be a rare occasion since we eat salmon usually once a week. Wegman’s, you might need tighter quality control!!


Enough complaining…back to the cooking! There isn’t a ton of prep to be done, chopping an onion, cutting cherry tomatoes in half, slicing kalamata olives, chopping rosemary, basil, and parsley. Ok maybe there is a bit of prep to be done, but it was fast! Cook the orzo according to the package and sauté some onion and rosemary. Add the onion and rosemary to the orzo once it’s been strained. Sprinkle salt, pepper, and basil on the salmon, cook for 5 minutes each side or until done (and hopefully you will know when that is!). Take that out and cook up the vegetables (garlic, onion, tomato, and olives), this takes maybe a total of 8 minutes.

After that you take it off the heat and stir in the parsley and basil. Serve the salmon on the orzo and top with the veggie mixture.

Final Product:

Well my first mistake was forgetting to buy basil, so I used dried and that was a fine solution. The other problem I had (I always have this problem when cooking fish) was undercooking the salmon. I had it on much longer than 5 minutes a side, because they didn’t look completely cooked. Finally the salmon started burning so I took it out. Once we got to the table with the salmon, part of my fillet was undercooked. Yes, I know you can eat undercooked salmon (and I do with sushi all the time!), but as a fillet it freaks me out a little. So I just ate around it; it wasn’t a huge piece that was undercooked. This was a very good meal, minus the undercooked salmon. It tastes good and it's healthy. Try it out!


I’m proud of myself for staying in and cooking this weekend. It doesn’t happen often, but I feel healthier for it and also saved money! Since the weekend we haven’t had anything spectacular for dinner: egg salad sandwiches Monday night (had to use up some of the Easter eggs I dyed) and black bean and cheese quesadillas last night. I have been doing really well with not eating meat of any kind this week.  That will be turning around the next few nights. Tonight we will be having pork roll sandwiches for dinner (yes I will be posting pictures since they now have the actual rolls and not just the slices at Wegman’s) and Thursday night we are going to Brewtopia (a monthly beer tasting event) at Rohrbach’s. I will be making a vegetable coconut curry that I will share with you this weekend. Can’t wait, it sounds wonderful!

Ravioli and Escarole Lasagna

I’ve been thinking more and more about cutting red meat from my diet. It really won’t affect me all that much. Looking at this week so far, I haven’t had red meat. The last time I had red meat was last Wednesday when we ate tacos. Of course considering how little I eat red meat (remember I think steak tastes like liver, so I avoid that almost always!), it probably doesn’t matter whether I eat the occasional bit of ground beef. Pork would be harder for me to give up. I love pork sausage, pork roll, bacon, ham steak, pulled pork, and the Carnitas at Chipotle. This would be a major sacrifice and I just don’t think I could do it. Have any of you cut things out of your diets (for non health reasons) that you thought you couldn’t give up, but you made it through? BTW I’m seriously not cutting out pork. Don’t even ask me about it!



Ah, dinner. I had been feeling sick during the day yesterday and I was very concerned that I wouldn’t be able to eat dinner. Less concerned about my food intake and more concerned that I wouldn’t have a blog post for you all. (See how much I love all of you!) Luckily my sickness turned and I was starving. I wanted to make something interesting, but easy for everyone. I’m still on my lazy kick. Don’t judge me too harshly!  The only way I can continue cooking most every day is if I am allowed lazy weeks.  So, Ravioli and Escarole Lasagna (from Everyday with Rachel Ray) was what was for dinner last night. There are times when it’s just easier to substitute ingredients rather than waste what you already have. I had spinach left over from the lentil soup, so I used that instead of escarole. (Both leafy greens, what’s the difference!) You are probably thinking, how in the world is lasagna for the lazy cook? This lasagna is perfect for the lazy cook! It’s only 5 ingredients and those are ravioli, escarole (spinach), 1 24 oz jar of red sauce, Italian sausage, and mozzarella cheese.


All you do is take the sausage out of the casing and cook it over medium heat (crumbling it as you cook) , until it’s no longer pink. Take it out of the pan (I drained the grease out of the pan, it’s not required) and then put the escarole/spinach in with some salt and pepper. Cook that until it’s wilted. Take the jar of red sauce and spread it in the bottom of a casserole dish, layer the ravioli next (I used the refrigerator kind), then sausage, escarole/spinach and the cheese on top. I’m pretty sure I didn’t use as much cheese as suggested (16 oz) that just seems like way too much even for a cheese lover. You pop that in the oven at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes, let it cool for about 5 minutes and there’s your dinner!

Final Proguct:

This was good. It could have been better. When I was eating it I wasn’t sure what I didn’t like about it, if it was the jarred sauce (which I don’t use often) or the sausage. Anthony told me it was the sausage, there was just too much of it. I used 4 links, which was a little over a pound. I didn’t want to waste any. Think I might only use 3 links next time and freeze the extra one. This meal would be a good addition to a weeknight menu, as long as you used less sausage. This will also make for good leftovers.


Tonight I won’t be cooking. We are going to The Owl House. Figure I might as well review the food we have on Facebook tomorrow. It’s a pretty cool place. This weekend I’m really planning on challenging myself by making risotto with asparagus. To say I’m nervous would be an understatement. After work today I might actually run to Wegmans and get a frozen pizza just in case!

2 Easy Lazy Meals

A Facebook page?! Really?!  Who do you think you are?! This is what I was thinking while creating the Facebook page for The Hesitant Cook. I shook off my doubt and my feelings of being an egotistical maniac. Everyone has a Facebook page especially if they have something they are trying to promote or share with a ton of people. And we all know everyone has a Facebook profile. If you want people to do something you put it on Facebook. Facebook is the new way to do EVERYTHING! Okay now I truly feel better about myself and my Facebook page.



I haven’t been overly adventurous in the kitchen this week. The phrase “back to the basics” keeps popping up in my head. That’s probably due to the fact that my last few meals haven’t turned out very good. So this week I made a Curried Lentil Soup in the Crockpot and Pulled Chicken Sliders with Coleslaw. When you see what these recipes consist of you are going to think I’m being very lazy, but they actually both turned out really good! I don’t feel bad about my laziness at all. Except I was so lazy I forgot to take pictures!! I’m so sad about this.


I used a good old trusty Betty Crocker recipe for the Curried Lentil Soup. Before you tell me that this is more of a wintery dish, let me remind everyone that I live in Rochester, NY! Enough said. I love the Crockpot, it feels like a cooking vacation. For the soup, you combine a bag of lentils, water, carrots, celery, onion, garlic, 2 veggie bouillon cubes, curry powder, salt and 2 bay leaves. That’s it for the next 8-9 hours. I added 2 tablespoons of curry for a stronger flavor; you all know I love me some curry! About 5 minutes before you are going to serve this you mix in a can of diced tomatoes. Take the bay leaves out and serve the soup with ¼ cup of chopped spinach. The recipe also calls for some yogurt, but I didn’t bother with that. I’m not a fan of yogurt.


Thoughts…it tasted like lentils.  I know that's not a very enthralling description, but I didn’t feel like the curry was very prominent. Anthony thought there was nutmeg in it, which is strange since there wasn’t. Would I make this again? Of course, it’s a comforting soup and it seems pretty healthy.  I would just add more curry or maybe some other Indian spices. There were also leftovers which is always a good thing in a house where people don’t want to cook every night!


Next up, Pulled Chicken Sliders with Coleslaw. My mother-in-law actually sent me this recipe and I figured it was time to give it a try. I’m very glad I did. It’s super easy and fast. This meal is perfect for a weeknight or if you want to be lazy. All I had to buy was a rotisserie chicken (I love those!), a bag of coleslaw mix, and green onions. First, mix 1 cup of bbq sauce with 3 tablespoons of cider vinegar. Shred/Pull the chicken, I used the breasts and the thighs since those are the easier parts to shred. Add that to the bbq sauce mix. To prepare the coleslaw, combine mayo, green onion, dill pickle juice, cider vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper. Add the coleslaw mix and toss. We toasted the slider buns (Thank You Wegmans, for the slider buns!) and heated the chicken in the microwave. Then we put the chicken on the bottom buns, topped that with the coleslaw and put the roof on (the top bun). We heated up a can of baked beans to go with it (love, love, love Bush’s Grillin’ Beans) and BOOM you have dinner!


Thoughts…super yummy and super easy! I even really liked the coleslaw and I thought I didn’t like coleslaw because of the mayo, but this one was good. We had the leftovers the next day and the sliders were still great! Everyone who eats chicken should use this recipe. I know I will be making this often!


Sorry about the lack of pictures today. I promise this won’t happen again. To make up for the lack of pictures, here is a picture of the stuffed cabbage we made a few weeks ago. Delish!

Destined For Failure...

Are some recipes just destined for failure?  I believe they are.  Seems to me that if you were to write a recipe you would test it out numerous times to make sure everything you were stating was fact.  I would hate to be the cause of someones meltdown in the kitchen.  There are times though when I completly follow a recipe and the meal still turns out terribly.  That is a recipe destined for failure.  Come on recipe writers test these recipes out.  Pretend like you can't really cook and need extra special help to do it.  Make these recipes fool proof.  Yes, I know.  Nothing is fool proof in my hands, but honestly this last one wasn't my fault.

The recipe:  Soba Noodles with Shrimp, Snow Peas,and Carrots.  Healthy, easy, tasty.  Those are the three words that come to mind when I see the title of this recipe and this is food that I really want to eat and enjoy.  Everything was going smoothly.  Prepping this dish was easy enough, though I did lose a little piece of skin from my thumb while grating the ginger.  I survived that though and was still in a good mood.  In fact this night was the most calm and collected night I've had in the kitchen in a long while.  I followed all the instructions and WHAM.  Soba is way over cooked!  Honestly now that I think about it I should have paid more attention to the length of time they have you cook the noodles (7 minutes).  Once before I made soba and noticed it cooked pretty fast then too.  Even the shrimp were a little chewy, that was my fault since I only had already cooked shrimp on hand. 

Final Product:

The sauce was yummy (it has peanut butter in it so that's a given) and I would make this again, but would definitly not cook the noodles for very long.  Whoever wrote this recipe must have had some crazy soba, because I had the normal stuff and it didn't need 7 minutes.