Sweet and soy grilled salmon & flowers to make my apartment a home

Well, now I have tons of stuff to blab about. I am debating if I should break all of this up into separate posts? Yes, yes I should.

OK. Now. I do want to talk a bit about what’s the deal with how I changed my blog theme (and ask for your opinion, although it’s not done yet so I guess that doesn’t matter…) and announce that I did indeed graduate last weekend and I managed not to trip across the stage or forget to bring my name card or some other Kelly-like embarrassing thing, in addition to lots of other mushy crap about how much I love everyone who’s been reading my silly blog over the past semester and told me how much they enjoy it. I also want to talk about where this blog is going now that my independent study is over (I got an A, in case you were wondering, and even though it’s “over” I am thinking I may following in Jacquie’s footsteps and try to print up my most relevant posts up and bind them together. I might be good to show future potential employers, no? I can’t quit you, blog!)

Anyhow, all of that can wait because I made this delicious salmon dinner for a friend and I Thursday and holy crap. Ah-mazing.

Let’s discuss.

I decided I wanted to go all out and get that most sustainable salmon available at Whole Foods (Wild King Alaskan, $24/lb.), which in my humble opinion, tastes the absolute best. I ended up buying two 1-inch (at the thickest) fillets for $17.

Here’s what I did.

Sweet & Soy Grilled Salmon with Avocado, Capers, and Red Onion

Combine in a bowl the following:

• 1/4 c. olive oil (exact amounts don’t really mater, you might need more if you are marinating larger fillets)
• a few T. of soy sauce (I don’t know how much, I just poured the rest of the bottle in)
• 1/4 c. brown sugar
• Juice of 2 lemons
• a dash or seven of garlic powder, depending on how much you love garlic

Yeah so swirl all that stuff around and plop your salmon fillets in and if you are super fancy and have a brush, coat them with the marinade. Then cover the bowl and pop in the refrigerator. Mine marinated for about 7 hours, but I am sure you could do for much less time, probably even 3-4 hours would suffice.

Then, slice up some avocado and some red onion and tomatoes (if you want) and drain some capers. Whatever you love on salad. You could also do a couple hard-boiled eggs using Jaden’s method (from the Steamy Kitchen) that makes the egg somewhere in between soft-and hard-boiled. I opted to leave the egg out. I initially was going to use Jaden’s recipe for a grilled salmon sandwich but then decided to use a marinade for the salmon…and then never actually made the dressing and I also made a salad instead of a sandwich…so really my dinner ended up totally different and I’m not sure why I am even referencing that recipe aside from the fact that it made me think to use capers, which I never have cooked with before.

By the way, I should also mention that my parents got me three new K. Sabatier knives as a graduation present, and they are fantastic. I have never had nice knives and it feels so nice to be able to actually slice through food without applying pressure. Fabulous. (When you begin asking for things like food processors and knives for presents, does that make you officially old? Yikes.)

I also bought myself a new eco-friendly skilet at Target the other day, which made me laugh because I never would have thought that a skillet could be not eco-friendly but hey, I guess that’s just the direction we are heading and I dig this pan a lot. I made eggs the next morning without a speck of cooking spray and it just slid around the pan like in an infomerical, it was hilarious.

Back to the salmon. You then heat up a skillet to medium-high and set your fillets on it. I ended up grilling the salmon for about 3 minutes each side, but it obviously will depend on how thick your fillet is.

Yes, mom, that’s a band-aid on my thumb. Yes, it’s from the knife. Yes, I will be more careful next time. Yes, I know those knives “could CUT OFF my finger.”

Definitely don’t overcook the fillet. If you have any feeling it might be done, take it off and take a good look at the center–with salmon you don’t really want the rare-ness you might go for with a tuna steak, but it should still be rather pink. Also, about halfway through cooking, throw your onion slices and capers in with the skillet (I much prefer grilled onion over raw.)

Once everything is ready, you plate it all up and voila! We found the salad didn’t really need “dressing” especially if you let the salmon marinate for as long as I did, because it was sooooo juicy and the onions had collected that marinade as well. But do what you like. I suppose you could do a drizzle of honey-dijon or some such over the lettuce if you prefer.

By the way, we drank a Pinot Noir with dinner which was a great pair. Pinot Noir’s are a bit more smooth and sweet, which went well with the hints of brown sugar sweetness in the salmon. (This is me trying to sounds like a foodie. Or a wino that doesn’t know wine, either/or.)

That meal tasted like you would pay at least $25 for it in a restaurant (maybe even more because of the fact that it was Alaskan King salmon, which is the priciest.) But when it came down to it, not including the wine, it  cost about half that to buy all the ingredients. And it was so so worth it. It just melted in your mouth. The best part, for me, is you could almost feel good about eating it knowing that it didn’t have the added dyes and hadn’t been raised in a confined space being fed tons of antibiotics, etc. I’ll spare the nasty details for here.

OK. So not to be all jumbly, but I do want to give you a glimpse into last weekend, in a post later on today or tomorrow in case anyone cares (I’m mainly thinking of relatives…)

…and next up, what I am looking forward to doing today (and hopefully for the rest of my life!)…Yoga! =)

It feels good to be back.

Maqluba, hummus, falafel, baba ghanoush, baklava…

Yum. My professors rock, that’s all I have to say.

So last night being our final exam block for my Theories & Methods of Nonviolence class, our professors had us over to one of their homes to hand in our final papers and enjoy some fine home cooking. The professor whose home it was, was born in Palestine, so the food was mostly of that Mediterranean variety. It was all so delicious and it was a really cute night. And I took pictures this time because the food was just presented so wonderfully and tasted so great.

This is maqluba. It is basically a rice casserole and in this picture it is the one with chicken and cauliflower I believe. But the vegetarian one that I ate had eggplant and tomato. It was divine. And they flip it over so it’s like one of those upside-down pineapple cakes, only, it’s a casserole.

Salad.

HOMEMADE hummus and baba ghanoush. Which tastes infinitely better than out of a tub at the grocery store and now that I have a food processor and more time on my hands I can’t wait to make my own.

Falafel! I’ve only had falafel once before this, in Brisbane. It’s really popular in Australia for whatever reason…and my professor’s was awesome.

SO much good food.

PISTACHIO BAKLAVA. ‘Nuff said.

Oh, I also tried Arabic coffee. Not a fan. It’s really thick and gritty-like! Anyone ever tried it?

I think the best part of the meal is that it was so made-with-love tasting. It felt like being home for a holiday or something, and not just because we were out in Suburbia (which was totally weird, to see a vast backyard and homes so far apart from each other…) but because he and his wife cooked it all for us. They even set out ziploc bags after and made us take as much as we could home for leftovers. How awesome is that?

I went into this class knowing next to nothing about international relations and conflict resolution and all of that, but I still found it to be really interesting. It was way over my head in terms of being able to contribute to class discussion in a room full of many people who have actually been to the countries and seen things first-hand. But, I did get to learn a lot of new stuff and it was good to be out of my element.

All in all, if you’re an AU student and looking for an elective to take, I’d go for this class. Plus, there’s an awesome dinner at the end. =)