The Sum of All It's Parts

I got home later then I planned today, and I will admit, I did not do a mise en place for tonight's dinner. I prepped as I cooked, I improvised, and I rushed...but dinner turned out pretty darn good, I must say. I cracked A Platter of Figs, and turned to the chapter I had initially added to my current menu. The title of this chapter: Salmon on My Mind. The menu featured in this chapter includes:

Fried Egg Soup

Wild Salmon with Vietnamese Cucumbers

Rose-Scented Strawberries

Unfortunately, I planned this menu awhile ago, and all the strawberries have been eaten...so I didn't make the dessert portion of this chapter. I did, however, manage to make both the soup and the salmon, accompanied by some white rice and the Vietnamese Cucumbers. While the majority of the recipes in this book are extremely labor-intensive, this one took about an hour, total, and that's nothing to complain about!

Each part of this menu went very quickly, and timed out perfectly so that everything finished at the same time. I love it when that happens! So as the title of this post describes, this menu really is the sum of all its parts. The salmon was simply seasoned with salt and pepper and drizzled with a little olive oil. It is supposed to bake in a 350 degree oven for 20-25 minutes, so I pre-heated the oven and put the salmon in. I felt that the preparation of the fish was a bit too simple, but it ended up working so well with all the other flavors. I will never doubt again! :)

I immediately set my rice-cooker so that it would be cooked at about the time I pulled the salmon out of the oven. Now that the things that take the longest are set to cookin', I had the time to throw together the other two components of this meal.

For the cucumbers, I used mini seedless cucumbers, and I did not peel them the way the recipe suggested. I like the crunch of a cucumber's skin, so I left it on, and tossed them with some fish sauce, julienned ginger, palm sugar, salt and pepper. After 5 minutes of sitting, I mixed in the juice of 2 limes as well as some chopped jalapenos and put it in the fridge until dinnertime.

At this point, there's about 12 minutes left on the timer for the salmon, so I better get that soup going. I poured some chicken broth into a pot (the author HIGHLY recommends making your own broth, but really...I did not have that kinda time today...so I hope he forgives me). I brought the broth to a simmer and added some thinly sliced garlic cloves, and a few minutes after that, some minced ginger. While the broth was simmering, I fried up a few eggs for the bottom of our soup bowls. It's an interesting concept, and it turned out to be a yummy one, at that. At the last minute of cooking, I added some bok choy ribbons to the pot and allowed them to wilt slightly.

The cucumbers were garnished with chopped mint and scallions directly before serving, and the soup was also decorated with scallions...a generous handful! I did not follow the directions in these recipes to the letter, by any means, but I think I got the gist of the concept, and produced a delicious (and healthy) meal in about an hour. The meal was hearty, fulfilling and delicious, and while I didn't follow my regular practice in the kitchen, things turned out okay. And the clean-up for this one was totally easy, so score one more point there!

Tip of the day: Read through an entire recipe before you start preparing it. If you can anticipate what comes next, you can produce a complicated meal with less stress, and in less time than if you really had to go step-by-step through a recipe.