Soy Sauce

Salmon burgers usually have an asian flair to them at least when I have seen them out at restaurants, but I was more in the mood for very simple flavors that really felt like spring and showcased the fresh salmon. I grabbed some vibrant green beans and ramps at the store and put together a quick slaw with a mustard vinaigrette as a topping for these burgers. Some hard boiled eggs and nice whole grain rolls pulled everything together. Some of you are probably grilling this weekend, and I highly suggest trying out these burgers as something different for a small get together.

When I get Korean food in my head it becomes like that annoying song that just won’t leave your brain until you hear it. We leave Cooking Channel on in the background at my job and they have a new Korean food show, so I am probably going to be craving these flavors a lot more often! I saw some Japche noodles on tv while I was at work the other day, and immediately made them when I got home. I wanted to use all the veggies I had on hand instead of buying a ton of stuff, so I got the noodles and headed home hoping there would be some good stuff in the fridge. I had this delicious Jones Dairy Farm sausage and some great veggies that made for a fun twist on the traditional noodle dish.

I’ve been dying to get together with my blogger friend Bianca to cook some Filipino food for years, and the stars finally aligned to make this happen a few weeks ago. She recently quit her job so she could finish up her degree and we realized that we both have Wednesday afternoons completely free. Check out her blog today for more on this same recipe, and again later this week for some other stuff that we cooked that day. Hopefully we can do this again a few more times before her semester is over so I can taste more of this delicious cuisine I have never been exposed to before!

If you told me 5 years ago that my coffee table would not only host my own cookbook, but also a cookbook written by a friend of mine, it wouldn’t even be something that my brain could grasp and I would probably just laugh it off. But here we are, and that sentence is a reality.

Nick from Macheesmo was a once rival, turned friend and also powerful ally in the world of food blogging, and his book Love your Leftovers, comes out in a few days! Love your Leftovers is an epic tome of meal planning that teaches you how to cook in large batches and then repurpose the leftovers into dinners later in the week. Nick is modest on the cover when he says there are “over 100” recipes in the book, because many of the recipes feature variations and twists with full ingredient lists. I asked him what the true recipe count was, and he said it comes to 187!!!

As I flipped through the book wondering what to cook the other night, the Vietnamese Noodle Salad that uses leftover grilled flank steak caught my eye (because I could eat vietnamese noodle salads every day of my life) and it did not disappoint.

Tasty Ham and Egg Barley Porridge with asparagus

At the Asian market I noticed that they had square rice paper. I have only seen the round kind in the past. When Mandi saw the square kind, she instantly suggested that I use them to make some sort of Thai or Vietnamese lasagna.  The first thing I did was buy a pan the same size as the rice paper.  Then I went back and forth on some different ideas and flavors to use in this lasagna, and finally went with drunken noodles. The sauce can really stand up to the prolonged cooking time, and it’s pretty much my go-to Thai dish anyways. I used ground chicken and diced up the veggies extra small to give it that lasagna feel, and swapped out the ricotta cheese for some tasty tofu.

While watching a late season Red Sox game on ESPN a few weeks ago, I noticed that one of my favorite announcers John Kruk seemed to be having trouble with Jarrod Saltalamacchia’s last name. He kept calling him Saltamaki, and all I could think was mmm sounds like a nice sushi roll. When setting out to make the Saltala-Maki Roll, I was first thinking salt cod, but I couldn’t formulate it into something that wasn’t either A. bacalao fritters, or B. disgusting. I kind of got stuck on it for a few days, until I decided to switch the focus onto something else really salty. Once I thought of using potato chips, the whole thing came together perfectly!  I’m thrilled to have the Sox back in the Postseason this year as I live only a few blocks from Fenway.  There is nothing like the excitement in my neighborhood on game day!   And I even have tickets to game 2 this Sunday night. Go Sox!

Everyone loves super tender ribs that come right off the bone, and I bet you think that they are really hard to make. Well guess what? You take the ribs out of the packaging, dump some liquid onto it, put it in the oven, go play some video games, and boom, ribs. The one tricky part is getting that liquid just right. I wouldn’t use just any liquid floating around your dorm room, like whey protein shakes or bong water, you need to make a really flavorful concoction with a balance of sweet, sour, salty, and spicy. I’ve found that Korean Bulgogi marinade fits the bill just perfectly.

After a couple weeks of fairly unhealthy activities and lots of beer, I decided to go on one of my week long health kicks. After a few days of only eating salads and seeds, I was really craving a hearty warming meal, especially on a rainy early september afternoon. After thinking a bit about what flavors I was specifically craving, this dish was created in my head and I went for it. The results were totally different from anything I have had in awhile and amazingly flavorful in a unique way. It’s totally vegan too!

These noodles use hummus as a shortcut to making something that tastes like Thai takeout.

The premise of this dish was to to create a textural study between 3 different gummy ingredients, braised octopus, potato gnocchi, and korean rice cake. All 3 of these things can remind me of each other, so I thought it would be fun to put them all together in a korean flavored sauce. It came out pretty tasty in the end, but I don’t feel that I fully achieved what I was going for. The main issue was the size differences between the 3 main ingredients. I was aiming to make them all a similar size and shape but failed. Regardless, if you like octopus you will enjoy this dinner, but on a normal night I would make it with either gnocchi or rice cake, and not both.

When I was frying some tofu one day, I noticed that it sticks together really easily. As the tofu cooks, it basically binds to any other tofu cooking nearby. This gave me the idea to one day stuff cubes of tofu, considering that whatever the stuffing may be, the tofu would hold it in nicely. When “one day” finally came, I made a vaguely Asian turkey meatball mixture to stuff into the little cubes.