Creative Cooking: Salmon Yakitori

This is what Steve brought home from his initial fishing adventure.





Isn't it beautiful?





This is the freshest salmon I have ever cooked with. From the ocean to the net to my hands in mere hours.

I went to my delicious bookmarks and looked up salmon. I rediscovered yakitori, a recipe I've been meaning to try from one of my favorite food blogs.





I started with a little sugar.

Note to readers: I attempted to be artistic while taking these photos and placed the salmon in the background of every ingredient picture. Consider appreciating that. Thank you.





Some smashed garlic.

Note to readers: If you use a knife to smash garlic cloves, use the same knife to slice a cucumber, and eat that cucumber slice, it is a bad idea. Trust me.





The original recipe called for rice wine. I had no rice wine. The suggested substitute was apple juice. I had no apple juice. I had a packet of caramel apple cider, but I thought that might throw the flavor of the dish off... I ended up using rice vinegar.




Because I'm an idiot, I added oil to the marinade. The oil was supposed to be used when cooking the salmon. Oops. Luckily, I don't think it ruined everything. In fact, because I used sesame oil, the flavor may have even been enhanced.






I had the foresight to mix the marinade in a ziploc bag...







which made it really easy to let the salmon chunks soak up the goodness overnight.





These pictures aren't the greatest, but I wanted to add them to prove I actually did make this dish. The above picture is the marinated salmon in (some more) sesame oil.





This is the salmon when it was done. (Again, the photo is primarily to prove my culinary activity, in fact, took place.)





The finished yakitori. Even my non-fish-eating husband enjoyed it.

Fishing With Teachers or The Post in Which I Use the Word Fillet As Often As Possible

Steve and I have lived in Alaska for going on seven years, and we went fishing for the first time today. This was a massive act of love on Steve's part because he doesn't even like fish.





Last night a few of the teachers put a net in the water. The net is attached to the white buoys you can see in the pictures above.





We pulled the net to shore looking for fish.






Okay, so the use of the word "we" was a little generous. Steve was the only Alston that did any of the actual pulling of the net.






The fish get tangled as they try to swim through the net.




Steve was a pro at untangling the fish.





The lineup. Notice the sanitary conditions. :)





Me with the future fillet.








Steve humored me and posed for a fish picture too.






The beginning of the fillet. A nice slice below the head.





Hard at work in the filleting process.





The other filleting stations.





This is what was left after I was done filleting. The leftovers were donated to one of the local dogsled teams.





The fillets were reserved for human consumption. I took a couple and cooked them in a bit of hot vegetable oil. After a couple of minutes, I put them in the oven.

Note to readers: the pictured fillet was not filleted by me. It was filleted by another teacher earlier in the day.





While the fillet baked, I gathered some of this beautiful lemon zest.





I added the zest to some butter, shallots, and lemon juice, inspired by this.






The finished fillet with the sauce. It was delicious. Even Steve agreed. Maybe there's something to this fishing thing after all...

Creative Cooking: Zucchini Cake

It started with these... We got some zucchini in our CSA box. Being as I'd already dabbled in savory zucchini delicacies, I decided to try something sweet. I turned to my buddy the Amateur Gourmet to figure out what to do with it. Olive oil cake sounded a little strange, but Adam has rarely led me astray.

Note to readers: Only one zucchini chunk was harmed in the shooting of this photo. (I considered picking the chunk up and using it anyway, but I haven't mopped my floor in a while.)

Update: Since beginning this post, I have mopped my floor. You're welcome.




The recipe called for grated zucchini, but I put the zucchini in my food processor (believe the reviews, this baby is as LOUD as a jet engine). I think I overdid it on the processing thing, but subtlety has never been one of my strengths.

Note to Readers: I do not in any way consider myself qualified to give useful recommendations about household appliances, but I want to say a few things about my blender/food processor. I don't love it, but it gets the job done. I only bought it because I couldn't justify one of these. Actually, I had no trouble justifying the aforementioned blender of bliss. I just knew that Steve would retaliate by buying one of these. Then I would be forced to buy this. The whole thing could spiral out of control very quickly.





The recipe called for toasted walnuts.





They also ended up in the food processor. And got over-processed. (I think they were supposed to end up walnut chunks, not dust...)

I have a problem.





My mood improved dramatically when I got to use my sifter on the flour and spices.





I had a moral dilemma when I looked at the ingredients list of my shortening tub. WARNING: SOAP BOX AHEAD I just finished reading Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food. A lot of what Pollan said really resonated with me, and I've been making an effort to be more mindful of the things I eat. I needed to grease the bundt pan, but the shortening had all kinds of multi-syllabic ingredients that I only vaguely recognized.





Butter was much more sensible. Ingredients: cream (milk), salt.

But butter is expensive. And I only needed to grease the pan. And is it even worth debating the health of individual ingredients when making a cake? That you will probably eat mostly by yourself?

If I had been thinking, I would have used olive oil. I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this, but the reason I didn't is because I was afraid it would make the cake taste funny. It seems I temporarily forgot that the name of this cake was OLIVE OIL Zuchinni. Duh.

I ended up using the butter. I expect to reach food nirvana sometime tomorrow afternoon.






After wrestling with my culinary conscience about the greasing of the pan, I mixed up the ingredients into a moderately thick batter...





And baked it in my bundt pan.

Note to Readers: This is the third time I've used the bundt pan this school year.

Note to Steve: It was still totally worth it.





The glaze consisted of lemon juice, sugar, and powdered sugar. I didn't even bother contemplating the nutritional value.





The finished cake showed no signs of the inner turmoil it generated.





In fact, it will probably be made again.

Full disclosure: I am not making any money from any of the links in this post. I was just in a facetious mood and felt like over-linking. It happens.

Creative Cooking: Bread in Five Minutes a Day

No-knead bread started showing up on several of my favorite food blogs quite a while ago. I've also been meaning to read this book (unfortunately, I'm a complete cheapskate, so the book has not been purchased).

I really loved the five-minutes-a-day idea because sometimes I can be kind of lazy when it comes to cooking (this is a problem because my husband thinks that tater-tot casserole, chili mac, and meatloaf count as "meals" (Hey Mom Alston! Sorry you haven't won me over to the meatloaf loving way of life! I still hate it but appreciate your conversion efforts!). The basic premise of this philosophy is that you make a big batch of dough and use it daily/almost daily over the course of two weeks. I settled on trying this recipe, which was recommended as a good starting place. (You can also just have at it with a simple ratio, but I was lazy wasn't confident enough.)




You begin by throwing all of the ingredients together. (I use my KitchenAid because I heart it.) I doubled the recipe because I wanted enough for eight loaves instead of four.




The dough will seem pretty runny, but that's okay.

When you realize that you got confused and tripled the amount of salt, baking soda, and yeast, you need to go back and add more water and flour, thus making enough dough for twelve loaves.





The dough needs to sit on the counter for a couple of hours. If you want to be able to use your Kitchen Aid during the resting time, you should probably transfer the dough to another container. If you had a momentary brain lapse and tripled the recipe because you were too lazy to use ratios, you will probably need to let the dough rest in two bowls...





But, you should make sure that they are both big bowls. Otherwise you will have an overflowing mess after two hours.





Feel free to use quick thinking and put some of the overflowed dough in a series of ziploc bags to freeze for use later.





The rest of the dough can go in the fridge until your ready to use it. Make sure the container isn't airtight.

Note to readers: Accidentally tripling a recipe and trying to force dough into containers that are too small can result in continued expansion in the fridge. Be ready for it.

When you're ready to bake your bread, just pull off a chunk of the dough.

The recipe calls for a baking stone. I do own a baking stone, but it's in storage in Seattle, along with all of my other real dishes, kitchen equipment, etc. My wise colleague Denise (who functions as my pseudo-maternal advisor in Shishmaref- "Um, Denise, if I bring this oil over, will you smell it and tell me if it's gone rancid? And then not judge me if it is?") suggested that I use a nice baking dish that would hold the heat evenly.





I do own a nice baking dish. I bought it in Paraguay. Steve made fun of me for carrying it all the way back into the U.S. and up to Alaska.

Note to readers: A small baking dish is nothing (in size or inconvenience) compared to the berimbau he brought back.





For those of you kitchen snobs, it is a Le Creuset baking dish. It is the only Le Creuset piece I own at this time. Steve has been warned that someday I intend to own a lot more.




I greased the dish with shortening.

Note to readers: this shot is completely staged. It turns out that I'm too uncoordinated to operate my camera or grease a pan with my left hand. I had to settle for holding-the-paper-towel-with-shortening-on-it with my left hand and operating my camera with the right.





Shape the dough into a ball and tuck all the edges underneath so that the top is smoothish. (This ball of dough will magically grow in the next few shots. Do not be alarmed. It is just a different batch of bread. VFN's Creative Cooking shows are not always shot in real time...)

Apparently, you can also shape the dough into sandwich loaves, but that technique hasn't been botched tried in VFN's test kitchens.





Let the dough sit for forty minutes. Preheat the oven at 450 sometime during this resting period.




Sprinkle the loaf, or boule, with flour...





and slice any design that makes your heart happy.

If you're really brave, you can bake the bread over a dish of water. Maybe you can avoid using a glass dish.





The final product has been greatly enjoyed in the Alaska Alston household.