The Rice Bowl Saga Continues

I have a bunch of ground pork and napa cabbage left over from the dumplings I made yesterday. I also had a bunch of jellied sauce left over from this chicken with fermented black beans and basil I had made last week for a departing friend. Browning the pork with some onions and deglazing with that chicken sauce and some dry sherry turned out to be fabulous over some rice. For the napa, I toasted up the usual ginger/garlic/scallions on the pan, but this time I added some small dried shrimp (it's a Chinese thing) before adding the vegetables. Tossed it around, added a little water and covered it to pan-steam. And that's an early lunch.

FAIL: Poached Snapper

It looks better than it tastes. How many times have you heard that?

rice bowl with dry sherry/soy poached snapper, ginger scallion oil, sauteed summer squash

I'm really not so well versed in preparing fish, so it's going to take a few tries failing before I feel comfortable serving it to friends. Poaching just seems like that really easy, straightforward way of preparing a fish fillet, but when you're like me and you ignore half the recipes you read, something's bound to go wrong. My poaching liquid was composed of soy/dry sherry/water at a ratio of about 1/1/2. It really didn't do anything for the fish, so I think next time I'll increase the amount of soy and perhaps add some miso paste. The ginger scallion oil did wonders for it, though, so that was an easy fix. For the summer squash, I did what I always do with fresh vegetables: sautee it with minced garlic, salt and pepper. It's stupidly simple, but there are some nuanced steps that might give me some ideas for a future blog entry. Till next time.

Fresh Spinach Rice Bowl

Mmm, this one came out real tasty. Fresh spinach, steamed rice, slices of roasted pork, sweet cumin carrots, avocado, sheets of seaweed and a sprinkle of scallions.

nom nom rice bowl

Playing with Seaweed

The farmer's market was selling these small packs of dried seaweed for something absurd like 60 cents each. I decided to give it a whirl for a rice bowl.

rice bowl: seaweed, pickled carrots, cucumber and daikon, soft-boiled egg

After hydrating them I realized that they were probably better suited for a brothy soup, but whatever. Tossed them with a bit of sesame oil and tamari soy. Julienned some carrots, daikon and kirby cucumbers... quick pickled them. Had an epic fail earlier trying to emulate Tim Ferriss' egg blowing trick, but the eggs were still good, so I had me some semi-soft boiled eggs. Plopped it all on some steamed rice and I'm good to go.