Mirin Glazed Salmon

From the kitchen of One Perfect Bite...I had planned to share a grand dessert with you tonight, but time caught up with me and it never quite made it to the oven. Tomorrow will be a better day, I promise. What I do have to share tonight is an easy Nigella Lawson recipe that is perfect for guests as well as family. The recipe is self-explanatory and the salmon comes together quickly. While I made a few minor changes to her recipe, I wanted to share the original version with you, and simply tell you about the changes I made. As you probably can tell from the photo, I used Atlantic salmon for my version of the dish. I had the fish monger cut a single thick fillet to makes its preparation even easier than in the original recipe. I also left the skin on and removed it just before serving. Over the years, I've learned that the flake test is really the most reliable way to determine if a fish is done, especially if you are working with thick fillets. The sugar in the marinade makes the fillets prone to scorching, so you'll want to carefully watch them as they cook. I make it a point to have everything else I plan to serve with dinner ready to go before I begin to cook the fish, It comes together so quickly that there won't be time for anything else once its done. This is a really nice recipe and I think you'll use it often. Come back tomorrow when I'll be featuring the world's greatest blueberry buckle.

Sunomono - An Easy Japanese Vinegar Salad

From the kitchen of One Perfect...We had another unexpectedly warm day and the gift of cucumbers from a friend gave me an excuse to make a much simpler supper than I had planned. These were the first yellow cucumbers I've had and I was really curious about their taste. As it turns out, the flesh is identical in flavor to that of the green variety, but the skin is unpleasantly bitter. Sunomono is a vinegared salad that is made with cucumbers or other fresh vegetables. Small pieces of seafood, such as crab, octopus or shrimp can also be added to make the salad more substantial. This is a very easy dish to make and it is elegant in its simplicity. The word sunomono means vinegared things, so you'll find there are many versions of this dish. I've added far more shrimp than are normally used in its preparation because I wanted to use it as a main course salad for the two of us. I usually make the salad with the near seedless English or Japanese cucumber. For those of you who have never seen the Japanese variety, they look like English cucumbers with warts. I do hope you'll give this simple recipe a try. Here's how to make this light and refreshing salad.

Warm Asian-Style Rice Salad

From the kitchen of One Perfect Bite...I made a new rice dish to serve with miso chicken tonight. I decided to grill despite the rain, so, if you happened down our stretch of highway this evening, I would be the fool you saw manning the grill beneath that huge red golf umbrella. Miso chicken is delicious, but I'm always puzzled by what to serve with it. Summer is no problem. I make a Japanese potato salad that's a perfect compliment to the chicken. Winter is more problematic. Plain, unflavored rice simply will not do and my winter palate refuses to embrace mayonnaise based salads. So, I decided to combine hot rice with mirin wine and broccoli slaw and see what happened. In Japan, sweet rice would be used to make a dish like this. Despite its name, this rice isn't sweet and it doesn't contain gluten. It is, instead, a very sticky, short-grain rice that's used to make sushi or sweet rice desserts. As you can see, I used basmati rice to make mine. It works well, but would be difficult to eat with chopsticks because the grains do not clump. I made enough rice to feed four, but the ingredients here can easily be doubled. I used mirin, a rice wine, because I think it's less sweet than sake and is more to our taste. The rice must be hot when the mirin and vegetables are folded into it. This is a really, really easy to make and it's quite good. Here's the recipe.

Warm Asian-Style Rice Salad...from the kitchen of One Perfect Bite

Ingredients:
2 cups hot cooked rice
6 tablespoons mirin cooking wine
1-1/2 cups broccoli or cabbage slaw
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Fold mirin and broccoli slaw into hot rice. Mix well. Cover pot and let sit for 15 minutes, or until mirin is absorbed. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Toss. Transfer to rice bowls. Yield: 4 servings.