Quick salmon fish cakes

This goes fast...  ready?

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Ingredients and Method

In a large bowl
1 14.5 oz tin of salmon, with the liquid (pick the skin and bones if you have to, I leave them in)
1 xl egg
3 green onions sliced thin
2 TB cornmeal mix
8 TB self raising flour
salt, pepper, whatever other seasoning you love like garlic or onion

MIX with a fork till no dry bits left

Heat 1/4 inch oil in a skillet, on medium/medium/low till 350 OR until it browns a small chunk of bread or a small sample of the mix.

Place spoonsful of mixture in hot oil, do not mess about with it, leave till the bottom is beautifully brown.  IF it takes longer than 3 minutes, the oil is too cold, if it's faster than 2 minutes, the oil is too hot.

Flip carefully and brown the second side.  Total fry time should be 5 minutes.  Drain on paper towels, serve with whatever you love.

Allow leftovers to cool and place in ziplock bag in freezer.  Reheat from frozen in air fryer (oven style) 400 for 5-6 minutes, middle rack.

/enjoy!!!!

Hot Smoked Salmon, inside, using the pressure cooker, this time an instant pot, seriously good, seriously easy

 

I have a smoker and regularly make hot smoked salmon.  I love my smoker and I wished my mom could have the same thing, she doesn't have a smoker.  She does, however, have an instant pot pressure cooker and I decided I would try to find a way she could make the salmon I make here but there, without a smoker.  I think I've done it.

TRACY'S HOT SMOKED SALMON, 

INDOORS, IN A PRESSURE COOKER

Ingredients: 

Salmon, with skin, in 1 inch pieces
salt, sugar, pinch of cinnamon
Pecan or hickory chips
water

Method: 

Cut the salmon into 1 inch pieces

Sprinkle fish with equal amounts of sugar and salt and sprinkle a little cinnamon, leave to dry at room temperature.

Make foil packet, open, with dry wood chips

 

Set pressure cooker to saute, put open foil packet with chips in it on the bottom of the liner pot, let heat and cycle through hot/on for the 30 mins setting. close lid

When cycle finishes, open lid, pour one generous tablespoon of water on the hot chips.
Put trivet and plate with salmon in the pot, close lid.

 

Time for 11 minutes.

  

  

Open, remove salmon, shut off pot.

EAT!

I've done this a number of times and it's delicious and I am thrilled that I can cook for my mom in another country, even though she doesn't have a smoker but we both have pressure cookers :)

x

/tracy

enjoy

QUICKIE DRIVE BY dinner idea - Roasted Asian salmon with stirfry rice noodle.

I'm starting a new segment here, Drive By Dinners... no long recipes just ideas and lists of ingredients that I threw together to make dinner and they worked :)  No play by play pics, just a couple of shots of the finished product.

IF you need a detailed recipe, let me know and I'll update the posts.

OK, here we go:

ASIAN SALMON WITH STIR FRY RICE NOODLE

INGREDIENTS:

Salmon 1 1/2 - 2 lb piece or however much you have
Rice vermicelli noodle

Whatever veggies you have in the fridge, chop then small.  Grate the ginger and the garlic

cabbage
green onion
onion
carrot
ginger
garlic

Broth or water

Asian type spices from that shelf in your fridge you never use

Soak the rice noodles in a big bowl in the sink in hottest tap water, shush them around with your hands a bit to soften and divide them, takes about 5 minutes.  You know when they're soft enough when you can wrap them around your finger and they don't break.

I get in there with scissors and cut them up, I like short noodles for this.

Make a sauce combination for your salmon:
2 big tablespoons of honey, same amount of soy sauce
a few drops of sesame oil and a glug of vinegar (rice wine, or herbed or plain)
spoonful of sugar
a garlic clove minced and about an inch of ginger, also minced
chopped up green onion a little water to thin
TASTE it!!

Put the salmon in a huge piece of foil, mix up the sauce and pour it on the salmon.
Wrap the salmon tightly and throw into a 400 degree oven for about 15 minutes.

Open the foil and broil the salmon till it's dark and dark and dark and crazy caramelized delicious



While the salmon cooks toss oil in a huge pan, throw in a couple of beaten eggs, whip them fast and take them out.
Add more oil and throw in ginger and garlic, shush it around till you smell it and add all the rest of the veggies you have, chopped small...  fry them around a bit, add a little water to help cook it down.

Throw in whatever you have like soy or some of the sauce from the salmon, and add the soaked and drained noodles and about 1/2 cup of water or broth, toss it all around, adjust seasoning, keep it moving.  Throw in the eggs.  The noodles absorb the liquid, add more, i like it to be relatively dry.

Put huge amounts in bowls and serve the salmon on top with any sauce, liquid in the foil...

Sprinkle with green onion.  EAT!

PS it's great cold, tossed as a salad!!

ENJOY!!!

Hot Smoked Salmon, the best thing I ever made. Ever. Truly. Ever

I love seafood, I could eat it every meal.  I love salmon but find it so often overdone to the point of being dusty in my mouth or chewy... euwww.  I am constantly on the hunt for salmon nirvana.

One of my favorite appetizers out in the world, when I get to go out to eat, is the smoked salmon at Pappadeux.  It's expensive so I don't get to go often. I never thought I'd be able to reproduce anything even close at home.  I did.  I might have done it better.

I own a smoker.  I know where to buy salmon.  How hard can it be? Let the experiment begin.

This is a quickie, I'll tell you now, the experiment was more successful than I could have imagined.  You're going to want to add salmon to your shopping list, now.

TRACY'S HOT SMOKED SALMON 

2 lbs salmon (it was on sale!) cut into 1 1/2 pieces
salt
pepper
sugar

smoker
apple wood chips (soaked)
water

Rub salmon with seasonings, leave to 'dry' on the counter.  Put the salmon on tin foil, it'll cook on it.  Don't make it too big, just enough to be a nice plate for the fish.  Leave it about 30 mins, the time it takes the Masterbuilt smoker to preheat to 250.

When it's hot, fill the wood chip delivery box thing with SOAKED applewood chips.
Pour some water in the bowl of the smoker to keep everything moist.  I didn't want to muddy the flavors.

Slide the fish into the smoker, on the foil, and turn the temperature down to 200.  The hotter start allows the smoker to be hot enough to actually smoke the chips.  Open the damper on the top half way and let the smoke draw up around the fish.

Lock and load, set the timer for 40 minutes.  Prepare for nirvana

Here's the beauty shots and commentary
Here's the 2 lbs sliced thickly. Just salt, pepper and a little tiny bit of sugar on it, I want it to taste like salmon.
 

OH MY GOD, the fat in the salmon slowly ooooooozed up and through the fish, you have NO IDEA what an amazing this this does to the texture of the fish.  I've never experienced anything quite like it.  The flavor is slightly smokey but only slightly, I wanted it to taste like fish that'd been kissed with smoke and that's exactly what I got
 

I took it out of the smoker and let it rest, to come back to room temperature.  I didn't want it hot.  

It was easy to de-skin (?is that a word?) each piece.  Turn it on it's side and the skin peels off in one piece and doesn't take an ounce of flesh with it, oh yeah, that's the way to do it!

Then I served it up on a plate, then added some aioli and some hollandaise, because, well you know, I had some in the fridge

  

Then I put some on a crusty roll, it's almost spreadable!

Then I flaked it on top of pasta with lemon and a thought of cream, crazy.

  

Best fish I have ever EVER made.  It's worth trying, it's worth doing, I hope you love it as much as I do.  I love it.  Crazy love. Wow.

/enjoy

Salmon and Sticky Rice

Asian Salmon and sticky rice

I love seafood, Connor loves seafood, we could eat it every meal.  When husband goes out of town, we eat loads of fish.  It's so much cheaper to feed 2 than 3 so husband misses out.  He also doesn't eat dinner with us, he works until after we eat and there's no way I'm going to invest in a beautiful piece of fish then watch it sit there for 2 hours merely to be nuked.  *shudder*  Hence seafood has become the mother/son go to meal.

Husband went to New York this week and Connor wanted us to eat fish for most of our meals.  [I will say he cooked for me already this week, steak and baked potato and salad.  I'm proud as punch that he cooked without me in the room and presented a beautifully medium rare steak to me.  A chip off this block for sure.]  Back to the seafood, virtually daily?  Oh yeah, kiddo, I'm good with that.  Tonight, Connor thought we should have salmon, Asian style.  Again, that'll work for me, we bought a piece of salmon (just shy of 1 lb which cost $6.99) and set about making up an easy meal for two.

In a bowl I put 1 1/2 cups of thai sweet rice (sticky rice) to soak, at least 2 hours.  When we were ready to eat I just put the rice in a strainer (mine is from Ikea) and set it over boiling water to steam, covered.  After about 10 minutes, flip it over in 3 pieces, test it for doneness and leave it another 5 minutes.  Fluff with a fork, as well as you can fluff sticky rice and serve it up! I don't think this rice waits well so try to time it so it's ready when you're ready to eat.  I used to have a straw steamer and bamboo bowl and it held better in bamboo, perhaps I should revisit that and get myself one.  I may have to do a comparison for you.
   

it's steamy and sticky and very flavorful.  

 

The salmon came together quickly as well

1 lb salmon filet

Marinade:

1 teaspoon soy

1 teaspoon sesame oil

1 teaspoon mirin (rice wine)

1/2 teaspoon fish sauce

1/2 teaspoon sugar

Combine and pour over the salmon, flip and leave it to marinate at least 10 minutes. 

Preheat broiler (old school!) and put fish on sheetpan and put it under the broiler for about 8-10 minutes.  Rotate it periodically and I threw some water on the pan after about 5 minutes to help steam the bottom and stop the marinade from burning on the bottom of the pan.  It also made a light sauce which was a bonus
  

Oh goodness, look at this.  A little char and a light pink line through the middle.  Not the dry, overcooked, squeaky salmon I had the last time I ordered it at a restaurant.  This is light and moist and absolutely delicious.  I slid hunks of the salmon off the skin, piled it high on the sticky rice and poured a little of the light sauce over it.  It's rich and delicious and something I need to make again very soon.
 
Beauty shots, plated with the sticky rice.  Connor thought it needed the green onion and he was right.  It added beauty and a lovely taste.  He had some fried shrimp leftover from a lunch and put them on the plate with his salmon in case you were wondering where they came from.
 

I could have eaten 23 bowls of this.
 

Go get some salmon, make this, you'll be absolutely delighted. 

/Tracy