It always seems like recipes and food blogs are written for those with lots of cooking experience who can whip out a recipe in the blink of an eye and don't question or run into problems when the ingredients they find are not exactly as the recipe called for. Case in point, the frozen salmon I bought. I know that fresh is always better, but didn't have time to run to two stores that day, and my usual grocery store doesn't have a great fresh fish selection.
Directions on the bag of frozen salmon say cook from frozen, doesn't say anything about flipping the fish either. We tried that...miserable failure. The edges were over cooked, the inside still raw. Lesson learned, defrost your fish before cooking.
Try #2, I defrosted the salmon, patted it dry, and looked up "salmon bake rules" to figure out what temp and how long to cook it. Every site says a different thing, but the one I found said 350 and 10 minutes per inch thick. This fish was about 1.5 inches thick so, I flipped it from skin down to skin up at 10 mins, the smaller piece came out done at 15 minutes, the larger piece was done at 20. That worked! But then the fish, while cooked, was soggy. Lesson #2: really dry that defrosted fish before baking.
Third lesson, eat any left over fish the next day, probably for lunch the next day. Fish for lunch 2 days later, not so good.
My friend Meghan is blogging, mostly about food but also some life experiences, and she posted a great Ginger Tilapia recipe (has a Wok this Way feature as she's soon to be a Wang (pronounced Wong, Vera is wrong) and is learning to cook some Chinese/Taiwanese meals from her future-mother-in-law) that we made, and while I screwed up the portion size (no wonder we were still hungry) it was delicious and I learned some great lessons from her post:
1) really dry the fish then sprinkle with salt and pepper (why I didn't apply this to the salmon on round 2, I don't know)
2) put the biggest piece in the pan first, ending with the smallest as the biggest needs to cook longer
3) to check if it's done, poke the largest part with a chopstick. If it comes out clean, it's done! Did this with the salmon too, and it worked!
We also tried her crock pot Chicken Mole recipe and it was delicious as well, even at 11pm when we sat down for dinner. (Let's just say that multi-tasking is difficult for people and remember to start crockpots earlier than expected...). It's dairy free too! We had it as tacos first, which were good, but I liked it better over rice to help scoop up the sauce.
(Pictures will have to be added later as the Photo Stream from my iphone to my PC doesn't sync, and my old mac laptop is struggling.)
It's been really neat following Meghan's blog and learning how much time it takes to create and curate a well-done blog, especially to gain followers. This little blog of mine has no big aspirations and is really for me to look back on later to see what I cooked and did, but her's is beautiful with regular posts, great photography and I hope it goes places and takes her places with it! I love that her blog has these tips that help me, a newbie at cooking fish and veggies (and almost everything, I'm learning more as I go about how much I don't know).
