Dinner: Seattle Asian Salmon Bowls

In the last post I talked about how we make Skinnytaste recipes a lot.  Well, here’s another one.  The wife and I both saw this recipe while looking through Instagram.  We both follow Skinnytaste on there and you should too (do so here).  We’ve now made two delicious recipes based on pictures alone.

This time around it was these Asian Salmon Bowls that caught our eye.  We’re usually game for anything involving salmon.  Throw in some Asian ingredients and we’re pretty much sold.  Especially when the ingredients are pretty much sushi…just not rolled up.

As per most recipes, I came home to this being 95% done.  I acted like I helped a bit (opened a beer) and everything was ready to go.  The wife had everything looking marvelous as usual.  I mean, just look at it.  On the side we made up some edamame (freezer bag).  A quick throw into a microwave and a ton of salt later…BOOM!

We dug in and once again, loved what we were eating.  I think we would cut down the wasabi a little for next time or possibly add a little less of the sauce to the bowl.  Other than that the dish was delicious.  It is pretty much a salmon roll that the sushi chef was too lazy to roll up.  It’s great to now have a recipe we can make at home if we have an Asian or even a sushi fix.  This one will fit the bill and keep things healthy.

Below is the recipe (which you can find on the Skinnytaste site here)…and like I said in the last post, buy her cookbook here!

Seattle Asian Salmon Bowls

Ingredients:

For The Salmon Bowl:

• 1/2 cup green onions, thinly sliced
• 1 English cucumber, sliced
• 1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds
• 1 4-ounce avocado, diced
• 2 cups cooked brown rice
• 3/4 cup sprouts such as daikon radish
• 1 strip nori, shredded
• 16 ounces wild salmon, cut in 4 pieces
• olive oil spray
• salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

For the Soy-Wasabi Vinaigrette:

• 2 tbsp less sodium soy sauce (or GF Tamari)
• 2 tsp wasabi in tube
• 2 tbsp mirin
• 2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp sesame oil

Directions

1. Combine the vinaigrette ingredients in a bowl and set aside.  Heat rice and keep warm.
2. Season salmon with a pinch of salt and fresh pepper. Heat a frying pan or sauté pan over medium-high heat. Spray the pan lightly with oil spray. When hot sear salmon, around 2 – 4 minutes per side (depending on the thickness of the fish).
3. Split rice into four bowls equally, 1/2 cup each. Top each bowl with 1 oz avocado, green onions, cucumbers, sesame seeds, and sprouts. Place salmon on top of each bowl, drizzle with the vinaigrette, and sprinkle with shredded nori.

Prepping.

Edamame

Everything on the table.

Finished product.

Dinner: Korean Beef Bowls

It’s a little bit surprising that I haven’t written about these things by now.  We’ve had them a least once a week for the past few weeks.  Just today the wife asked why I hadn’t put these up yet and I gave her the real answer…I’m lazy.  There’s been TV and sleep getting in the way.  In any case, it’s about time to talk about the amazingly delicious dinner that is Korean Beef Bowls.

The wife found these a few weeks back on one the blogs she frequents (Designer Bags and Dirty Diapers).  She told me that day that we were having Korean Beef Bowls…and, not going to lie…the name didn’t exactly sound that appealing to me.  Nothing like a bowl full of beef to get a guy excited.  In any case, I held out hope that this would be just like any other meal that the wife puts together.

I came home to the meal pretty much done.  There was a nice sweet, but spicy smell in the air.  In the oven were some Chang’s vegetable egg rolls cooking away (any other Chang’s are crap).  Just like most days it was up to me to just go ahead and shove the food into my face.  To add a bit of texture and other flavors to the recipe the wife added some snap peas and cut up some carrots.  As we like to do as well, we used the boil in a bag rice.  Cook smarter folks…not harder.

I went ahead and dug in once the plate hit the table.  I do have to say that the flavors here are really good.  You can taste the sweetness of the brown sugar, but also a little heat from the red peppers.  As I normally do, I added a bit of sriracha to give it just a bit more kick.  That is one of the nice things about this dish.  It allows you to make it as spicy as you would like.  This thing was a hit all around.  We’ve made it for multiple people now and everyone has loved it.  If you get an itch for an Asian inspired dish…I would definitely encourage you to hit these up first!

Korean Beef Bowls

Ingredients:

• 1 lb lean ground beef
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1 Tablespoon sesame oil
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 – 1 teaspoon crushed red peppers (depending on how spicy you like it)
• salt and pepper
• 1 bunch green onions, diced
• Rice, cooked 

Directions:

1. Heat a large skillet over medium heat and brown hamburger with garlic in the sesame oil.
2. Drain most of the fat and add brown sugar, soy sauce, ginger, salt and pepper and red peppers.
3. Simmer for a few minutes to blend the flavors. Serve over steamed rice and top with green onions.

Dinner: Sweet-Spicy Chicken and Vegetable Stir Fry with Double Sesame Rice

Another day…another Cooking Light recipe ya’ll.

In our endless quest to, at the last minute, find something to make for dinner…the wife and I threw out ideas.  I pulled a recipe from SkinnyTaste.com that may have been a little complicated to throw together quickly.  The wife pulled this recipe from Cooking Light for Sweet-Spicy Chicken and Vegetable Stir Fry.  She sent over the picture from the Cooking Light site and it looked pretty tasty.  I’m a fan of stir fry as long as they don’t have those devil made water chestnuts in them.  WATER CHESTNUTS ARE GROSS PEOPLE!  So, a trip to the store to grab some of the ingredients and dinner was about to go down.  We make a lot of asian recipes so most of this stuff was already laying around the house.  Another great thing about the wife…always thinking smarter, not harder.  Use what you have!

In any case, I can’t vouch for much of the making of the recipe outside of what my wife and sister wife (a friend of ours, but she now goes by sister wife…got a work wife too, just how I roll) said about the meal, which is that it was easy to come together.  I walked in the door from work and, like a well oiled machine, they were already halfway through the stir fry.  I came into the veggies already in the pan sautéing away.  Sitting to the side was the liquid they would add before the cooked chicken back in.

Dinner: Fusian

Somehow every so often the wife and I end up at the mall.  This time around it was for me as I needed some things for vacation. Anyway, as we were driving out to the mall we passed a strip with some new places in it.  One of these was Fusian.  The wife had heard about Fusian before and as we were trying to figure out what to have for dinner it jumped to the top of the list.  She told me it was a sushi place where you can make your own rolls.  As a sushi fan, she had my attention.

Set in a corner of short strip of other places, Fusian has a nice modern feel to it as you walk in.  As you walk up to the menu and counter up front you get a bit of a Chipotle vibe.  This isn’t a bad thing as Chipotle is awesome, but the way you put your sushi together as you move down the line is what I mean.  You start out picking your wrap, rice, filling, toppings, and sauces.  There’s probably a million different combinations that you can make.  The variety of sushi you could come up with should appease sushi fans old and new alike.