Well, since my last post, I’ve gotten married, moved into a new flat in HK, visited Colorado 3 times, and – it seems – neglected blogging.

My new year’s resolution (keep in mind that i think in “school-years”) is to maintain at least one of my blogs with reasonable regularity… and the food one is a lot more fun to update! So here’s an incomplete overview of some of our home life:

Homemade pizza – one of our favourite things these days, and so easy with a bread maker to make some great dough.

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Homemade tortilla shells - this is one thing i’d much prefer buying, but my husband is into DIY of all sorts a fun attempt.

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Simple Roasted Veggies – lots of oregano, basil, and some salt, pepper, olive oil – so hearty and good.

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Lasagna, made with ground Elk Meat – from my dad-in-law in Colorado. Elk meat is a very healthy meat. It has a similar consistency and taste to beef, but it is low in fat, cholesterol, and since this elk was from the wild, very low in artificial hormones and chemicals, except perhaps what it would pick up in its environment. I used to dislike hunting, but I had never been around that culture. I’m still not huge on the whole culture-gone-wild surrounding it, but my father-in-law’s attitude towards hunting (shoot one wild elk in a season, and manage to use every part of it) is to me more humane and respectful than factory farming.
Another recent discovery that I can’t believe I hadn’t used before with pasta sauces is: grated carrot!!! So good for flavour and colour!!

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a delicious spread of food from a market in Bangkok (just the essentials: tom yum, pad thai, etc)

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And our FAVOURITE thai place in Hong Kong – Ping Kee – thankfully just around the corner! Here, a grilled fish – rubbed down in sea salt, stuffed with herbs, grilled on a charcoal grill, and served with a delicious tangy/very spicy chili-ginger-lime?? secret sauce and a pork neck salad (also grilled pork, tossed with the secret sauce and thinly sliced red onion, cucumber, celery, and some other stuff)

More to come, I hope!

My dear friend Michelle came up to visit from New York City. On Saturday night we stayed home and made a very simple (but delicious!) meal of salmon fillet with a miso marinade.

I bought two 7-8 inch long salmon fillets (around 0.5 kg) for three people. When I got home, I rubbed these down with salt and rinsed them in cold water to clean them. After letting them dry, I spread miso paste on both sides (the skin and the pink fillet). This is a simple marinade my mom taught me. Miso is a Japanese salty paste of fermented soy beans. It’s a popular soup base and works really well with salmon.

While this was marinading, I put some rice in the rice cooker (a mix of 2/3 Japanese sticky rice and 1/3 mixed wild rice and brown rice). We then prepared a salad – red leaf lettuce, thin tomato wedges, and thinly sliced red onion. The salad dressing we made goes really well with Asian/Japanese main dishes:

• 1 tbsp of fresh grated ginger
• 1 tbsp of fresh minced garlic
• 3 tbsp of lemon juice (approx – can use a light vinegar instead)
• 3 tbsp of soy sauce (approx)
• light olive oil

I’m actually not sure how much lemon, soy, and olive oil I used, but I would flavour to taste and make sure that there’s just enough olive oil to make your vinagrette spread over the lettuce. The dressing is tangy and slightly spicy from the ginger.

To cook the salmon, I heated some oil and fried both sides of the salmon, starting with the skin side. (TIP: the first fillet I cooked, I didn’t scrape off the miso – the miso paste actually burned quite quickly. Because the skin is dry and will almost deep fry in oil, it’s best to not have anything else on that side. The second fillet I cooked, I scraped off the miso, and it cooked a lot better.) When the edges of the fillet have changed from raw to pink, flip it over. It took 7-8 minutes on medium-high heat to cook through.

In honour of Michelle’s first trip to Canada, we had to have a Canadian brew! We bought a white beer called Blanche de Chambly (a Quebec brewery). It was quite good and went well with the fish! We later mixed some pomegranate juice with the beer and it was great!

(From L to R): Beer, Beer with Pomegranate Juice, Pomegranate Juice

Finally, for dessert, Phoebe brought home a box of discontinued Godiva chocolates that her manager had given to the employees because they were no longer being sold. Double-decker!

No, we didn’t finish it all in one night.