Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Off to a slow start... [Honey Pig and Golden Curry]

Clearly this is going to be a sporadic blog, not a regular one.  What with Heather home for the holidays, getting ready to teach a new class (computer science ethics) this spring, and gearing up for paper assignments for the major conference I'm cochairing (AAAI-13), I just totally forgot about this.

To make up for it, this post will be a two-fer.

Last night we had dinner at Honey Pig -- awesome and authentic Korean on Rt. 40 in Ellicott City, across from the Enchanted Forest Shopping Center.  Always crowded (but open 24 hours!), always delicious.  Not a huge variety, but all the basics, grilled right at your table.

Tonight it's a busy workday weeknight, so I went with the fallback staple -- Golden Curry.  If you're not familiar, this is a curry mix that you can buy in most grocery stores (Asian section).  I always use the mild curry (they also make it medium or hot), 1-1.25 pounds of stew meat, 3 stalks celery, 3-4 carrots, 3-4 potatoes, 1-2 onions, 1 green pepper.  Dice everything small (about 1/2" dice) so that it will cook quickly, and follow package directions.  Serve over rice.  (Oops, I forgot to make the rice -- looks like we will be trying out the new precooked rice we bought at Lotte yesterday!!)

Marie

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Lime-Dill Salmon with Yogurt Lime-Dill Sauce

Heather had her wisdom teeth out last week and is just starting to try "solid food," so I was trying to think of what would be solid enough to be satisfying but still easy to eat without much chewing. Salmon, of course!

She loves dill and I wanted something zesty with a lot of flavor, since she's super-tired of bland foods.  I found a terrific recipe online:  Grilled Salmon with Lemon-Dill Sauce.

We (sous-chef Heather and I) made a couple of changes:  we used lime (as suggested) instead of lemon, and we used fresh (well, jarred) minced garlic instead of "garlic-pepper blend" (whatever that is).  We also thought the yogurt sauce was too tangy and limey (partly because the lime is stronger than lemon, but we used the same amount, but also partly because Greek yogurt has such an intense tang).  So we added a lot more (probably 3T altogether) fresh dill, a bunch more ground pepper (maybe 1/4 tsp total), a dash of cayenne, and a pinch of paprika.  We broiled the salmon since it's not grilling season.

We served the salmon with Pillsbury crescent rolls (not even suggested on the Pillsbury recipe site, but it was the softest starch I could think of, other than mashed potatoes, which she's also tired of) and avocado (the softest vegetable; well, OK, technically a fruit, but whatever).  Really delicious and I would definitely make and serve it again.  The only flaw was the not-so-wonderful salmon (they were all out at two grocery stores, so I had to use frozen salmon; and the fillets were quite thin, so I managed to overcook them a bit -- should have ignored the timing in the recipe and followed my instincts instead).

"My Life in Food" Begins (48 years into my actual life in food....)

I'm not much of a blogger, but I'm a huge foodie.  I love to cook and eat great food.  I love finding great recipes and inventing my own.  And I'm getting to be kinda middle-aged, so my memory isn't so great and I can't always remember the great dish I made last October.  Plus (again in the middle-aged theme) I really need to lose 20 pounds, and am trying to get serious about it in part by paying more attention to what I eat.  (Don't worry, though, I enjoy food too much to give up the good stuff altogether!)

My plan is to use this blog as a kind of journal to remind myself of the wonderful (and not-so-wonderful) food that I've eaten and to share my love of food with anybody who would care to keep me company in my food journey (or with nobody at all, and hey, that's cool, too).  Maybe I'll mention an occasional weight-loss milestone if the moment inspires me.

Anyway, welcome to my blog, and we'll see how this goes.