Salmon en Papillote with Maple Syrup, Ginger and Mango

I'm back from my trip to UK. In fact, I was back since the beginning of August. I was just overwhelmed with work and I'm a bit behind with my research, so I'm catching up slowly... I also get distracted by the numerous summer activities and events in Montreal. If you visited Montreal, you would understand why...I received numerous e-mails and tweets about when I'll be publishing my next recipe. I have been pressured quite a lot by co-workers too, so you're not the only ones... I'm so fortunate to have such loyal viewers and I greatly appreciate it.

The Highlands of Scotland in a nice sunny day.

You might wonder what I did in my three-week vacation in the UK. I visited over 30 cities which includes Wales, England, Scotland & The Highlands. When I'm in a foreign country, I hunt for the best places to eat and acquire as much knowledge about their food culture. Expect some posts about my food adventures in the following weeks.

Yes, this is Stonehenge!

I received a request a week ago from my brother's friend who wants me to make a salmon dish which is savory and, at the same time, original. When I deal with salmon, I immediately think of "en papillote", a classic French cooking technique in which the fish is steamed inside a sealed pouch with fresh herbs, seasonings and aromatics. My favourite marriage of ingredients is maple syrup, ginger and lime which gives a contrast of sweet, tangy and citrus flavour to your dish. Simply licking your mixing bowl, you'll be amazed of this combination. I added some mango and coriander for some freshness to the salmon.

What is your favourite salmon dish? If you have already published a salmon recipe on your blog, feel free to post your link on the comment section. I would love to read it!

Note: I presented both ways to make a pouch. Both methods are as good, I didn't see any difference in terms of doneness and flavors.

Serves 4
Preparation Time: 10 mins
Oven Time: 15 to 18 mins
Printable Recipe

Ingredients

1 tsp extra-virgin olive oil
4 salmon fillets, skin on or off
salt and pepper to taste

Garnish
3 tbsps maple syrup
1 tbsp ginger, grated
2 tbsps lime juice
2 tbsps coriander, chopped
2 scallions, finely chopped
2 mangoes, cut into cubes

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 375F.

2. In a medium bowl, mix maple syrup, ginger, lime juice, coriander and scallion.

3. Add in the mangoes and, with a spoon, gently coat the mangoes with syrup mixture.

2 options for the pouching:

4. Cut parchment paper in a heart shape. Add a tsp of olive oil in the middle of one side of the heart. Place the salmon skin side down, add 1/4 of the mango garnish on top of the salmon.

Fold the other half of the paper, starting from one end of the heart, crimp the open edges to seal them by making a series of small folds.

OR

4. Lay a foot-long parchment paper. Repeat the above process for the salmon. The pouch should look like a calzone.

5. Place salmon pouches on a baking pan and bake for 15-18 mins.

6. To serve, place the pouches on serving plates, and let each person cut open his or her own pouch. Bon apétit!

Tuna Samosas

After 8 months of waiting, I finally got this recipe in my disposal from my friend from l'Ile de la Réunion. This recipe could have been the 150th post on Random Cuisine, still the Maltese Pudina-Chocolate Bread Pudding is an excellent dessert and we recommend you to try it out if you haven't done so.

Have you ever made samosas? Do you have a suggestion for a filling? If not, here's your chance to impress your friends. I can guarantee you that eating one samosa won't satisfy your appetite. Samosas are so versatile, you can use any fillings: mashed potatoes, cheese, ground meat and even chocolate!!! Here we used tuna mixed with onion and seasoned with a bit of curry powder and turmeric. Making samosas can be tricky at first, so I took step-by-step pictures to help you out. The recipe is inspired from Goutanou.

Serves 8
Preparation Time: 3 hours
Cooking Time: 2 mins per samosa

Printable Recipe

Ingredients

1 medium onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
3 tbsp coriander, finely chopped
2 tsp curry powder

1/4 tsp turmeric

3 cans tuna, drained
16-20 spring roll sheets

Procedure

1. In a skillet, heat oil over medium heat. Cook onions until transparent. Add in garlic and half of the coriander, cook until fragrant, about 1 min. Mix in curry powder and turmeric. Season with salt and pepper.

2. Remove from heat. Mix together cooked onions with tuna and add the remaining coriander.

3. Transfer filling to a bowl.

4. Cut spring rolls sheets into thirds (4cm x 20cm). Wrap the spring roll sheets with a damp towel for several minutes or until humid enough to handle it. Too much moisture can break it apart. Be careful!

5. In a small bowl, add flour and enough cold water to reach a "glue" texture.

6. Use two spring roll sheets. Fold one corner and bring it to the opposite side of the strip.

7. Take the other corner and bring it on the opposite side of the strip to form a pocket.

8. Stuff the pocket with a teaspoonful of filling.

9. Apply flour mix on the strip end.

10. Fold it to form a triangle.

11. In a pot, heat vegetable or canola oil for deep-frying. Fry samosas until golden brown, about 2 mins.

12. Remove excess oil with a paper towel. Serve.

Fiery Tuna Pie

Last week, I organized a seafood night with the people from work. It has been a while that we didn't cook as a group because of the final exam period. Seafood dishes are what we needed to reward ourselves for hard and painful study.

My Mexican friend, Mon made a tuna pie on puff pastry with a twist of spiciness.  If you can't handle the heat, omit the jalapeno peppers.

Preparation Time: 5 mins
Cooking Time: 10 mins
Baking Time: 15 mins
Printable Recipe

Ingredients

2 sheets puff pastry
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
3 tomatoes, diced
1 Knorr shrimp cube
few sprigs of parsley
2 cans of tuna
Capers to taste
Jalapeno peppers preserved in vinegar to taste

Procedure

1. Preheat oven to 430F.

2. In a skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Cook onions until transparent, add in garlic.

3. Add tomatoes and the Knorr shrimp cube to skillet and cook for 2-3 mins. Add parsley.

4. Add in tuna and capers. Simmer for 2-3 mins. Add in jalapeno peppers with a few drops of the vinegar. Set aside.

5. Butter a round pyrex dish. Roll out 1 1/3 sheets of puff pastry to cover bottom of the dish.

6. Add the fillings. 

7. Roll out the remaining puff pastry. Pinch the edges together and poke holes with a fork on top.

8. Bake for 15 mins or until golden brown.

Sweet and Sour Fish Fillet

This is another fish dish that my Taiwanese friend made on the same night as the Red Cooked Tilapia. In Chinese cuisine, in order to make a sweet and sour dish, generally the main ingredient is deep fried and then coated with the sweet and sour sauce. In most time, a batter is made for deep frying but he didn't made any fancy batter for the fish, simply an egg-flour dip.

Serves 4
Preparation Time : 5 mins
Cooking Time : 25 mins
Printable Recipe

Ingredients

2 fish fillets such as white seabass, cod, halibut, cut into 1'' pieces
2-3 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup flour
3 bell peppers (red, green, orange), diced
1 large onion, sliced

Sweet and Sour Sauce
1/2 cup vinegar
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup pineapple juice or water
1/4 cup ketchup
2 tbsp cornstarch

Procedure

1. Season fish with salt and pepper. Dip fish in egg and let drip back into bowl. Coat with flour.

2. In a skillet, pour enough oil to cover the bottom. Heat oil over medium-high heat. Fry fish until golden brown about 2 mins per side. Transfer fish on paper towel and keep warm. Remove oil from skillet.

3. In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Cook bell peppers and onions until soft, about 5 mins. Remove from heat.

4. To make the sauce, combine vinegar, sugar, salt, orange juice, pineapple juice and ketchup in the same skillet. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 mins. Mix cornstarch with a few tbsp of the liquid to make a slurry. Pour slurry to the skillet and stir until thick.

5. Bring back fish, bell peppers and onions to skillet and coat well with sweet and sour sauce. Serve with white rice.

Red Cooked Tilapia

The holidays are the best time where you can meet friends and family you haven't seen for months... One of my good friend Tony came to Montreal for the holidays and invited him to join one of the cooking sessions.

The first dish was cooked by my Taiwanese friend Chris known as Hong Shao Yu meaning Red Cooked Fish. This is one of the oldest and familiar method known in Chinese cuisine. This is done by slowly braising the meat in soy sauce. This is the first time that we use a whole fish for the cooking session.

Serves 2-4
Preparation Time : 5 mins
Cooking Time : 20 mins
Printable Recipe

Ingredients

1 whole tilapia, scaled and cleaned
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sake
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp vinegar
3 green onions, cut into thirds
3 large slices of ginger
2 tofu blocks, sliced
2 tbsp ketchup

Procedure

1. Pour enough oil to cover the bottom of the wok. Heat oil over medium-high heat. Fry fish on both sides, about 1-2 mins each until slightly brown. Remove fish and drain oil.

2. In the same wok, add soy sauce, sake, sugar, vinegar, green onions, ginger, tofu and ketchup. Stir and add 1 1/2 cup of water. Bring to a boil and simmer for 5 mins. Bring back fish to wok, cover and simmer for 10 mins.

3. Serve the fish along with a bowl of rice.

Tteokbokki

Along with Sukiyaki, we had a little taste of Korea. This dish is made by a Korean friend. Tteokbokki might be hard word to pronounce to most people. This means in good English - spicy ricecake casserole. It is a popular street food in Korea and really enjoyed eating it. Some of the ingredients here can usually be found in Asian market.

Serves 3-4
Preparation Time : 20 mins
Cooking Time : 15 mins
Printable Recipe

Ingredients

10-15 rice cake sticks, cut in half
1 onion, diced
2 green onions, cut into thirds
2 fish cakes, cut into 1/4-inch
3 garlic, chopped
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp honey
1-2 tbsp red pepper paste
chili powder (optional)
1 hard-boiled egg per person
Black sesame seeds for garnish

Procedure

1. In a medium bowl, soak into hot water for about 20 minutes to make it slightly sticky.

2. In a medium pot, boil 1 cup of water and add rice cakes, fish cakes, onion, green onions, garlic.

3. Add in soy sauce, brown sugar, honey, red pepper paste and chili powder. Cook until rice cakes become soft and chewy, and sauce becomes thick.

4. Turn off heat. Serve in a bowl and sprinkle with black sesame seeds. Add a hard-boiled egg to the dish.

Sukiyaki

Ever wonder how in Japanese restaurant make such great sukiyaki sauce. The sauce is simply as 1-2-3. You can easily find all the ingredients needed in any Asian supermarket. Sukiyaki is known under Japanese Hot Pot, unlike the Chinese Hot Pot, the ingredients are cooked in the sauce before serving.

This recipe comes from a YouTube video called Cooking with Dog, a Japanese woman cooking Japanese dishes along with her dog. If you ever wonder how to cook them, these are THE videos.

Preparation Time : 10 mins
Cooking Time : 35 mins
Printable Recipe

 Ingredients

3 firm tofu

1 leek, greens removed

1 pack enokitake mushrooms

6 shitake mushrooms
6 white button mushrooms

2 Korean fish cakes
1/2 lb short ribs, separated into individual ribs
5 leaves of nappa

Sukiyaki sauce

1/2 cup sake

1/4 cup mirin, sweet cooking sake

1/4 cup soy sauce

2 tbsp brown sugar

Procedure

1. Cut tofu into 1/2-inch slices, shitake mushrooms and button mushrroms into quarters, nappa and leek into 2-inch slices.

2. In a large soup pot, combine all the ingredients for the sukiyaki sauce and stir until sugar dissolved.

3. Boil sauce and add in all the remaining ingredients. Cover and simmer for 30 mins or until all the ingredients are cooked.

Seafood Paella

Paella... this is the first time that I heard and ate paella made by my Taiwanese friend. I'm not sure how paella should really taste like, but this paella tasted so good that I cannot stop eating.

Serves 6

Preparation Time : 30 mins

Cooking Time : 1 hour
Printable Recipe

Ingredients

1 tbsp olive oil

2 onions, chopped
2 sausages, cut into pieces
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tbsp fresh thyme
4 ripe tomatoes, chopped

2 1/2 cups short-grain white rice

pinch saffron threads soaked in 2 cups water

5 cups chicken or fish stock

1 kg mussels
1 lb white fish fillets

10 oz. uncooked prawns, deveined

8 oz. scallops
3 squid tubes
1 tbsp fresh parsley

Procedure

1. Cut fish into 1-inch pieces and squid into 1/2-inch tubes.

2. On large paella pan, heat oil over medium heat. Add onions, sausages and thyme, cook until onions are transparent, about 5 mins. Add garlic and cook until fragrant.

3. Add tomatoes and stir for about 5 mins.

4. Add rice and cook, stirring until translucent, about 4 mins. Stir in saffron mixture and stock, and bring to simmer. Simmer, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes or until the rice has absorbed almost all of the liquid.

5. Add mussels, cover and cook for 2-3 minutes. Add in fish, prawns and scallops and cook for 2-3 mins. Stir in squid and parsley and cook until seafood is cooked and mussels open.

Hot Pot - Chinese Fondue

A few weeks ago, my Taiwanese friend thought of organizing a hot pot, a great economical idea. The idea here is that everyone bring whatever leftover they have in their fridge and share it with others. The concept of hot pot is very simple. A pot of simmering water or broth is found at the middle of the table. Basically, you place a few uncooked ingredients in a wired or slotted spoon and cook in the pot. Any ingredients can be put in a hot pot as long they do not take too long (more than 5 mins) to cook.

That day, we brought 3 new students to our cooking gather up. Two exchange students and my neighbour lab physicist. We were in total 10 people for the hot pot, it is probably the largest group we ever had since the first organization of the collective cooking since last October... hmmm...I just realize while writing this post that it has been now a year of collective cooking organization. Wow, what an accomplishment!

Okay, back to the fondue, the cooked ingredients are usually eaten with a dipping sauce. There are two popular dipping sauce that my family uses everytime we have a hot pot : ginger sauce and oyster-soy sauce.
For the oyster-soy sauce, mix 1:1 oyster sauce : soy sauce. Serve on ramekin or dipping bowls for each person.

Anyone can organize a hot pot at their home, all you need is an electrical pot or portable stove. Add water with herbs or broth in the pot, boil and then bring it to a simmer. The liquid can start spicy, peppery, salty, barbecuey or any combination of flavour, so get your guests entertain.

As you can in all the pictures here, there were lots and lots of food and we did not managed to finish them all. Here is a list of what food people brought :

- Cuttlefish, fish, prawn, squid, vegetable, beef balls

- Fried and unfried Tofu

- Thin slices of pork, beef and lamb

- Lots of vegetable : nappa, lettuce, broccoli

- Precooked dumplings

- Shrimps, scallops and clams

- Rice noodle

The special part of the event is at the end when everyone is full. The liquid becomes a soup, you can taste all the food that were dipped since the beginning of the evening. All in all, we had a great time. I hope this post will help you readers to organize chinese fondue night.

Tuna Medallion with Three-Colour Sweet Peppers

I came across a recipe from a nearby supermarket. This asian style tuna is straightforward to make.

Serves 4
Preparation Time : 5 mins
Cooking Time : 20 mins
Printable Recipe

Ingredients

600g Bluefin tuna steak
3 tbsp vegetable or olive oil
2 tbsp oyster sauce
1/2 red pepper, julienned
1/2 green pepper, julienned
1/2 yellow pepper, julienned
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
75 mL dry white wine
1 tbsp soya sauce
1/2 tbsp hot sauce (optional)

Preparation

1. Cut tuna steak in 4 medallions.

2. Heat 2 tbsp of oil in skillet over medium-high heat and brown tuna, about 2 mins per side. Brush tuna with oyster sauce ans season with pepper. Set aside and keep warm.

3. Add 1 tbsp of oil and cook peppers for 3-4 mins. Add garlic, wine, soya sauce and hot sauce and simmer for 3 minutes and serve with tuna.

Note

For a touch of Mediterranean flavour, add a few stalks of broccoli raab sauteed in oil and garlic. Also, you can add a few chopped bacon to skillet with peppers.