Shrimp with Sambal and Banana

Right before heading out on our 'round the world trip, the Real Martha cooked up this tasty dish that combined unusual ingredients (shrimp, overripe bananas and sambal?).  Before she made it I tried to convince her to make something else, assuring her that she would eat more rice and sambal than she ever dreamed of when in Indonesia, but she had seen this recipe on the Food Network and was itching to make it...  I'm glad she did because it came out pretty tasty!  An interesting mix of sweet, spicy and savory.

Definitely a good use for bananas that have sneakily gone overripe (other than making a variety of banana shakes).  The Indonesian sambal we used may have been a bit too spicy, but that's easily remedied by leaving a little bit out next time.  I bet chicken, tofu or tempeh would work well in lieu of the shrimp, too.

Salmon with Brown Sugar and Mustard Glaze

Mmm- good recipe find.

Super tender salmon with a sweet and mustard-y glaze based on this Bobby Flay recipe: rather than grill it, I put the salmon fillets skin-side-down on a tin foil covered cookie sheet, S&Ped them and then topped them with the glaze... baked them at about 450 F for 10 or 11 minutes until the glaze was slightly caramelized and the salmon slid right off the skin.

Served with a side of gingery/garlicky stir-fried baby bok choy, spiced up with a little bit of crushed red pepper.

Chinese-Style BBQ Ribs

Tim and I have had a rack of baby-back ribs in the freezer since Super Bowl... since we were running low on freezer space, we decided to bust them out for a slow-cooked Sunday dinner. 

(Sorry the photos are so bad... after smelling these things cooking for 3 hours, I was too impatient to set things up for a good photo.  Had to eat.)

We decided a Chinese-esque marinade sounded good, so I made a marinade that was an amalgamation of a Gourmet magazine recipe and a Rasa Malaysia recipe, with much success.  The resulting ribs were sweet, spicy, sticky and sliding off the bone.  Highly recommended.

Here's what I did:

- 1 rack of baby back pork ribs

- 1-2 tablespoons peeled, minced ginger

- 1-2 tablespoons peeled, minced garlic

- 1/4 cup soy sauce

- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

- 1/3 cup hoisin sauce

- 2 tablespoons honey

- 1 teaspoon Chinese 5-spice powder

-  a couple big squirts of Sriracha sauce (maybe 2 tablespoons?)

- Course ground black pepper

• I blitzed it all together with my stick-blender, reserved about 1/4-1/3 cup, and poured the rest over the rack of ribs.  
• I marinated the ribs in the fridge for about 7 hours.  
• I set the oven to somewhere between 325 and 350 F (our oven is in Celsius and is quite inaccurate to boot so I do a lot of estimating), wrapped the ribs in tin foil with the marinade (meaty side down) and cooked them for about 2.5 hours until they were tender and almost falling off the bone.  
• I opened up the foil, turned the ribs meaty side up, poured the reserved marinade over the top and broiled the ribs for about 7 or 8 minutes (until the marinade was bubbly and caramelized).
• Served with rice and sauteed veggies.

Salty Sesame and Chocolate Chip Cookies

Tim says these are the best cookies he's ever had.  

Coming from Tim, who usually says "They're fine," that says a lot.

I bookmarked this recipe the second I saw it on Joy the Baker... salty + sweet?  Yes, please.  The recipe is quirky, but it all comes together amazingly... a basic chocolate chip cookie dough, with the addition of some soy sauce in the place of some of the salt and a sprinkling of black sesame seeds.  Sounds crazy, but you should try it.  So good.

Roasted Salmon with Lime and Cilantro

Tim and I saw some salmon at our local butcher shop, and although it was clearly not local, it looked so good and so different from everything we've been eating over the past few months, so we got some.

We cooked them according to this recipe from the Other Martha- roasted until super tender and moist and then topped with lime juice, cilantro and a little bit of soy sauce.  Served with a side of garlic-sauteed green beans and couscous with garlic and green onion to soak up the sauce.  Delicious! 

Sesame and Panko Crusted Chicken

Tasty, easy weeknight meal:  sesame and panko crusted chicken breasts served over an arugula salad with an Asian vinaigrette.  

The gingery, spicy vinaigrette it split in half at the beginning and serves both as a marinade for the chicken and as a salad dressing.  The crispy sesame and panko crust on the chicken is awesome. 

I added some romaine hearts to the arugula for crunch- I'm pretty sure you could use about any green for the salad.  Be sure to pound the chicken breasts flat so that they cook evenly- you don't want to accidentally burn the sesame seeds while trying to cook the fat part of the chicken breast.

Tofu and Veggie Fried Rice

We made way too much pilaf for Sunday's Armenian-style horovatz, so I decided to make fried rice with all of the leftovers, also incorporating the leftover beet greens and stems. Feeling a little sluggish after a weekend of drinking and meat-eating, I decided to do a non-traditional spicy tofu and veggie fried rice with a little egg, loosely based on a couple fried rice recipes from Jaden Hair at Steamy Kitchen. My recipe after the jump!

Orange Pan-Glazed Tofu

Colleen sent me this tasty looking orange pan-glazed tempeh/tofu recipe a couple weeks ago, but I didn't get around to giving it a try until this week, and she's busy hiking the Inca Trail... good news is, the recipe is great, so I'm happy to make it for her when she gets back. I bet at that point, she'll probably be ready for a break from Peru's national dish, guinea pig.Crispy tofu coated in a sour, sweet, gingery glaze was delicious served with rice (to which I added some lime juice, cilantro and minced scallions) and roasted broccoli. The only change I made to the recipe (because it seems like I'm incapable of making a recipe word-for-word these days) was to add a couple big squirts of Sriracha to the glaze prior to adding to the tofu, because I like it spicy.

Black Pepper Beef Jerky!

Mike and Jamie gave me a dehydrator for my birthday back in September, but all I've made since then was some dried apples, which were good, but not earth shattering. I resolved to take my dehydrator training wheels off and engage the dehydrator in a more substantial and ambitious endeavor: beef jerky. After reading/drooling over an article in Food & Wine about homemade artisan beef jerky, I went with a black pepper beef jerky, which uses beef top round, sliced thinly and marinated in soy sauce, Worchestershire, lager and copious amounts of crushed black peppercorns. The recipe is super simple and the dehydrator made quick work of it (4 hours), despite the warnings that beef jerky could take between 4 and 12 hours to dry. The results were delicious, although probably not the most photogenic of all the things I have cooked. Chewy, spicy, meaty...

Grilled Flank Steak with Rosemary

This was a simple marinade for a grilled or broiled flank steak, but actually finding flank steak at the grocery store these days: not so easy.

Soy sauce, honey, rosemary, garlic, olive oil... the usual. Simple and tasty. Served with roasted broccoli and mushroom risotto on the side.