I met Nizar for lunch at Café Trang. He had chicken soup with vermicelli rice
noodles. I love the way Trang sprinkles
chopped green onion and herbs on the top of its soups ($5.75 for a small bowl). Since it was warm, I decided to order one of
my old favorites, Bun Cha Gio, which at Trang is served on a platter of rice vermicelli
noodles under the meat ingredients (grilled pork, two pork eggrolls) and the other
ingredients separated into mounds around the meat ingredients on the noodles: chopped
peanuts, a daikon and carrot salad, and shredded lettuce. Soups are served with a side dish of mung bean
sprouts, slices of jalapeno and lime and sprigs of fresh cilantro, and oriental
basil. The Bun Cha Gio is served with a
small bowl of sweetened fish sauce. I loved
the dish, especially the slightly water logged shredded fresh lettuce.
After lunch I crossed the parking lot to Ta Lin. I went to the fish department and saw that
they had packaged fresh filets of sushi grade red tuna (maguro at $13.88/lb.?) and
octopus tentacles ($13.88/lb.), which are two of my favorites. Since we had bought steelhead salmon yesterday,
I immediately thought we could fix a great plate of sushi with the three
ingredients and the PPI rice. I bought
the seafood and some shitake mushrooms ($3.98/lb.), a piece of fresh ginger and
6 fresh shallots ($1.49/lb.) and a nice small Korean Daikon ($.99/lb.). The
entire bill was $21.02.
When Suzette came home she was hungry, so at around 6:30 we
started cooking. I wanted to convert the
PPI rice into sushi rice, so I looked in the Japanese Cooking Book, page 290
and found out that you cook the rice in vinegar, sugar and salt, so we added
some of each to the rice with some aji mirin to make a sauce and put it on the
stove at a medium heat to heat and emulsify the sauce and cook the ingredients into
the rice.
Suzette was even more creative, I handed her the daikon and
she said she wanted to make a daikon and carrot pickled salad. She went to the garden and picked several
carrots and shredded the daikon and the carrots in our Cuisinart and then added
sesame oil, a little chili oil, sugar, Chinese rice cooking wine (which contain
2.5% salt by volume) and aji mirin to the shredded vegetables. Then she asked, “What else should be added?”
and I said she should add rice vinegar and she did and we put the salad into
the fridge for a few minutes, while we prepared the sushi rice and I cut fish
and octopus into slices and we put wasabi paste into small dipping bowls and I
fetched beers and cold nigori sake.
Suzette got a pyrex baking dish that was the right size to hold the
salmon for gravid lax and we measured the salmon to fit the pyrex dish and then
I cut the residue of the salmon filets into sushi.
Finally we were ready to eat and the colorful fish and daikon
and carrot salad made beautiful plates of food.
I highly recommend making your own sushi if you love it. It is the cheapest way to be a sushi
glutton. We figured that the entire plate
piled high with octopus, tuna and salmon cost less than $10.00 each and we have
PPI tuna and octopus that Suzette wants to add to her favorite Chinese dish,
Garlic Eggplant, tomorrow evening. I
will shop for fresh eggplants tomorrow.
Suzette had brought home a big handful of lovely fresh dill,
so after dinner and watching Chicago blow out Pittsburgh in their second game
of their NHL Eastern Final series, we made gravad lax. We took the two matched filets of salmon and
the pyrex dish in which I had placed the fresh dill from the fridge.
Then I placed and mixed in a bowl 2/3 cup of salt, ½ cup of
sugar and 1 tsp. of crushed black pepper. As mentioned earlier we used a glass pyrex
baking dish that in which the matched salmon filets fit very snuggly. After removing most of the dill from the
pyrex dish, we laid a layer of dill on the bottom of the dish. Then we dusted the outside (skin side) of the
first filet and laid it skin side down onto the bed of dill. We then dusted the inside of the first filet
with the sugar and salt mixture and laid another layer of dill on it. Then we dusted the inside of the second filet
and laid it on the dill and the first filet.
Then we poured the rest of the mixture onto the second filet and laid
more dill on it. I covered the dish
holding the two filets loosely with saran wrap and laid a brick on top of the
fish and then tightened the saran wrap around the sides of the dish. I usually turn the fish over in the dish
after 12 hours and remove it from the dish after 24 hours. Since we made the fish at around 8:30 p.m., I
will flip it at 8:30 am and take it out at around 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday. The gravad method of
curing with salt and sugar will extend the freshness of the fish in peak
condition for up to two or three months, although I have kept some for much
longer. It results in a food product we
typically refer to as smoked salmon; but it is not smoked, it is salt and sugar
cured and we love it as an ingredient for summer salads.
This is picture of the dish before the filets are flipped and re-covered with plastic wrap and the brick is placed on it to weigh it down before it is placed in the fridge. This is about eight to ten hours into the process. Note that the gravad process has yielded some visible liquid at the sides of the filets and dill on the bottom of the dish.
Bon Appétit
Bon Appétit
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