Crispy Skin Salmon with Chili-garlic, ginger, honey & soy

Quite an easy dish to make. Light and tasty.

I use salmon fillets & like crisping up the skin, it makes for a lovely taste & texture. A good visual guide while cooking the fillets is to look at the sides; they should be turning opaque but without white foamy spots sprouting out from the sides – if you start seeing those, the heat is too high or you have been seriously flattening it with your fish slice. That white stuff is called “albumin” and it doesn’t make for an appetizing piece of fish.

The sauce in my opinion tastes better as it “ages”…it mellows out and the flavors infuse beautifully so if you can make the sauce/marinade in the morning or even the day before and store it in a jar in the fridge till you need it. The sauce quantity below will make more than you may need & can be stored in a tightly sealed jar in the fridge for 2 weeks.

I make 6 salmon fillets as they are usually 150gm so the extra 2 fillets are halved between us.

The rice is just day old rice mixed with veg & some of the sauce, so it’s not fried rice. The bok choy, I decided on at the last minute so while it’s not listed exactly in the recipe how to cook it is explained.

The profiles below show the calorie & nutrition info for the salmon plus the veg rice excl. the bok choy & the sauce (The sauce is approx. as it serves more than just 4 servings).

Crisp salmon and rice

The sauce profile.

Crispy Skin Salmon with Chili-Garlic, Ginger, Honey & S

Cheers!

Fast food and a thai inspired chicken curry

Hubby is away travelling and I’ve been handling all the errands this week. The result is I’ve been ordering in for dinner 😦
While I do actually enjoy fast food, it’s heavy and it’s a drain on the wallet too.

Yesterday, coming home after my son’s play day, I was dead hungry! Call up delivery again? I felt sick to my stomach and honestly I was too hungry to wait for 45min!

And then it hit me, I could probably make a delicious dinner quicker than what it would take to order & wait for a pizza or KFC! & that’s exactly what I did! Stormed into the kitchen and made a curry!

In a fix, I guess most of us think fast food is the quicker option when really most simple pasta dishes and a curry like this one take less time and are much, much better in both taste and nutrition. So think about that the next time you’re in a hurry and want to order in 🙂

The steamed rice and thai inspired chicken curry took exactly 30min to make from scratch. Well almost scratch, I had a tub of ready made green curry paste in the fridge. That’s the only short cut!

And if you follow the shesimmers blog or Kasma Loha-unchits site you’ll understand that ready made shop bought curry paste is completely acceptable if you can’t source all the right ingredients to make your own paste! In Cairo that’s impossible anyway!

We don’t have fresh shallots or galangal or kaffir lime leaves for example. Gourmet sells dried galangal and kaffir lime leaves but expensive and dried, not fresh 😦

And when I do make my own paste, I rely on produce that my husband gets me when he’s travelling and I freeze them until ready to make a batch.

Maybe there’s a hidden thai store somewhere in Maadi, but I have yet to find it! So until we do have a real Asian grocery store here in Cairo, shop bought is perfect!

Quick & easy Thai inspired chicken curry

Cheers!

Falling off the food wagon & the Sweet & Sour Chicken comeback!

Well it was Xmas and New Year and Mooled Elnaby…an all round season, right?

Indulge and splurge in gorgeous food. You’ll know what I mean if you’ve seen my previous posts! Between the roast rib and roast potatoes, trifles & tiramisu’s, the seafood fests of Alex and, Mooled Elnaby sweets and treats, small portions and calorie counting really took a back seat!

But now we’re back in the normal world and I need to get cracking on with still tasty yet calorie friendly dinners.

Which brings me to Asian cuisine…I just love Chinese and Asian food. The flavors are complex, the dishes are beautiful and a lot of recipes are quite easy to make. Sweet & Sour Chicken happens to be one of them !

One of my favourite quick and easy dinners, and way way way more tasty than any Chinese takeaway here in Cairo! I mean unless you’re going to a really authentic and expensive Chinese restaurant, there really isn’t any comparison!

Added bonus to several of the Chinese and asian meals is they will usually contain vegetables, hence healthy (healthier!), and I found that I can cut down on the fat content without impacting on the flavor.

This recipe is adapted from my favourite Asian recipe site and that is Rasa Malaysia! Her recipes are great!

The main difference is that mine doesn’t have the fried battered chicken. I sauté the chicken until browned lightly on the outside yet half cooked on the inside. It’s lighter than the original version yet still tasty.
I also add ginger along with the garlic as I love it’s taste. The final change is in the sauce quantity and proportions, I like a bit more sauce and more sour. You can find the original recipe here.

Calorie wise it’s great too!

The nutrition data below is for 1 serving (the recipe makes 3) plus 140gms steamed basmati rice.

Nutrition Data Per Serving
Calories (kcal) 655
Protein (g) 53.0
Carbohydrate (g) 77.8
Fat (g) 14.7
Fibre (g) 2.8
Fruit & Veg 1.6

So check out the recipe and I hope you enjoy!

Sweet & Sour Chicken

Cheers!

Asian Inspired Fried Rice

Between traveling to Singapore & Rasa Malaysia’s awesome site, I usually have a craving for a taste of the far east. The beauty in a lot of Asian dishes is the simplicity and ease to make. If you follow the golden rule of mise en place, translated literally to “everything in place” and have all your ingredients washed, cleaned and prepped before cooking, you will find cooking most Asian dishes is a breeze.

Fried rice is my go to dish when that craving hits, when I don’t have a lot of time & I’m not prepared with any specific ingredients and will use what ever I have on hand in the pantry and fridge.

If you have some veg, frozen or fresh, some day old rice and any type of protein and 2 key sauces; namely Soy & Fish sauce, you’re ready to go.
I actually always cook extra rice than what I need so that I will always have some rice left over in the fridge for exactly this reason.
Soy & Fish sauce are now widely available in all large supermarkets so keep a bottle of each in your fridge & you are set.

While my fried rice is not as delicate as the awesome fried rice I tasted in Singapore, it tastes pretty good and makes a hearty main course or lovely side dish.

Amazing Seafood fried rice from Singapore

My Asian inspired mixed fried rice 🙂

Recipe: Asian Inspired Fried Rice

Cheers!