Dinner

I blog about a lot of mundane topics, so I may as well blog about my dinner tonight. 

I'm single and I don't like cooking, but I do like to eat nutritious food. I like tasty food. So what can I cook tonight that is healthy and tasty? As I made dinner, I took a few photos with my phone. So here we go.

I prepared veggies for juicing: Carrots and cukes and beets and celery. The juicer makes quick work of them.
 

I put the juice into a couple of clean jars, formerly peanut butter jars. The screw caps seal in the freshness, as they say on TV. I put both jars into the fridge to cool down. One is for today and one is for tomorrow. It's about as easy to prepare two servings as to prepare one serving. So each serving contains approximately 2 ½ carrots, ½ cucumber, 1 beet, and 1 celery rib. (I stir-fried the leaves and stems of the beets last night and ate them with ... well, here I have to take a detour to last night's supper.

So here we are at last night's supper. I have beets, and I chopped white onion. I stir-fried the onion with the beet stems, which turned the onion a pinkish color. I also stir-fried the beet leaves. They're the most nutritious part of the beet. Don't take my word—look it up!

This was the first time I had cooked beet leaves and stems. When I was finished cooking and plated the meal, it looked like this. You see the white onion is stained pink from the beet stems. The beet stems must be cooked until they are tender, although if they are a little chewy you just have to chew a bit longer and they will dissolve to nothing. You will not be spitting out any beet stems. 

The beet leaves are also on the plate, and they are also good. I didn't know how they would taste, but if I had cooked a second helping, I would have eaten it. These are the greens from 4 small beets, and like any greens they cook down a lot. You should, of course, wash the stems and leaves before cooking them, or you may be eating some dirt with your meal.

Now I started cooking some chopped white onion in an electric wok with a tablespoon (or so) of sesame oil. The wok's temperature was set to 300F°. 

This is a medium white onion cut into pieces about 1 cm per side. That's about a half inch for you die-hard fans of U.S. customary units.

 

 

 

 

After I added sesame oil the white onion adopted a brownish color, as that is the color of sesame oil. Toasted sesame oil is even darker brown. I'm not sure what the difference is, or if there is a difference. Maybe the toasted variety has a stronger flavor. Again, something for my readers to look up on Google. 

Stir fry the onion for 10 minutes at 300F. 

Now I throw 8 ounces of spinach leaves on top of the cooked onion. It fills up the wok nicely. The spinach leaves will cook down quickly. Continue stirring the whole shebang for a couple of minutes.

While you're cooking the onion and spinach, get a piece of salmon going in the frying pan. I used cooking spray and it eliminates the oil splatter you get when you put something wet (fish) into hot oil. Later, when the fish is about half cooked, you can add a tablespoon or so of your favorite oil (I used extra virgin olive olive, or EVOO as that woman on TV calls it) and got no spatter at all.

Of course, I could have used a spatter screen but experience has shown me that they are all but worthless. Drops of hot oil pop through the screen; the screen simply breaks the drops into smaller drops.

At first, cook the salmon skin-side down. I say that as if it were important. I'm just pretending to know what I'm doing here. But really, I'm winging it. I'm always winging it.

After a while, flip the salmon over so that it can cook from the other side. Give it another few minutes. Now, I'm not winging it when I tell you this. You have to turn the fish over in the pan, or it's going to be over-cooked on one side and raw on the other side. Trust me.

I start with the skin-side down and cook it a while, flip it over for a few minutes, then flip it again because if it's thick you can get the fish-side too brown and you might burn it. The skin-side is more resistant to burning.

Of course if you burn it, just tell yourself you're eating blackened salmon. Which you are, just not what the restaurant serves.

So here's the salmon skin-side down again, and the cooked onion and spinach beside it. Now that the spinach is out of the pan, I pour about a tablespoon of oyster sauce on it. Oyster sauce is a little sweet and a little salty. I won't tell you what it's made of, but the name of the stuff is a giveaway.

The spinach is ready to eat, and the salmon is ready to eat. Now just put them on a plate side-by-side. That works a lot better than stacking them like hot cakes, but I suppose you could do it that way, too.

By the way, I'm making dinner for tomorrow night at the same time as tonight's meal. So what I'm cooking is twice the amount I plan to have for dinner.

And here we are: dinner. Or supper. Or dinner.

Usually for salmon I'll make up a quick drizzle from melted butter and lemon juice. But this salmon came from the store pre-spiced. It has brown sugar, honey powder (honey and sugar), salt, black pepper, paprika, parsley, red pepper, and white pepper. 

Though I used stir-fried spinach and onion for my side dish, you could use rice and vegetables and lemon wedges. You could serve the fish with mashed sweet potato and roasted veggies. You can serve the fish with chocolate chip cookies. I don't care. I say, go crazy. Enjoy yourself. Just as I enjoyed eating my meal and creating this blog post about it, garnished with lots of photos. 

Enjoy, and bon appetit!

P.S.
Dessert: