“halp halp, I have 50 lbs of turkey leftovers from thanksgiving, what do I do with it so I’m not bored of eating turkey sandwiches for the next millennium?”  Well good thing you read my blag.

First I hope you saved your turkey bones and made a turkey stock. If you didn’t, tsk tsk. It’s the best part of cooking a whole turkey and it takes about 2 seconds to make, and your house smells wonderful for the whole day.

Turkey Stock

Ingredients:

• Your leftover turkey bones
• 1 or 2 onions, quartered
• 1 or 2 stalks of celery, roughly chopped
• 1 or 2 carrots, roughly chopped
• 1 or 2 leeks, washed clean and roughly chopped
• Any leftover aromatics such as rosemary, thyme, sage, whatever works. Throw it in!
• Enough water to submerge everything

If you don’t have any of the above ingredients, no biggie, stock isn’t a precise thing.

Directions:

1. Put all your ingredients in a pot, bring to a boil. Then down to a simmer and cover, leave it on the stove for 4 hours or so.
2. If the water level is too low, add a little more water.  Taste at the end, if the flavor is too strong, add more water.  If it’s too weak, let it boil off some more.
3. Strain the stock. Store in a large Tupperware container.  I usually end up with about 6-8 cups from 1 turkey.

Now that’s over with, you can use the turkey stock for many things.  I’ve used it to cook my ramen, recipe to follow.  I also used it in a turkey fried rice which I will post later this week.  I make ramen, A LOT.  Probably too much but it’s one of my comfort foods and it’s super easy to make.  Now this isn’t the dried noodles with some flavor packets labeled “oriental flavor” and sold for 30 cents.  This is all fresh ingredients, fresh vegetables are very important when making good ramen.

Evie’s Turkey Ramen with Baby Napa Cabbage and Mushrooms

Ingredients (this yields 1 serving):

• 2 cups Turkey Stock
• 1/2 cup Leftover turkey meat
• 2 roughly chopped Baby Bok Choy*
• 3 mushrooms, sliced
• fried onions**
• Sesame oil
• Salt***
• 1 bunch of Asian Noodles (Angel hair pasta is an acceptable substitute but requires longer cooking time)

* You don’t need to use bok choy here if you don’t have any on hand.  Any vegetables that you like will do.  Find what’s in your fridge, chop it up and stick it in.  (heh heh heh)
**You can get fried onions from the asian stores.  You can probably use the american kind too, but I find the asian ones have better flavor and less batter.
***If you brined your turkey like I told you to, you might not have to salt the turkey, your stock should be salty enough from the bird

Directions:

1. Heat up the turkey stock in a medium pot.  Bring to a boil.
2. Add the vegetables and leftover turkey, boil for 3 minutes.
3. Add the asian noodles, boil for another 2 minutes.  Add salt to taste.
4. Put everything in a bowl.  Sprinkle with fried onions and drizzle with seasame oil.

EASY HUH.   I told you so.

If you’re looking to subscribe to some food mags, amazon is offering a pretty damn good deal on Food & Wine, only $5 for the whole year.

I also grabbed House Beautiful for some decorating ideas, Real Simple because I flipped through it at Stacy’s and actually kind of liked it… after subscribing to something catered to the 35-45 demographic, I had to bring myself back to earth with a subscription to Cosmopolitan so I don’t feel like an old fart.  Every subscription was $5, I love dealz dealz dealz!

In other news, I submitted my ribs and wontons pictures to tastespotting, I am e-famous!  I also submitted my bread stairz but forgot to edit the watermark out and it got rejected, doh!

mmm wontons – a staple in my household.  These are only in the medium hard category because I used pre-made wonton skins which you can get at any asian grocery store (even Target sells them now!).  It’s much more fun however to make your own wrappers, tastier too!   I usually make wontons in large batches and freeze them, use them in wonton soup or ramen.  The skin on these are a little too thin to fry, if you’re looking for potstickers keep posted, I will eventually post about making your own wrappers.

Start off with one  whole napa cabbage, break it apart in a food processor.  You can also do this by hand but I wouldn’t recommend it, you will be chopping until your hand literally falls off.  Squeeze off almost all the juices (there will be a lot), we don’t want the filling to be too watery, they will not wrap well and come apart in the water when we boil them later.

Next add your ground pork.  I used a little over a pound.  The ratio of meat to cabbage should be 1 to 1, but it really is up to what your personal preference is.  I used fresh grounded meat since my food processor was already out!

Next, add all the seasoning.

• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons minced ginger
• 2 tablespoons minced garlic
• 3 chopped scallions
• 1/4 cup corn starch

Notice the amount of liquids that goes into the mix, this is why it can’t be too wet from the cabbage.  The corn starch will offset the liquids and make everything stick together.  It also makes the meat more tender.Mix everything together.  You should be able to pick up the filling with a pair of chopsticks and it shouldn’t be oozing liquid.

Next get your supplies ready.  Get a baking sheet (or cutting board) and line it with parchment paper.  Make sure it fits into your freezer if you plan on freezing some.  Also put out a small bowl of water, this is to help the wonton skin stick better.

Start your water right now as well.  By the time you wrap about 20 or 30, the water should be boiling.  If you suck extra hard, you might have fewer, but it never hurts to have super boiled water.

Take one piece of wonton skin and hold it in your hand.  Use chopsticks and grab a dollop of filling.  You shouldn’t over fill it if this is your first time making wontons.

Next, dip your finger in water and wet the bottom row of the wonton skin, fold your wonton skin in half and make sure the bottom sticks together.  Now if you notice, a wonton skin isn’t perfectly square sometimes.  If yours is perfectly square, ignore this.  I usually fold along the longer end so I have more wonton skin at the bottom.  This helps keep your filling in better.

You don’t have to use water here if you are more experienced with wrapping.

Now this is the tricky part.  Pay attention.  Hold the wonton in your hand, configure it to the above picture.  Roll up the bottom edge towards you while pulling the top two corners together and pinch.  Use water at the pinch point to adhere the skins.  It should look like the picture when you are done.

Here it is again from the side.  If yours doesn’t look like this, start over and try again.  Roll and pinch, roll and pinch.

If your wonton looks like this, you have failed and probably put too much filling in.  Go back and try again with less filling.  Roll and pinch, roll and pinch.

Your water is boiling right?  If not you are reading fail and I told you to boil water earlier!Put your wontons into the water, very gently.  They are very fragile in this unfrozen state.  And this step is VERY IMPORTANT so listen up.  Take a serving spoon, and stir the water very carefully after all your wontons are in the pot.  Scrape the bottom of your pan very gently, make sure you don’t break anything in the process.  Wontons love to sink to the bottom and stick to the pan.  Do this as soon as all your wontons are in the water!!  I usually boil about 20 at a time to prevent sticking.

While your wontons are cooking, ready a bowl and add to it:

• Teaspoon of chicken boullion
• Teaspoon of salt
• Teaspoon of soy sauce and/or fish sauce

When they start popping up to the surface, that’s when you know they are about to be done.  This should only take less than 5 minutes.  If they are frozen, it will take longer.  You want to keep about 2 cups of cold water handy.  When the water starts boiling, put the cold water into the pot.  The idea is to never let the water fully boil.  This is because the boiling agitates the wontons, and has a higher chance of breaking them.  By the time your cold water is going to boil again, chances are your wontons are already done.  After they are at the surface, I would let them sit about a minute or two longer.  Ladle out the wontons and water into the bowl with the seasoning.  Mix and garnish with green onions, fried onions, and a dash of sesame oil.

After you have a bowl or two of wontons, you can go back to finish wrapping them all.  Be sure to cover your wrappers with a damp paper towel to prevent it from drying out.  After you are done with the wrapping, put the entire cookie sheet or cutting board right into the freezer.  Once they are frozen (about 2 hours), you can put them into a ziplock bag and they won’t take up any space.  Then you will have wontons ready for whatever you need them for!

And now the finished product…  nom nom nom.

Look how pretty they are all lined up!

A while back, I posted some pictures of tasty ribs and carrot cupcakes that Sean and Travis made.  Sean has written up the recipe for a coworker of mine, and my coworker got a kick out of it and said I should post it on my blog.  So here is the awesomely delicious, but not-so-precise recipe!

Sean’s rub-a-dub-dub-ribz

Braising Liquid:

I never use exact measurements.  Also, it tends to change a little bit every time I make them.  Nevertheless, I try to end up with about four cups of the stuff total once everything is added in:

-A fair amount of apple cidar vinegar
-slightly less, but roughly equal parts Worshester(sp), soy sauce, water.
-A drop of liquid smoke.
-A fair amount of Sriracha red pepper sauce, to desired spicyness.
-Fresh ground pepper.  I prefer a peppercorn blend with red peppercorns in it.
-A tiny bit of honey.
-For sweetener, I will sweeten to taste with either 1) Coca-cola(not the diet shit), or 2) cheap sweet Riesling wine.  I think that I actually used a little of BOTH the time that you came over and had these.  If you use riesling, make sure it’s a sweet one and not at all dry.

If you didn’t fuck it up, the vinegar will not be overpowering, and it will be moderately spicy while retaining some sweetness.  I’ve used Molasses in the past, but it tends to cause the liquid to burn off/get “gummy” faster, so I switched to the tiny bit of honey + liquid sweeteners.

Rub a dub dub.

I used to make my own rub, but nowadays I just use “Wee Willys” dry rub, I think it’s Formula #1, but it might be #3(you should be able to get it at any grocery store).  When I want it to be spicier, I add some Cayanne pepper into the “Wee Willys”.

When I do make my own rub, at its core is a mix of chilli powder, granulated garlic, granulated onion, sweet hungarian paprika, the aforementioned red peppercorn ground pepper, cayanne pepper, dried red pepper flakes, and brown sugar.  I also add in smaller amounts of ground cumin, ground coriander, and if I want a more smokey flavor I’ll add some “Original Juan Batch #218 Chipotle Seasoning”(see also: this shit is awesome, you should be able to get it at that Chili pepper store in the Mall of America, if it still exists.  Also can get from http://www.originaljuan.com).

Cooking:

Get yourself a broiler pan, you know the kind where you’ve got a top “sheet” with holes in it that sits on top of another pan so that fat can drip down and get caught?  Perfect!

Rub the shit out of your meat(huhuhuh) and drop them into the lower part of the pan, just ignore the top part for now.  Then pour as much of your braising liquid into the pan as you want, so that the ribs are sitting in a nice pool of the stuff.  If you’ve got extra, thats ok since you might want to add more later on if it burns off in the pan.

Heat your oven to 300-325.  Cover the ribs-filled-pan with aluminum foil nice and tight and place in the oven.  How long you cook them is dependent on preference, but about 1.5-2 hours usually does the trick, depending on how many racks you’ve got going in there.

After they’re braised to preference, remove the pan from the oven.  Now you need to shift your oven racks so that they’re closer to the top(hopefully the heating/broiling element of your oven is on the ovens ceiling) so that the ENTIRE broiling pan can fit on there(lower and top piece, plus the ribs sitting on top of that).  Transfer your ribs out of the pan, place the top piece onto the lower piece(leave the braising liquid in there), and transfer the ribs on top of that top piece.  Turn the oven to Broil, and once it is heated up place the ribs back in, right underneatht he broiling element.  It’s likely that your rub is very moist, so if you’d like you can add a little more before broiling, but don’t go overboard.  This stage will dry out the rub a good amount.

Usually you only need to broil the ribs for about 5 minutes.  You don’t want to burn them, you just want to dry the rub out a bit.  Once you’re happy with this, pull them out, apply your favorite BBQ sauce(Famouse Daves Devils Spit FTW!!!) and place back under the broiler for 2 minutes, or until you’re satisfied.

Remove from oven, let rest for 2 minutes or so, and then eat.

I am tired of explaining to people what a blag is, plus this is way more catchy.  Evie Eats Everything.  It’s true.  I’ve never met something I didn’t want to eat.  You should go to the aquarium with me.  I just hope my RSS feeds doesn’t break again so my 2 followers would need to re-follow me.

They should just rename turkey day to Alton Brown day, I mean really, the man already won thanksgiving.  Just give him the title.  I’ve been pre-baking turkeys for thanksgiving for the past 3 years, mostly because I love turkey and I cannot wait to get one into the oven and then into my belleh.  From the day that whole turkeys go on sale till the day they take it away from me, I cook as many as Sean and I can eat in the timeframe.

Rules and Tips for Roasting Turkey

1. BRINE YOUR TURKEY.  I cannot stress this enough.  Turkey is a fairly big bird, and its not easy to season the outside so it flavors the inside.  The math just doesn’t work people.  You need to soak that bird, then it will get juicier, more tender, and more flavorful.  Why anybody would NOT brine a turkey is beyond me.  “But waaah waaah I don’t have a big enough pot to brine in!”  Shut up and listen ok, reduce the brine recipe, stick your turkey in there breast side down, let his ass hang out.  You want the breast to get the most out of the brine, the dark meat is usually flavor and juicy enough by itself, it can hang out and not be submerged, some of the saltiness will travel upward – and I actually prefer it this way for dark meat.  Let me reiterate, if you are not putting your turkey in a brine, I will come to your house and beat you with the tasteless dry turkey corpse and all your relatives will be horrified on thanksgiving when I start beating them too with your dry ass turkey, do you really want that to happen?!
2. Try not to put stuffing in it.  When you put stuffing in the cavity of the turkey, it gets in contact with the bacteria and uncooked turkey goo, so you really have to cook the turkey until it’s all the way done in the middle – and usually when you are at this point of the cooking process, you’ve already overcooked your turkey (or cooked your turkey to a great temperature, and get sick from the turkey bacteria in the stuffing).  Just don’t do it, it’s not worth it.  Stuff it with aromatics instead, it makes your turkey smell great and more flavorful, and smell less like throwing up the next morning.
3. This tip I learned from this year’s turkey.  Make sure you have some liquid in the bottom of your pan.  The recipe I adapted used a few cups of water to steep the aromatics, and the entire mixture is put into the cavity of the turkey.  A lot of the liquid leaks out and settles at the bottom of the pan.  You ask, why do I need to keep my pan moist?  Well do you want turkey gravy??  If there is no moisture at the bottom of your pan, all the yummy turkey juices and fats that cooks off are going to hit the bottom of the pan and sizzle away and/or burn into the pan.  By the end of the cooking process, you’re left with very little turkey juices and a lot of turkey crust.  Nobody likes turkey crust.

Now I present to you, a picture of the best turkey you will taste in your entire life, already eaten a little by me… because I was hungry… very hungry… and it was so good… yes it’s missing a leg… and an entire side of his body….. THIS IS HOW YOU KNOW IT’S GOOD PEOPLE!!

The Best Thanksgiving turkey EVER

adapted from Alton Brown’s Good Eats Roast Turkey

Ingredients:

• 1 (14 to 16 pound) frozen young turkey

For the brine:

• 3/4 cup kosher salt
• 1/2 cup light brown sugar
• enough chicken stock to cover half of your pot (a gallon or so)
• 1 tablespoon ground white pepper
• 2 teaspoons allspice powder
• 4 or 5 slices of ginger
• 1 cinnamon stick
• enough iced water to submerge your turkey and not overflow the pan

For the aromatics:

• 2 onions cut into quarters
• 2 stalks of celery, rough chop
• 1 carrot, rough chop
• 1 cup water
• 1 tablespoon dried rosemary
• 1 tablespoon dried thyme
• Canola oil

Directions:

2 to 3 days before roasting:

Begin thawing the turkey in the refrigerator or in a cooler kept at 38 degrees F.  Or buy a thawed fresh turkey and bypass this step.  Defrosting turkey sucks.

Combine the chicken stock, salt, brown sugar, pepper, allspice, cinnamon, and ginger in a large stockpot over medium-high heat. Stir occasionally to dissolve solids and bring to a boil. Then remove the brine from the heat, cool to room temperature, and refrigerate.  If you’re impatiently putting the turkey in the brine on the same day, you can wait until it’s somewhat cooled, and add ice until it’s all melted and cool (like how you make quick jello!)

Early on the day or the night before you’d like to eat, combine the brine, water and ice in the 5-gallon bucket or a big cooking pot.   Place the thawed turkey (with innards removed) breast side down in brine.  I find it very annoying to find fridge space for a 5 gallon bucket, so I’m a big fan of the half brine method I used this year with the turkey.  If  using a 5 gallon bucket, weigh down the bird to ensure it is fully immersed, cover, and refrigerate or set in cool area for 8 hours – 16 hours, turning the bird once half way through brining if you find it necessary.  I prefer the shorter time period, once I brined a turkey for too long and it was way too salty, so be careful with your timing in relations to how big your bird is.  Mine was about 13 lbs and I brined for about 8 hours overnight, without turning, in a smaller cooking pot with the turkey’s ass hanging out.

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees F. Remove the bird from brine and rinse inside and out with cold water. Discard the brine.

Place the bird on roasting rack inside a half sheet pan and pat dry with paper towels.

Combine the onion, celery, carrot, dried herbs, and 1 cup of water in a microwave safe dish and microwave on high for 5 minutes. Add steeped aromatics to the turkey’s cavity.  Tuck the wings underneath the bird and coat the skin liberally with canola oil.  A trick to tucking the wing is locate where the wing meets the body of the turkey, cut a small slit on the body side, and insert the tip of the wing into the slit.  That wing will never fall out during the cooking process.

Roast the turkey on lowest level of the oven at 500 degrees F for 30 minutes. Insert a probe thermometer into thickest part of the breast and reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees F. Set the thermometer alarm (if available) to 161 degrees F. A 14 to 16 pound bird should require a total of 2 to 2 1/2 hours of roasting. Let the turkey rest, loosely covered with foil or a large mixing bowl for 15 minutes before carving.  My 13 lb turkey took about 1 hour 50 minutes and was a perfect 161 degrees.  And if you don’t have one of these, your life is not complete and you really need to buy one, now.

When your turkey is resting, look in your roasting pan, there should be EGADS! Turkey juices!  Pour that into a small pan, scrape up all the turkey crusty bits as well.  Bring to a boil, add flour to bring the texture to a gravy-like state.  You probably don’t even need to salt it due to the flavor of the brine.

I made a green bean HOT DISH (not casserole, you’re in minnesota territory now) and stuffing for sides.  We kind of ate them as well, before pictures, so… here are some after shots.

And finally, the cleanup crew. Let me halp you lick that up, it haz a flavor.

Yup, I purchased my first cookbook.  I’ve been wanting to study up on classic french cooking and techniques lately and it just happens that this book came up on an episode of top chef, and my favorite contestant Kevin described it as “life changing”.  I’m sold.

I skimmed through it and so far it’s super interesting, I’ve already learned a few things that I never knew before such as how to get beef marrow out of the bone easily, and how to make tomato consomme.  I think I’m going to start with the brioche since I have all the ingredients… and then go shopping for exotic ingredients such as truffle oil, veal tongue, and beef cheek!

super effective for eating that is.

I was very proud of myself for icing little carrots onto this cake.  It’s definitely not the best looking cake I’ve ever made, but boy is it ever delicious.  The recipe is from (surprise surprise) King Arthur!  The one tip I have is to for the love of god, use a food processor to grate your carrots if you can.  I couldn’t find the stupid attachment for my food processor so I had to grate 3 cups of carrots by hand and if there was a hand job quota for the year, I have used it all.  (Sorry Sean).  Also, squeeze out the extra juices out of your shredded carrot so they cake mix doesn’t get too liquidy.  Man I’m making this recipe sound really x-rated, lets just say that the taste of this cake is worth the extra hand jobbing (are we over the line yet?  we are?  ok great).

Carrot Cake

• 1 1/2 cups (10 1/2 ounces) vegetable oil (yup this is a lot, you can most likely reduce this and substitute apple sauce or yogurt)
• 2 cups (14 ounces) sugar
• 4 large eggs (or 5 medium eggs in my case!)
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon cloves
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 cups (8 1/2 ounces) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour (king arthur or BUST)
• 3 cups (11 1/2 ounces) finely grated carrots (be sure to squeeze excess liquid out of your carrots!!)
• 1 1/2 cups (5 3/4 ounces) chopped pecans or walnuts

Cream Cheese Frosting

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
• one 8-ounce package cream cheese (fat free please, there’s already enough of that)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 cups (10 to 14 ounces) glazing sugar or confectioners’ sugar
• milk or cream to adjust consistency of frosting, if necessary

Cake:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease two 9-inch round layer pans.
2. Beat together the oil, sugar, eggs and spices. Mix the flour with the baking soda, and stir in. Add the carrots and nuts, and mix until just blended.
3. Pour the prepared pan(s). Bake the cake(s) for 35 to 40 minutes, or until the cake tests done. Allow the cake to cool completely before frosting it. (If you’re using two 9-inch round pans, remove the cake from the pans after about 15 minutes, and place it in a rack to cool.

Frosting:

1. Beat the butter and cream cheese together until smooth. Add the salt and vanilla. Beat in the sugar. Add a teaspoon of milk or cream if the frosting is too stiff to spread; add additional sugar if it’s too thin.
2. Frost the 9 x 13-inch cake right in the pan. For the layers, from the top of one layer, top with the second layer, and frost the top and sides of the cake.

Now the obligatory Cake on Stand picture.  (You mean a cake stand is for cakes and not bread?) EAT YOUR HEART OUT STACY!  CAKE STAND CAKE STAND Cake Stand CAAAAAKE STAAAAAAAAAAAAAND!!!!!!!!!!1!~~

If you know me, you know that I hate crusty breads.  If we are served crusty breads at a restaurant, I will dig out the soft innards and put the crust on Sean’s plate.  When Stacy and Ronnie were off on their crusty sourdough kicks, I was like whatevs have fun chewing crust!  I went out and bought a pullman pan.  This pan will produce a 1.5 lb loaf, with very minimal crust.  The pullman pan comes with a lid but I’m not 100% convinced for the need, it’s convenient and all but I can spend that $14 on shoes (or 1/10th of a shoe…) or something.  I just use a cookie sheet on top, and a cast iron skillet on top of that to weigh it down.  The point of this pan is to not let the bread rise, so it is denser and most important, NO HARD CRUSTS!  This bread is perfect for sandwiches and toast.

Pain de Mie (this is the french way of saying white bread)
adapted from King Arthur Flour

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup (5 3/8 ounces) milk
• 1 cup (8 ounces) water
• 6 tablespoons (3 ounces) butter
• 2 1/4 teaspoons salt
• 3 tablespoons (1 1/4 ounces) sugar
• 1/4 cup (1 1/8 ounces) Baker’s Special Dry Milk or nonfat dry milk
• 3 tablespoons (1 1/4 ounces) potato flour
• 4 3/4 cups (20 ounces) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
• 2 teaspoons instant yeast

Directions:

1. Combine the ingredients as above, using a flat beater paddle or beaters, then switch to the dough hook(s) and knead for 5 to 8 minutes. Transfer the dough to a lightly greased bowl, cover with saran wrap and allow the dough to rise overnight in the fridge to develop better flavors.
2. Take your dough out of the fridge and let it rest for 30 minutes to warm up a bit.
3. Lightly grease a 13 x 4-inch pain de mie pan. Transfer the dough to a lightly greased work surface, shape it into a 13-inch log, and fit it into the pan. Cover the pan with lightly greased plastic wrap, and allow the dough to rise until it’s just below the lip of the pan, about 2 hours, depending on the warmth of your kitchen.
4. Remove the plastic, and carefully place the greased cover on the pan, let it rest an additional 10 minutes while you preheat your oven to 350°F. Bake the bread for 25 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven, carefully remove the lid, and return the bread to the oven to bake for an additional 20 minutes, or until it tests done; an instant-read thermometer inserted into the center will register 190°F. Remove the bread from the oven, and turn it out of the pan onto a rack to cool completely.

One of the reviews at king arthur said the flavor was a little bland, so I took the liberty of letting it rise in the fridge overnight.  This usually results in a more flavorful end product, and this bread did turn out very flavorful and delicious.

And the debut of my new cake stand!!! With bread in it!!!  This cake stand is so awesome, it’s also a punch bowl AND a dip thiney-a-mabobber!  (Just for you Stacy)

I’m all for a quick dish on a weekday, you’re home from work, you’re tired, your coworker screwed up the code you were working on for 5 weeks, you’re grumpy and want food now now now.  When my mom told me she microwaved fish my eyes were like this O_o.  Yup I actually made one eye get physically smaller.  So I tried her insaneness and it actually kind of works… but there are some rules you must follow.

Microwaving Fish Rules

1. If your fish costs more than $20/lb, if you microwave it I will come and kill you in your sleep.
2. It has to be thin to cook all the way through without making parts of it extra chewey.  The best kind is a flat white fish.
3. It’s best to do this with a liquidy sauce.

Some people say that microwaved lobster tastes better than steamed lobster, so why not fish?

She uses the Lee Kum Kee brand soy sauce for seafood, which is basically a mix of asian flavors great for seafood (such as cooking wine, soy sauce, etc).  I didn’t have any on hand so I’ve used equal parts soy sauce and fish sauce and cooking wine with a dash of seasame oil and one ginger slice.  I experimented with a small slab of sea bass, and thus came to rule #1 and rule #2.  Rule #2 because the sea bass was too thick and I ended up overcooking parts of it to get it completely done.  And then rule #1 because I was so pissed I used such an expensive fish.  I have tried this with thin white fish and it’s pretty much delicious.  I am going to experiment later with microwaving a slab of salmon in a seasame soy sweet glaze and see how it turns out.

Ingredients:

• A 1/2 lb slab of white fish, thin, bone in, bone out, whatever works.
• 1 tbsp Soy Sauce
• 1 tbsp Fish Sauce (if you don’t like fish sauce, you can just use straight soy)
• 1 tbsp Cooking Wine (this eliminates some of the fishy flavors)
• 1 slice of ginger
• dash of sesame oil

Directions:

1. Use a glass bowl with a flat bottom that the fish can sit in.  Put the slice of ginger at the bottom of the fish.  Combine all ingredients and cover with saran wrap.
2. Microwave for 4 minutes.  Be careful when taking it out, it’ll be hot.  Eat fish.

I garnished with some sauteed baby bok choy and mushrooms.  Don’t forget, use a thinner fish!!