Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Dinner with a toaster oven, mostly...

I was EXHAUSTED but very very hungry tonight.  I also didn't want a lot of dishes to clean.  So, I decided to make good use of my toaster oven and a package of aluminum foil to make dinner.  I had a lovely maitake mushroom and some shiso leaves that I really needed to use.

So, I decided to combine the maitake with shitake, some fresh garlic, a little sesame oil, butter and sake, and roasted it in aluminum foil in my toaster oven:





While I was at it, I decided to cook some wild salmon as well!

I drizzled salt on the shiso leaves and let them sit for a few minutes.  Then I wrapped them around the salmon filets, and drizzled them with a little sesame oil.  The salmon joined my little mushroom friends in my toaster oven.





I decided to pair this with some homemade nukazuke.  These are daikon and gobo (burdock) room that I pickled in rice bran.  The bed of rice bran is known as a nukadoko.

It's a Japanese method of pickling - I used to watch my grandmother making these when I was a little girl.





The finished dinner below... I decided to make some udon noodles in a quick broth.  I topped it with beni-shoga (red pickled ginger):

Everything came out pretty tasty... except I think I left the nukazuke in the nukadoko too long.  It was a bit sour tasting.

On an added note, all of these photos were taken with my new IPhone 4S. It takes awesome pictures!