Simple avocado salad

Here is a simple salad based on one my cousin made a long time ago. It's just sliced avocado, red onion and bonito flakes (which I omitted here). I dressed it with a little soy sauce, lemon juice and plenty of black pepper and sesame seeds. I imagine a non-Asian version could be dressed with cilantro, lime and maybe tabasco? Or balsamic vinegar and olive oil. This salad is best with a more firm avocado, for those times when you must have an avocado but it's not fully ripe.

Mushroom bourgignon

This recipe is not going to have enough meat for one of my readers (you know who you are). In fact, it has no meat in it. Suck it!

Looking forward to a steamy 2010

I bought a steamer insert like this except larger (although if I'd seen this purple version, I would've gotten it instead). I made this salmon, which I sprinkled with olive oil, salt and pepper, wrapped in foil and steamed for about 25 min (I hadn't completely defrosted the fish beforehand, otherwise I think 15 min plus 5 min off heat is plenty). It was incredible. Therefore you can expect a lot more steamer recipes in the future. Just in time for my standard New Year's [daily] resolution of being [more] healthy. Which I immediately broke by serving the salmon with an asparagus and corn risotto.

Chocolate chip cookies

For the past few Christmases, I've made some kind of sweet treat to send to my relatives. I started it one year when I was especially poor and thought a homemade gift would be best. In addition, since I have a lot of relatives, the pressure to get them all something was too much, so sending them a box of chocolate truffles or cookies seemed a nice way to a) use my one talent [and I use the word 'talent' very loosely here]; and b) give something that could be shared by many.

I did it! Pasta carbonara

Have you noticed my ever-growing list of foods I want to make over on the right sidebar? Pasta carbonara was one of the first on the list. I have been fascinated by carbonara for a while now. I think it was the idea of a raw egg being mixed into some hot noodles. How could that work? Isn't that some kind of health code violation?

Nonetheless, I tried it, first at Otto. I thought it was deliciously simple.


Making it, however, was a different story.

More chocolate, in the form of a cookie

For the past few weeks, I have had to stay up for work until as late as 1 am. I wouldn't have any actual work to do, but I would just have to stay up in case the client needed something. It's incredibly hard to stay up that late when you have nothing to do.

Thankfully, I could do this from the comfort of my own home and usually I would pass the time watching TV or movies or surfing the web. But this would make me tired and make it even more difficult to stay up (I did once fall asleep--shhh, don't tell).