Recipe number five.

First post of the new year. First recipe of the new year and what a beauty it was.

I’m going to start off by saying a somewhat belated happy new year to everyone. Hopefully y’all enjoyed the break and had a blast of a time celebrating.

As for what the new year has in store, my goals, plan and all that, that’s going to come in another post soon. There’s a lot, and I mean a lot. All ridiculous goals. All achievable though (I think).

Starting from this recipe I’ve started to take photos of the cooking process too. I’ve been taking the photos in the bathroom since it’s all nice and white lighting but that’s all going to change. I saw the light - literally. So that should be somewhat exciting. I’m going to start using the kitchen lighting, which is nicer, more dramatic, and the background is somewhat nicer! Although I already do Instagram and snapchat the lot, this serves as a more permanent home for the process really.

Of course, one of the big aims for this blog was to showcase some semblance of improvement, especially after the first few posts where I’ve been getting to grips with writing style, photos and whatnot. So this is kind of a step in the right direction I suppose.

Onto the recipe itself.

I’d been looking forward to this for ages. I hadn’t cooked since early December and salmon is one of my favourite foods. It finally gave me a reason to try out miso too, which I’d been reading rave reviews about. Now, enoki mushrooms - they were impossible to get a hold of. I don’t know whether it was the post new year store emptiness or what, but nowhere had them, not even the asian shop I always go to. I used white mushrooms in their place, which are supposedly similar. Barring that, the ingredients are simple enough. I had to omit the brocolli because my stomach does not like it one bit.

Prep and cooking

As far as recipes and cooking go, this was fairly simple. I mean the longest thing was the prep, and that’s because I can’t multi-task, and if I tried to do it mid-cooking I’d end up burning everything.

Although, I did end up undercooking the salmon somewhat. It was poaching in the liquid, and when I flaked it all seemed well. Took it out the broth, plated it, flake flake flake, and bam raw in the middle. Wasn’t my biggest concern seeing as soon as I’d pour the soup over the uncooked bits would cook. And so far I’ve had no problems, so success!

Cooking time wise - it wasn’t an overly long recipe, albeit all my time was spent waiting at the stove and stirring and basting. An active recipe, rather than a sit and rest. Don’t mind that really.

Taste

Now here is the part you’ve all been waiting for. It tasted good, not the most spectacular thing in the world but not the best. For me, it was slightly too salty for my liking. The few days after I ate it with couscous, rather than having it as a soup and it was much better, in my simple opinion.

I stress that it’s my opinion in the end. I have a somewhat low salt tolerance and dislike anything too salty. May have been the omittance of the broccoli, or the enoki mushrooms. All I know is that next time I’ll be using less miso paste.

Verdict

I enjoyed making this. Salmon is undeniably one of my favourite foods and I’d be eating it much more often it weren’t so expensive (£12/kg or so). I’d had it for dinner for four days and it does get better, but that was with me having it with couscous rather than as a soup.

This was the first recipe I’d made where Ramsay’s “serves X” had failed me. The broth had reduced and I ended up with about enough broth for two bowls of soup. Nevermind though since I had it with couscous. No biggie.

Odds are I’ll be making this again in the future, and now I know to go a bit easier on the miso.