Miso-Maple Glazed Salmon

First dish for the blog.  Decided to go with a fairly easy dish to get it started off on the right foot.  I found a good glazed salmon recipe online, and it turned out pretty good.

Glaze Recipe

1 part yellow miso paste

1 part seasoned rice vinegar

1 part maple syrup

Small amount of finely chopped chives

The glaze was super easy, simply pour the ingredients into a bowl and mix together.  Couldn't mess this up if you tried.

On an oven ready pan, I laid down some tinfoil, lightly oiled the tinfoil and laid the salmon flat.  I went with the skin left on the salmon, as I've always heard that the skin locks in the best of the salmon flavors, plus the skin will stick to the tinfoil instead of the salmon itself, making removal from the pan extremely easy.  

Turning the burner to high heat, I started to sear the bottom of the salmon, just enough so that the oil was sizzling and the bottom part of the salmon started to turn light pink.  I then removed from heat and laid on the glaze on the top and side of the salmon.  I put too much glaze on, and it leaks onto the tinfoil (something I think was inevitable), which caused a slight issue later.

Once the glaze was applied, I through the fish into the oven, set to high broil.  I left it in for about 8 minutes to cook, just until the glaze started to brown and ensuring it was cooked by testing the firmness of the salmon by squeezing the sides.  Now remember that extra glaze, it started to burn a little bit, which wouldn't be a problem, except when I opened the oven the smoke got out and set off the fire alarm.  Super annoying, luckily it didn't last long and didn't set off the building alarms.

Before I forget, while the fish was cooking, I also prepared the side of asparagus.  Extremely simple to make when you have a steamer.... a little tougher when you don't.  I ended up using chop sticked, laid along a curved frying pan to make a makeshift elevated platform in the pan.  I then laid the asparagus stacked on the chopsticks, put some water in the pan and put it, covered, on heat to boil the water thus steaming the asparagus.  Crafty haha.

Once everything was finished, a simple plating of the food, some butter, a nice garnish of a lemon crown and we were good to go.  And this is how the final result looked.

Miso and Maple-Glazed Salmon

From a tase point of view, this dish in my opinion was fantastic.  The saltiness of the miso paste matched with the sweetness of the maple syrup was all tied together quite nicely.  The salmon ended up being perfectly cooked, just a little crispy along the edges which worked out nicely.  Definitely a great start to the food blog.

What It's All About

Just a quick overview of what this blog is all about.  Since I moved to Los Angeles, I've decided I needed a new hobby to keep me busy and distracted.  I've always enjoyed cooking and my desire to try to maintain a newer healthy food lifestyle.  As such, I figured a food blog would be a great fit.

At least once a week, I'll post a new recipe and pictures of the results.... good or bad.  I'm no expert chef so try not to judge too hard if things don't look pretty.