Poached Salmon with Asparagus, new potatoes and green things

Contrary to the frequency of Asian recipes I post up, we do eat Western dishes. This is one of those. There's three components to the meal but they are easy to put together, maybe it can go under one of Jamie Oliver's 30 minutes meal. I have that cookbook, just haven't try any of the meals yet. Maybe I should, you think? Now that's its summer in Sweden, fresh new potatoes are everywhere and goes really well with salmon, one of the most commonly eaten fish here.

Ingredients (Serves 2)

2 slices of salmon 

Half a lemon

250ml water and 250ml white wine

1 bunch of asparagus

6-7 new potatoes

Half a leek, paprika, 4-5 button mushrooms

Steps

1. The potatoes will take the longest (about 15-20 minutes) to cook, so start the pot of water (generously salted) to boil it first while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.
2. Take a shallow pan and fill it up with the water and wine, along with 3 slices of lemon, some salt and pepper. Slide the salmon slices in when it is gently simmering and poach it for about ten minutes, drain and set aside.
3. Prepare the asparagus by breaking the woody end parts, and slice the leek, paprika and mushroom.
4. Heat up a frying pan on high heat, and put in a knob of butter. Fry the asparagus first until your desired crunchiness, and season with salt and pepper just before dishing it up.
5. In the same pan, add more butter if required and stir fry the rest of the 'green things' (leek, paprika, mushrooms) again to your desired level of crunchiness and season with salt and pepper towards the end.
6. Serve everything on a plate with a slice of lemon and some type of sauce, here we normally use romsås, which is a combination of creme fraiche, mayonaise, salt and orange cavier.

Pork Ribs and White Radish Soup

White radish, also known as daikon or white carrot is the main ingredient used in the Singaporean carrot cake is also quite good as an addition to soup. This is a simple soup using just three ingredients, yet very flavorful.

Ingredients (2 portions)

Half a large white radish, peeled and sliced into thick medallions

150g pork ribs (this one I used was the soft bones part of the ribs which can be quite fatty, you can use other parts if preferred)

3-4 red dates

1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine

Salt to taste

Steps

1. First blanch the pork ribs in boiling water for a few minutes. Drain, rinse and set aside while you boil up 3 bowls of water again.
2. Return the ribs to the boiling pot of water together with the sliced radish and red dates. Wait for it to come to boil again then turn down the heat to let it simmer for about 30 minutes.
3. Add the Shaoxing wine and salt to taste just before serving.
   
   

Stir Fry Celery With Wood Ear Mushroom, Baby Corn and Carrots

Its fast but it's almost been four months since our baby boy arrived and life has never been the same again (especially for the blog!) and my husband suggested I can blog about parenthood and stuff. So since he starts tasting solids (we've tried rice cereal so far), you may see some baby food recipes coming up in this blog :)

First, this really nice refreshing dish to add to your Chinese dinner table. It was cooked by a friend who helped during the confinement period and I've grown to like it more and more. I wanted to make it for my Dad who visited us in Sweden late last month but didn't get the chance too. So hopefully my sister will see this and make it for him instead ;)

Ingredients
4-5 stalks of celery
1 carrot
1 can of baby corn
A handful of  dry wood ear mushroom
Chicken stock powder to taste

Steps

1. Peel the celery and carrot and slice into sections. Soak the mushroom until soft, remove any hard bits, drain and set aside. 
2. Heat up a frying pan on high with 3 tablespoons of cooking oil until smoke it coming out.
3. Add in the celery and carrots first and fry until they are bright in color before adding in the mushroom and corn.
4. Season with chicken stock powder and some water, I prefer them with a bit of crunch but you can cook it longer if you want it softer. Serve with rice.

MyMoment Yogurt Drink

I got an invitation recently to test this yogurt drink called MyMoment. You can check out the video here. I actually bought the strawberry flavour before and am looking forward to test the other flavours. You can also be a test pilot, just click on this link (it's in Swedish) http://smartsontestpilot.se/mymoment/bli-testpilot/ to participate. Enjoy!