You have got to know by now just how much I love miso, right?

This recipe is my absolute favorite way to enjoy miso, and one that I make about twice a month as it is so quick to put together and so richly delicious.

I start with a fillet of salmon placed on a baking sheet that has been lined with aluminum foil.

Next, I make the glaze. All you need are these two, miso and mirin…

Any miso is fine, I realize you may only be able to get your hands on shiro miso (aka: white or mellow miso.) I use this “red” variety because I’ve tried making the recipe with both and found this one to be less salty. As for mirin, if you can’t find it you can use either maple syrup or honey and a few drops of water to thin it out. I’ve tried it using both of those ingredients and it was still awesome.

So, put a dollop of miso in a bowl and add about a tablespoon or so of mirin.

I then microwave this for ten seconds, stir, then another 10 seconds and stir again. It’ll look about like this, don’t worry if yours is thicker or thinner than mine. It’ll be great, I promise.

Just pour it over the salmon and spread evenly over the surface and down the sides.

This gets baked at 400 degrees for exactly 20 minutes.

While that was baking, I got the rest of the meal ready. I had some sushi rice going in the rice cooker already so I just had to make something to go with it. I decided to smash up an avocado with seaweed flake, salt and toasted sesame.

And I even had time to have a little fun with my ring molds that I haven’t touched in forever. I used them to mold the rice into pretty little discs.

Out came the salmon. Don’t worry about the burned edges, it’s just because there is sugar in the mirin, the fish itself is fine. This is why you needed the foil.

And here it is, alongside the rice topped with mashed avocado and sliced scallions.

Seriously, one of my very favorite dinners.

And no, you don’t need to mold the rice into pretty shapes. I would have just plopped it on the plate too if I wasn’t planning on photographing it!

Miso-glazed salmon

Perfectly baked salmon topped with a glaze of salty miso and sweet mirin.

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 25 minutes

Yield: 2 servings

Ingredients

• 1 skin-on salmon fillet
• approx. 2 tbsp. red miso paste
• approx. 2 tbsp. mirin

Cooking Directions

1. Lay salmon fillet on a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil, remove any pin bones.
2. In a small bowl, combine miso and mirin.
3. Microwave miso and mirin for 20 seconds then stir to combine.
4. Pour mixture over salmon and spread evenly with a butter knife.
5. Bake salmon at 400 degrees for approximately 20 minutes or until done.
6. Serve with rice, smashed avocado, and scallions if desired.

Hope you try it, I’m really proud of this one!

January 17, 2011 Alayna Discussion, Recipes 5 comments

One of the best dishes I’ve ever had at a restaurant was the Seafood in a Claypot at Ma Li. It’s full of noodles, ginger, mushrooms, a piece of fish, some squid, some shellfish; all cooked in a personal-sized clay pot that seals in all the juices, making for a rich and delicious broth.

When Jeff and I were honeymooning in Japan, we looked for a clay pot to take home with us, but they were all very large, heavy, and expensive.  We were already lugging around more than we could comfortably carry, so we opted to not purchase one while we were there.

I’m still looking for a good clay pot, but that hasn’t stopped me from trying to recreate my favorite dish with what I have available.

I chose to use a large baking dish to make my soup in.  I started with a layer of bok choy and slices of daikon radish. I just cut the ends of the bok choy and separated the leaves a bit, then I used a vegetable peeler on the daikon to remove a layer and cut it into thin slices.

Next I sliced up some shiitakes and scallions and spread those over, then grated about an inch-long piece of ginger over the top. I cut a portion of salmon into a few smaller pieces and nestled them into the vegetables.

I used some leftover miso soup and added a swish of soy sauce and about a tablespoon of toasted sesame oil.  If you don’t wanna make miso soup, just use vegetable or seafood broth and add a bit of miso paste.

I poured it over the vegetables and salmon along with some water and covered the dish with aluminum foil with a few holes poked in the top.

Baked at about 425 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes, it comes out looking and smelling intensely divine. I like to add a drop or two of chili oil to the top to finish it off.

This dish is so easy because it’s mostly just assembly. There’s nothing you need to stand around and monitor while it’s cooking, you just stick it in the oven and go do something else.

I still want a real clay pot to try this with, but the baking dish works surprisingly well. I’m sure this technique could work with many other kinds of soup too.

Mmmm…warm and spicy soup sounds so good right now.

October 27, 2010 Alayna Recipes 5 comments

It’s official, I hit the trifecta!  After an amazing oatmeal breakfast and an epic sandwich at lunch, dinner did not disappoint.

I found this recipe a few days ago on a recipe aggregator site and thought it would be really easy to just substitute shiitakes, a mushroom I always have on hand, for the chestnut mushrooms it calls for.

Lemme show you what I did.

First I put a piece of salmon rubbed in sesame oil and soy sauce in the oven at 400 degrees.  It takes about 20 minutes to bake, just enough time to do the rest.

I sauteed half an onion in sesame oil…

Then sliced my shiitakes…

Love the little curls at the end of the caps, so cute!  Anyway, I brought some water to a boil to add my soba noodles to…

That is what the package calls two servings, but really it comes out to more like 3 and half or 4.  Something I learned.

I chopped a HUGE clove of garlic, this was probably 2 or 3 regular cloves.

At this point the onions are mostly caramelized.  I threw in the shiitakes and garlic and let them cook down a bit too.  Then I added a splash of rice wine vinegar, about 2 tbsp. of honey, and a generous sloshing of soy sauce.  I firmly believe that; for the most part, if you are measuring ingredients while you are cooking you are doing it wrong. Baking is the opposite, but that’s another story.

Here I am mixing the onions and mushrooms in the sauce…

And here I am smiling because Jeff says I don’t appear in/ smile enough in my own blog…

Can’t you see I’m busy cooking???

Jeff drained the soba that was roiling away…

And I tossed it in the sauce mixture to create this glistening vista…

Here’s what I had for dinner!…

Oh my, yes.

I am a huge fan of onions, raw and cooked.  This was an ode to the onion, for sure.  Loved the sweet caramelized onion sugars flavoring the salty savory sauce.

It has been a successful food day all around.

October 9, 2010 Alayna Recipes 2 comments