Today we are going to be making a Spicy Kanikama Salad. I first had this dish as an appetizer in a Shabu Shabu restaurant in New York and I absolutely loved it. It’s nice, light and packs a little bit of a kick.
It goes great with other Japanese cuisine but you can have it as meal all by itself.
Here are the ingredients you will need.
- One 12 ounce package of imitation crab meat.
- ¾ of a Cup of Mayonnaise – Get it here on Amazon http://amzn.to/23vgCzl
- Juice of ½ a Lemon
- 3 tbsp. of Rice Wine Vinegar – Get it here on Amazon http://amzn.to/25TpJw5
- 2 tbsp. of Sriracha sauce – Get it here on Amazon http://amzn.to/1SqSg1U
- ½ of a Large Cucumber
- 2 Green Onions
- Panko bread crumbs – Get it here on Amazon http://amzn.to/1N2UlF4
Preparation
Because the imitation crab meat is already cooked, there is no actual cooking that happens. The first thing you will need to do is shred the imitation crab so that you have stringy flakey bits. This will add to the texture and presentation. It should look something like this:
Once the crab is shredded we are ready to prepare the cucumber. I made the cucumber into noodles using the Spiralizer. If you want to learn how to use this great device, you can click here and read an earlier post I made.
Chop the green onions into fine bits, this will be used as garnish later.
The Sauce
Pour the mayonnaise into a mixing bowl. Mix the Lemon juice, rice vinegar, and Sriracha into the mayo and whisk it until it has a nice pink consistency. Once the sauce is ready pour the shredded imitation crab meat into the sauce and mix it until it coats the meat.
You are now ready to assemble the salad.
- Grab a bowl and first put the cucumber as a base.
- Lump the crab meat on top of the cucumber
- Sprinkle the desired amount of panko on the crab
- Garnish with the chopped onions and serve
Feel free to experiment with the recipe. I began with some recipes that I found on the internet but found that they were too heavy on the mayo and not enough on the vinegar. I added the citrus element and it really improved the sauce. The next time I make this I will likely up the citrus even more and see what the results are.
Be creative, that’s what makes cooking fun.
Thanks for reading
Tequila Lime Drumsticks on the Grill
Like many of you, we eat a lot of chicken especially during the week. Why? It’s inexpensive, tasty and considered a healthier alternative vs many other types of meat. But many people, especially the health conscious ones, tend to only focus on the chicken breast for their cooking and they ignore the dark meat. This is a big mistake in my opinion. Not only is a chicken breast more expensive to buy but it’s simply not as flavorful as the dark meat is.
For this recipe we bought a large packet of drumsticks for the super market. It was a large pack, about 16, which meant we had a fair amount of leftovers. If you are having a party and need to cook and don’t want to break the bank, this is a perfect recipe.
So how do we make regular ol chicken drums special? It’s all in the sauce. For this recipe we used the tequila lime recipe we had used for our stuffed portabellas and just made about 3 times as much of it. This is the great things about learning to make your own sauce recipes. They are super versatile and the end result can taste totally different depending on what you are cooking with.
Here are the ingredients for the sauce:
- 1 ½ a Cup of Tequila
- Juice of 6 Limes
- 3/4 of a stick of butter
- About three pinches of the EME Fish & Poultry Seasoning
- 15 Shakes from a Sale Shaker depending on your preference
- 3 tbsp. of flour to thicken (Here is the flower is used available on Amazon – low carb flour)
Preparation
The first step is to actually make the sauce
- You will need a medium size sauce pot for this step.
- Grab the butter and put in the pot at high heat until it fully melts.
- Once the butter melts, pour the tequila in and squeeze the lime.
- At this point I back off the heat to about medium and let the sauce reduce.
- Once it has reduced I put the flour in and whisk it with a spoon, this will thicken the sauce.
Marinating
Once the sauce is made you are going to need to let the chicken cool so you can use a portion of it as the marinade. I used two large freezer bags and put equal parts of the chicken inside of each bag. Using a ladle, I put enough of the tequila lime sauce to cover all of the chicken in the bags. In my case about 2/3s of sauce went in as marinade. Your marinade should look something like this:
Cooking
Once your chicken has been sitting in the marinade for at least 30 minutes (More is better here) you are ready to cook!
Here are the steps
- Make sure your Grill is clean and ready to go.
- Fire up the grill to about 400 degrees.
- Using tongs grab the marinated chicken and put it on the hot grill.
- Pour the marinated sauce into a bowl.
- Make sure that the sauce that wasn’t used as marinade is put into a separate bowl is this will be used later.
- Baste the chicken (I used a Silcon Basting brush like this one – http://amzn.to/1qewnw5) with the marinated sauce close the lid to your grill.
Note – If you have a gas grill you are going to need to keep a close one the chicken, the fat from the dark meat will drip onto the heat plates and can cause a flare up. If you see smoke coming out open the lid. If a flare up is happening, move the chicken off the flame and let the flare up burn off. You can also keep the lid open and turn the heat up. It will take a little longer to cook but you will be able to see what’s going on easier.
- Every Few minutes, rotate your drumsticks and baste them with the marinate sauce. This will begin to cook the tequila flavor right into the skin.
- By the time the chicken is done you should have basted all of the marinade sauce on the chicken.
- Once the chicken is done plate the chicken into a separate container and with a separate brush, baste the sauce that was not used as marinade onto the chicken to give it a great finishing touch. Make sure you either wash your brush or use another one.
That’s it! You are now ready to eat.
Let us know what you think.
Smoked Salmon Spinach Salad with homemade honey mustard vinaigrette
One of the difficult things about cooking during the week is that time and energy often come up a bit short when you get home to cook an elaborate meal. This challenge is magnified when you are trying to make the meal not only taste good but be healthy for you as well.
Luckily, this recipe manages to be healthy, tasty and quick to make. This is the holy trinity when it comes to weeknight dinners as far as I’m concerned. I can’t take the credit for this one however as it was my lovely wife’s idea.
The only real work you have to do is making the homemade vinaigrette.
Prep
- Put the Spinach in a salad bowl.
- Slice the grape tomatoes to your preferred size.
- Put the salad aside while you make the vinaigrette.
Ingredients for the salad
- 1 Bag of fresh spinach
- 1 small smoked salmon filet
- ½ a box of grape tomatoes
Ingredients for the vinaigrette
- 1/3 cup of extra virgin Olive Oil
- 2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar
- 2 teaspoons of mustard
- The Juice of ½ lemon squeezed
- 1 teaspoon of dried dill weed
- ½ shallot finely chopped
- 2 teaspoons of honey
Making the vinaigrette
- Mix the lemon juice, mustard, vinegar, dill weed and shallots in a bowl
- Whisk them vigorously until they are well mixed together
- While whisking, slowly stream in your olive oil to help integrate it with the vinaigrette
Final Preparation
- In a slow stream pour the vinaigrette over all part of the salad and then toss it to ensure the vinaigrette is well integrated.
- Cut the smoked salmon in half and place it on top of the salad for final presentation.
This is definitely one of the simpler recipes we have done but the end result is fantastic. The smokiness of the salmon pairs perfectly with the tangy and slightly spicy finish of the vinaigrette. We paired this meal with a Geyser Peak Sauvignon Blanc which will be a “Wine under Nine” selection in an upcoming post.
So if you are looking to be healthy on a weeknight, give this recipe a try and let us know what you think!
Grilling with Gramps
I have mentioned on a number of occasions that my Father in Law was one of the main reasons I got into cooking. We have even featured one of his recipes when we talked about how to make Beer Can Chicken. The difference with today’s recipe was that he actually did the cooking and all of the tips and tricks are coming right from the source. So what are we going to talk about today? Grilling some beautiful Rib Eye and T-Bone steaks.
This is not a complicated recipe. There are no fancy marinades or sauces. Why? Because a good steak doesn’t need much added to it to make it great. What you do need however is good technique so that you can make the most of the delicious cut of meat.
So let’s get to it. Here is what you need to know to make a great steak.
The first step is to trim the meat so that the hard outer fat layers that you often find in cuts like these. Some of you may have heard the phrase “Fat is flavor” and my father in law agrees for the most part. However he told me “These hard outer layers doesn’t melt into the the meat so it’s not really adding anything to keep it on”. If you think about it, whenever you get a cut of meat like this at a restaurant and it has that hard thick layer of fat, all you ever do is cut it out.
Once the meat is trimmed it’s time to do the seasoning. He kept the seasoning pretty light. Just a little bit of salt, a little bit of pepper and a healthy dash of paprika.
Once the meat is seasoned, let the meat sit because it’s time to get the grill fired up. He opted to use his Weber Charcoal grill over his gas grill. It was more of a hassle, but when you are cooking a great piece of steak he insists on cooking over the coals. The key is getting the coals nice and hot before putting the meat on them.
The reason for this is you want to get a a good sear on the steak early so that you can “lock in the flavor”.
Timing is key here. You want to make sure that you get a good sear on both sides but once you do, you should move the meat away from the hot coals and letting the indirect heat of the grill finish off the cooking. My father in law refers to this phase as “putting the steak in the oven”. At this point, the only thing left to do is wait until the steak is done. Now if you were to ask either of us, done means medium rare, medium at the most.
But that’s the beauty of cooking you can make your own meals to your own taste.
So fire up the grill try it out and let us know what you think.
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