Standard Captain's Blood!

• 2 oz Jamaican rum
• 1 oz lime juice
• 0.75 oz falernum syrup
• 2-3 generous dashes of Angostura bitters

Shake hard for 30 seconds to chill, dilute, and generate ice chips; gate pour (don't strain) into a chilled coupe rimmed with lime juice; garnish with three dots of Angostura bitters (an eyedropper helps) and a wedge, wheel, or twist of lime.

Household favourite, this one.

It's Tuesday, so by now you definitely know the drill: salmon with lemon & dill, fingerling potats, cherry tomatoes with feta & basil, baked asparagus with lemon, garlic, and Parmesan.

I overdid the fish just ever so slightly, but everything else was great.

In case you were curious about the visual difference between a classic margarita that is gate poured versus one that's double strained, here you go!

This is a simple 2:1:1 ratio of tequila, Cointreau, and freshly squeezed lime juice, shaken hard for ~30 seconds and poured into a chilled coupe half rimmed with salt. Some recipes call for 2:1:0.5:0.5 ratio of tequila, lime juice, Cointreau, and simple syrup; for me that usually depends on what any particular batch of limes are bringing to the party. (In this case they were a little disappointingly lacking in tartness, unfortunately! Not exactly something that extra sweetener could help though.)

Simplest possible dinner tonight: I put together a nice batch of dashi and brewed an entirely pleasant bowl of miso. Nothing adventurous, just sliced cremini mushrooms, thinly sliced scallions, white miso paste, a couple of scant dashes of mirin - just to add a slight hint of sweetness - and some wakame flakes.

Next time I'll put some more work into the dashi by letting my kombu soak for a few hours beforehand and by shaving my own katsuobushi, but that wasn't the shape of the evening tonight.

Pretty good meal!

Following through on my intention to try out at least one new recipe a week! This time I'm digging into the green leafy options a bit, leaning on some common flavour combinations, and putting together a side dish for the protein I baked up earlier in the week.

Ingredients

• 6 baby bok choy, uh, plants?
• 5-6 cloves of garlic
• a knob of ginger about ¼-⅓ larger than the garlic cloves
• sesame seeds for toasting
• about a teaspoon more or less of red pepper flakes
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 tsp toasted sesame oil

Peel, tip, and tail the garlic, then smash it; peel the ginger, then slice very fine against the fibrous grain; then dice them both together, quite finely, to roughly the same consistency.

Chop the roots off the bok choy, wash thoroughly, then cut the green leafy parts away from the white stem parts. Cut the leaves large and set them aside to add later, since they cook so fast; chop the white parts smaller and keep them at hand, they'll go in soon.

Mix sesame oil, soy sauce, oyster sauce, and brown sugar very vigorously - aim to emulsify it all a bit. A small mason jar with a lid works well, or a high sided bowl and a fork.

Dry toast the sesame seeds. Add a bit of vegetable oil into a pan and fry the garlic and ginger until very fragrant and starting to brown a bit, then add in the white bok choy stems and mix until well heated. Add the red pepper flakes, the mixed sauces, the green leafy parts, and about ¾ of the toasted sesame seeds (set the rest aside for garnish); toss well and cook through.

Plate, and garnish with the extra sesame seeds!

(Next time I do this I think I'll try thickening the sauce a bit with just a touch of corn starch.)

Follow-up photos downthread!

Standard Tuesday evening meal again, but I've been teaching myself how to pick fish with more discrimination and boy howdy has that effort been paying off in meal quality.

Cremini mushrooms, Brussels sprouts with bacon, fresh tomatoes, beef disc. Mostly just using up stuff in the fridge, but it made a pretty delicious pair of dinners!

It's Fancy Oatmeal Sunday!

Hazelnuts, walnuts, almonds, pecans; plus some nice rolled oats with cinnamon and vanilla. Honestly not much to it at all - maybe I should have toasted the nuts..? - but a nice tasty late morning meal to follow coffee.

That's weird, this picture didn't attach properly to the preceding post?

🤷‍♂️

Fingerling potatoes

Microwave on high for about 6-7 minutes, flip over, repeat. Slit open; season with butter, pepper, salt, thinly chopped chives.

Tomatoes

Wash, halve, season with salt and pepper. Toss with crumbled feta.

Asparagus

Wash; trim fibrous ends; chop into bite sized pieces. Toss in olive oil. Add a few cloves of smashed and diced garlic, then cover with microplaned parmesan cheese and fry.

Toss asparagus after the bottoms have browned; squeeze over about half a lemon worth of juice. Add the other half of the parmesan cheese, then pop into the 400°F oven for 18-20 minutes.

Once you remove the pan from the oven, squeeze over another half a lemon or so.

Salmon

Heat a half sheet tray in an oven set to 400°F. (This will aid with heat conductivity and also catch any leaks.) Lay out two sheets of parchment paper or aluminum foil near prep area.

Dice two celery stalks, two shallots, a few cloves of smashed garlic; lay in a flat layer on the foil sheets. Tear in a good amount of dill. Salt generously. (The goal here is mostly to add aroma and steam.) Lay skin-on salmon pieces over the vegetables; salt well; top with 3-4 thin lemon slices and more dill.

Tightly seal parchment/foil packets. Lay atop heated sheet tray. Cook for 16-20 minutes depending on fish thickness and desired doneness level.