Cooking western food is never my kind of skill. There always something missing in the taste area, which I never sure what was it. I guess because western food is a very simple dish which made me harder to cook, and I get use to so many herbs and spices in Asian cooking. However cooking western food has making me appreciate the true taste of the protein.

I grilled salmon fillet couples of time already, but I never get the flesh to cook right and evenly. They were always too rare and almost raw in the middle, that I couldn’t even continue eating them. I had to recook them in the microwave to get them edible. Probably it is also because I don’t enjoy eating sashimi and all sort of other raw things (except YuKe; Japanese style steak tartare). The rawness is so unacceptable that my husband (big fan of raw foods) mentioned about how the fish should be cook longer.

In order to practice my salmon grilling skill, I went to fish market and bought a whole Salmon Atlantic. The smallest one is about 3 kg, and the fish is enough for a month menu dinner rotation. There you go, I tried different way of cooking them and I did it. The image shown below is not yet a perfect crispy skin salmon, as you can see some part of the skin in the middle has a lighter colour. Later after I did the meal, I found out that you have to apply pressure when cooking the skin.

This time I tried to use a strainer as my final step in making mash potato. The texture is really smooth, but using strainer is too much work and muscle aching. Next time I’ll just stick to the potato masher.

Ingredients

• 1 salmon fillet, deboned (about the size of your palm)
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1/4 lime
• 1 tbsp of olive oil
• 1 large size of desiree potato (about the size of your fist)
• 25 gr of butter
• 1/4 cup of mozzarella cheese
• Salad vegetable mix
• French dressing

Instructions

1. In a small pot, boil the potato until cook. Peel the skin and mash it. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add butter and mash it until smooth. Finally add grated cheese and mash it until mixed. (To achieve a smooth mash potato, use a strainer)
2. Wash the salmon and pat dry with paper towel. Add salt and pepper to taste.
3. Heat olive oil in a pan. Squeeze the lime juice over the salmon. Cook it skin side down on the pan for 5 minutes. (Try putting pressure on the salmon in the first two minutes to achieve even crispiness)
4. Flip the salmon carefully and cook for another 2 minutes.
5. Turn your oven on 180° C and cook your salmon for 3-4 minutes. (Optional, I like mine to be well done. Be careful not to overcook)
6. Serve the salmon with mash potato and green salad.

Cooking time (duration): 15

Culinary tradition: French

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!

Anyway, back to my finding of this great recipe of Chocolate Mouse. I found several genuine and very convincing recipes of the mouse, but too unsure which one of them is actually works (not collapse) and tastes better. So, I started by eliminating the recipe that use butter. No hard feeling to butter, but you need a really good quality of butter if you want to use one because it is a ‘no bake’ recipe. You could really taste and smell the butter. According to my past experience while baking a chocolate bun, although I used a good quality of butter (or at least I think it is), I could taste the yucky oily after baked butter in the bun. I thought to myself, the chocolate mouse is not baked, so I would not want to risk it.

I still have several failures and heartbreaks while trying this recipes though. So here is some tips to keep in mind before you start making your chocolate mouse.

1. Always make sure to use the eggs on the room temperature.
2. Cool down the chocolate before putting the egg yolk in, and stir it fast when the yolks are in (the mixture will be come vey heavy and thick).
3. Put the clean bowl for beating the thickened cream for at least for 30 minutes in the fridge. It will help the beating of the cream to make it whipped nicely.
4. Make sure that the bowl for beating the egg whites is clean without any fat and oil residue, or otherwise the beating of egg white will fail.

Another habit of mine involving melting the dark chocolate ala au bain marie, I am always to lazy to do it the old way. So out with the old and in with the new, I always melt the chocolate in the microwave, quick and easy. The only thing that you should keep in mind is that remember to set your microwave power down to 50 %, and just do it for 40 seconds at a time. Stir it with metal spoon. And do it for another 40 seconds and you are done. If the chocolate is still chunky, do it for another round.

Preparation time (minutes): 30

Culinary Tradition: French

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!