Salmon and vegetables

Another food post. Another simple recipe.

Tetsu and I eat rice at least 5 times a week.  Everything goes with rice!  Japanese like white rice (and so do I) but I try to put a little brown rice in the pot just to get more fiber in our diet.

And with rice, the most typical meal will be some kind of fish and miso soup.  I'm not much good at cooking fish but with a couple of slices of salted salmon, I almost can't go wrong.

Okay... I could just toss this in the griller and grill it plain (that is how salmon will be served at breakfast). 

Or I could add a few vegetables to out diet.  I decided to add sliced onions, sliced potato strips and maetake, a type of leafy mushroom.  I "wrapped" it all in foil and added a dab of butter and a little sake (the sake steams it all a bit.)

As an aside... I can use the same ingredients and instead of butter and sake I'll mix up a tablespoon of miso with  a tablespoon of mayonnaise and then wrap it all up.  Just a different flavor but very good.

And this is my fish griller.  Almost all Japanese kitchens will grill fish (and other things) with a griller like this.  My kitchen is equipped with gas (and yes, I try to remember to turn the gas off at the valve there every night) and it has two burners and the griller.  If you recall, I bought this new stove appliance last year after my old one gave out.  Most stoves are of a standard size and will just fit into the standard space left in the kitchen cooking area.

My griller is modernized just because it doesn't need water in the drip tray.  With my old griller I'd have to put water in there to keep splatters from crusting on the bottom.  What a mess to clean up!  My new griller is Teflon coated...  Just big enough for two slices of fish... but that is pretty normal too.  I guess big families have to eat in turns...

Ta-da.  I'm not sure how appetizing that looks but I served the fish in its foil wrapping and we added a bit of soy sauce before eating.

Along with the salmon I served a salad, cold tofu (Tetsu absolutely has to eat a block of cold tofu every night) and fermented soy beans called natto.  It's a pretty healthy meal if I do say so myself.