Happiness is a Brownie

I guess writing a blog is a bit like writing a book - you don't do it for the money. Sure you have people like J.K Rowlings and George R.R Martin  who have made an empire out of whatever they started out writing, but even they confessed that they started out because they wanted to write, not because they want to make tons of money. I mean as opposed to working in the banking industry where (I would say) the main attraction is the promise of money. The money for writers, if there is any to be made, may or may not come later.

And many writers, like many artists and composers, reach fame posthumously (e.g Tolken - ok now you know I read lots of fantasy novel series). So fame is also definitely not the reason for writing. And If I were to be famous, I would definitely like to still be alive to reap its rewards (minus the paparazzi in front of my house of course.)

I thought I would start a food blog and gain money from advertisers and go full time and write some more, take professional pictures, have an assistant,  get a publisher,  have a full-coloured cookbook...and then I realised... no.

I just want to write because I just want to write. Just like I want to play the piano just because I want to play the piano. And I want to bake brownies because I want to eat brownies.  Or plant pretty summery flowers even if they wither in winter. It may all seem directionless, ambitionless and a non-focused, unproductive way to live (says the voice in my head...*ok shut up now*), but it makes me happy. And happiness is a meandering path that leads to more moments of bliss and joy. And it radiates and perpetuates.

The above-mentioned brownies

So I guess what I am saying is this...writing a blog (and doing other seemingly non-productive things that do not shake the world or seem to make a big difference in my life or anyone's) is a way to create happiness.  Cheap and effective. And happiness has the ability to radiate outwards, such that when I am happy, my family is happy, and the people around me tend to be happier. Which is a ripple effect of positivity in its own right.

These 'happy moments' attitude have become all too rare nowadays  The measure of success that has been lauded and encouraged is how productive or busy one is (while looking good doing it.) Where statements like 'I wish I have time to...' or 'I'm so busy now I don't even have time to (insert your reason here)' are to be worn like badges of honour.

Ironically, a part of me still wants to be able to say those things. I grew up among high-achievers and self-motivated doers, who could juggle many things and excel in all them. I wanted to be like them, believed I was one of them. And I was caught in that flow too, and it still calls out to me sometimes. And I still feel that I should be doing more productive things to make big changes in the world.

But for now I choose to be happy in many little ways and make small changes. Happiness can also be found in doing seemingly meaningless things. Some people call it Zen and describe it differently. But you know, a rose by any other name smells the same. And by writing this, I just had my shot of happy moments.

So for happiness that radiates and perpetuates, I hope you find many ways to make yourself happy too.

And below is the recipe for the above-mentioned happiness-inducing brownies (with no additives)  that take scarcely 30 minutes from start to finish.

Happiness-inducing brownies (adapted, scarcely from Smitten Kitchen's My Favourite Brownies)

Ingredients

• 85 grams unsweetened chocolate, broken roughly
• 115 grams unsalted butter
• 265 grams granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 5 ml vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt or 1/4 teaspoon table salt (about 2 grams)
• 85 grams all-purpose flour
• A handful of walnuts  broken into random pieces (more if you prefer) 

This is how we do it

Heat oven to 180 degrees. Line a baking pan with baking paper .

Break the chocolate into pieces. The smaller they are, the faster they will melt.
Add butter to the bowl and melt the chocolate with the butter either over a double boiler or for a minute thereabouts in the microwave.

Add the rest of the ingredients one a time, stirring as you do it. Make sure that you end up with a uniform sticky brown mass that smells delicious. Resist the urge to scoop out with the spoon and eat it like Nutella.

Bake it for 25-30 minutes or less if you like to under-bake your brownies. I find my oven usually bakes it in 23 minutes, when the toothpick I insert into the centre comes out clean.

If you are willing to wait, then wait for it to cool before you cut the brownie into pieces. But for me, I slide it out of my pan, wet a knife, and cut it into squares barely 5 minutes after it's out of the oven so that I can cram delicious warm chocolate fudgy forkfuls that melt in the mouth almost immediately. (I do not believe in delayed gratification you see).

That is really one example of good things coming in small packages.

Strawberry "Secret Weapon" Cream Cake

Being a mommy, one of my tasks in my job desciption is 'Baking cakes for Bake Sales at the Kindergarten'. Apparently not many mothers (or even fathers!) know this yet, until they are forced coerced asked nicely by the Kindergarten teachers if they could do so.  Luckily, I love baking so this is not a chore. But it did remind me of a certain scene in a movie where Carrie Bradshaw played a harassed working mom who wanted to bake a cake for her child's kindergarten bake sale so much, that she ended up at a corner supermarket at 8pm buying an apple pie and a pie dish to fit in it, and then rolling and squishing the apple pie into it to make it look homemade. Poor Carrie Bradshaw. And so I am sharing this recipe with other busy moms. It is essentially a 'pour-everything-into-the-mixer' cake. If you are pressed for time, yes you can even artfully squeeze whipped cream out of the spray can and plop strawberries on the arty cream bits (I won't tell!).  Let this be the secret weapon cream cake for busy moms and dads everywhere!! :-)

Ingredients

4	Eggs
200 g	Sugar
A few drops	Vanilla essence/1 vanilla pod
125 ml	Cooking oil (I used Canola oil)
150 ml	Lemonade (e.g Orangina, Fanta lemon)
250 g	All purpose flour
3 teaspoons	Baking powder
500 ml	Whipping cream
250 ml	Philadelphia Cream Cheese/German Schmand
4 tablespoons	Icing sugar (you can add more if you like it sweeter)
1kg	Strawberries

Here's how we do it.

Grease your cake tin with butter or line it with parchment paper.
Turn on the oven to 180 degrees.

Meanwhile....
Using a electric/hand mixer, mix eggs, sugar and vanilla essence until a pale yellow colour.
Then add in oil and lemonade and mix for about 2 minutes.
Then add in the flour and baking powder, and whip the whole mixture until uniformly yellow and light (about another 2 minutes with an electric mixer)

Then pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin and slide it into the oven for the next 30-40 minutes, depending on your oven. The main thing is, that at the end of the baking period, a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake should come out clean and the cake surface should not wobble and should feel firm to the touch.

And now for the cream filling and topping

Using the (clean) mixer again, whip the cream with the sugar until stiff. Then add in the cream cheese and beat the mixture until fluffly and spreadable but still somewhat stiff.

Prep the strawberries by slicing or chopping or merely loping off the green tops according to your fancy.

Putting it all together

Let the cake cool for about an hour before doing this. The next day would be even better as the cake would have had time to cool off and really 'mould' together. (If you pressed for time, you don't even have to cut it!)

Anyway, cut the cake into half sideways. Spread half of the strawberries and cream on top of the bottom half of the cake and place the top half of the cake on it to make a strawberries-and-cream cake sandwich. Then spread the rest of the cream and strawberries on it.

You can chill the cake or eat it immediately (though I would recommend letting it rest for about 30 minutes before cutting to let everything meld together).

And voila! Yummy scrumptiousness that tells you that Spring and the sun is here with every bite.  And it is homemade :-).

Asian-ised Chicken Broth with Vegetables and Rice Noodles

I've been trying to jump on the health food bandwagon which is filled with chia seeds, beetroot brownies, green juices, phyllis husks and zucchini strands, with no bread, white rice or pasta in sight - and I kept jumping right back off. It's like going to a whole new world where real food is not real food anymore. Where brownies look like brownies but don't smell or taste like them (I tried), where vegetables pretend to be pasta, and rice and and potatoes become fugitives due to them being 'white carbs'. Not to mention bread which is no longer defined as comforting slices of warm softness for various toppings but is just known as a source of gluten, which is supposed to be bad for your gut and makes you fart, among other things. I mean, to me it all seems rather...scary, albeit in a food sense. What happened to the good old-fashioned advice of eating 3 square (well-balanced) meals a day with 2 healthy-ish snacks in between? That advice actually seems reasonable and easy-to-follow, not to mention agreeable to the tummy and the tastebuds. But now, you are supposed to have no carbs, unless they are low GI, no sugar unless it's in a fruit form (but no grapes as their fructose level is too high), gluten only if you dare, and no eggs puh-lease, just soak dem chia seeds overnight and voila you have egg substitutes (I dare you to make omelettes from them). Don't even get me started on paleo. Eat like a cave person but, but you can still have pancakes? (Sorry I don't mean to make fun of these healthy diets - okay just a little).

So anyway I was on that bandwagon again, feeling virtuous after consuming a whole bowl of gluten-free, organic homemade chicken broth with lots of  bak choy, broccoli, carrots, ginger, onions and chilli, topped with chicken and rice noodles (in other words, Mee Soup as it is known by the Malays in Singapore). And then fell right off when I decided that after all that virtousness, I just needed to eat chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. And so I did, after baking it from scratch with white flour and real eggs (how dare I!) following Nigella's Old-Fashioned chocolate cake recipe which I love love love.

But at least I am happy to say also that seeing my children eat both Mee Soup and REAL Chocolate Cake makes me feel like a well-balanced mommy - strange but true!

Chicken Broth with Vegetables and Rice Noodles (Mee Soup)

Ingredients for the chicken broth

• Chicken bones from one chicken
• 2 onions
• 2 carrots
• 2 leeks
• 1 thumb-sized piece of ginger
• 5 cloves of garlic
• Enough water to cover the chicken bones
• Salt and pepper to taste

Boil everything for about 1 hour until you get a golden liquid. Drain and use the broth to add flavour to just about everything you want, but in this case, for the Mee Soup.

And now to transform it to Mee Soup

• 1/2 onion
• 1 clove garlic
• 1cm ginger
• 5-6 small dried prawns or dried anchovies (from the Asian shop - can be omitted)
• Chicken breast/thigh cut into strips
• Chopped broccoli, carrots, bean sprouts, bak choy and whatever vegetables you like
• Thin rice noodles (the rice vermicelli kind, or the slightly thicker kind for Pho or Pad Thai)

Place the onion, garlic, ginger and dried prawns/anchovies with a little water in a food processor and blitz into a paste.  Fry in a teaspoon of oil until you the fragrant smell hits you. Then add half the prepared chicken broth (you can add more later if you need to), together with the chicken strips and chopped vegetables. Let it boil and simmer until the chicken strips are cooked and the vegetables are tender.

Meanwhile soak the rice noodles according to package instructions until they are soft.

For the assembly

Add the soft rice noodles, pour the hot broth with chicken and vegetables over them.
And to make the transformation complete, add these for toppings as much or as little as you fancy :

• Chilli slices
• Rice vinegar
• Tomato ketchup
• Soy sauce
• Coriander leaves
• Fried onion

Mmmmm warm, comforting and yummy. Just don't blame me if you feel like eating chocolate cake after that!

Moroccan-inspired fish with lots of memories.

I seldom cook fish for the simple reason that fish is either expensive or not fresh or both. But the Turkish supermarket that we always frequent happened to have fresh sea bass on that day there so my lovely husband, knowing how much I love fresh fish, bought one.

But alas, when I unpacked it, there it was - glassy eyes staring at me, scales gleaming, gills red and tummy full of innards. Alamak, as the Malays say it. OMG, roughly interpreted.  So now I have to scale and gut the fish and the only times I've seen it done, were when I was between the ages  of 6 to 9, when I accompanied my mother to the wet market while I was still living in Singapore. Back then, Singapore was full of wet markets and I still remember vividly, the one in Ghim Moh where I grew up (and looking at the Google images brought me right back to the thick of it) - vegetable-sellers standing on stools, shouting and waving their green offers,  Indian women in their vibrant saris sitting cross-legged chatting with each other surrounded by their colourful spices, live chicken squawking in their cages and friendly fishmongers scaling and cutting up fish caught a few hours before and who gave my mom fish roe for free knowing that I love them. Just opening up that package and staring at that fish brought back all those memories. Something that opening a pack of frozen, square-cut salmon fillet could never do.

But memory alone is not enough to scale and gut the fish and so I had to youtube it.  Suffice to say I managed. But what became of that fish after being cleaned is even better. It got to be smothered with a Jamie Oliver's Moroccan-inspired spice paste for his Moroccan Sea Bream dish (from  Jamie's 15-minute meals) that went really well with the couscous (though I must admit that my children preferred to have the fish with rice and corn kernels and a side of vegetable sticks to dip into the sauce). You will notice, however that after all my substitutions, it has become neither Jamie's nor Moroccan. But deliciously so and I'm proudly owning this one.

Ingredients

For the spice paste :

50 g parmesan cheese
2 tbsp ground nuts (or use pine nuts)
1 whole roasted capsicum or bell pepper
3 fresh tomatoes
1 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar
A pinch of salt and pepper
A dash of garlic powder (or half a garlic for a stronger taste)
A squeeze of lemon.
Half a cup of extra virgin olive oil
1 fresh chilli (optional)

Put everything in a blender/food processor and blitz to a smooth paste. Adjust the taste accordingly.

Short-cut tip - You can also use a jar of pesto and blitz that together with the ingredients, minus the nuts and parmesan.

For the fish :

1 whole fish, scaled and gutted (or 4 white fish slices with skin on)
Salt and pepper for to taste
100ml hot water or hot seafood/vegetable broth
A pinch of saffron strands

Heat a frying pan with a little bit of oil in it. Meanwhile, season the fish with salt and pepper. When the pan is hot, add the fish, skin down and leave for about 2-3 minutes, to cook and crisp up the skin, depending on the thickness of the fish. Then flip the fish over. Drop the saffron strands into the hot water/broth and stir until it becomes yellow. Add 2 tablespoons of spice paste. Then pour everything into the pan, around the fish. Cover and let it simmer on a low flame for about 7 minutes until the gravy has thickened to the consistency that you like. Add more water/broth if it gets too dry.

Sprinkle some coriander and serve with couscous or rice, with roasted or steamed vegetables and more spice paste (and extra chilli slices if you wish for an extra zing) on the side.

Sedap kawan-kawan! (Malay : It's really delicious my friends!)

Spaghetti for the Soul

Warning : This is a vent post. Usually I am a happy, cheerful, contented person, but being blue once in a while is also important as it gets us in touch with our inner self and brings to our awareness, the things in our lives that we need to change. Or so I'm told.

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Sometimes I'm convinced that some women are put on this Earth (and Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and fashion magazines that make you feel ugly  - shout out to Barz Luhrman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI) to make you feel bad about yourself. Of course this is entirely my own self-construct (/destruct) brought about by days when I already feel blue, but let me put in words what normal, slightly overwhelmed mothers with no outside help, earning peanuts (or paid in hugs) feel when confronted with such a reality (or illusion that is passed off as reality in our state of blueness). We start to ask ourselves, why are we given this end of the stick? Why are we not born blond and beautiful or brunette and svelte? I mean that 30-year-old model has 2 kids and still looks amazing and is lauded for looking amazing on the catwalk after a mere 6 weeks of giving birth (while I looked and felt like a cross between a cow and a dugong), and has $8 million in her bank account to boot.  Or how about an (ex) supermodel who is merely 4 years older than me but caused an online uproar at how amazing she looked in her non-photoshopped photos, and how perfect her family is (all perfect skin and teeth and probably with an IQ of 160, due to her perfect mothering I suppose). Or how another uh.ma.zing mother of 4 (4!!) small children appeared on  Huffingtonpost with perfect hair, make-up and body with the brazen tagline "What's your excuse?". Really just makes me want to stop trying because whatever I do, I don't think I can reach these pinnacles of perfection, right? Might as well not work, wear pyjamas the whole day, don't wash my hair, don't wear makeup, eat all the crunchy fried chicken, eat nutella by the bottle and outsource the bringing up of my kids to kindergartens and schools that would probably do a better job of nurturing their intellect.

(A week later.....)

(actually no...I was just being a drama queen...)

But I just can't do it. I just can't have smelly hair and eat fried chicken all day long and outsource my children to kindergartens and schools. I realised we humans are wired to want to be the best we can be and that is why it is so darn difficult to accept that our best is perhaps not enough. Or maybe I am speaking for myself. But one thing is clear, I can choose. I can choose to look at those women as a reminder and a reflection of who I am (woefully) not, or I can take them as examples of women who have managed to use their strengths to succeed in their various niches and thus remind myself of my own strengths and to look for my own niche to succeed in.

And so today is another day where I will give my best (and convince myself that it is enough). And hug my children and husband tightly when they come home and give them homecooked food to eat, because I think for now, that is my niche. Because it is damn tough to be everything to everyone and credit should be given for trying (credit should also be given to good ol' homecooked food for nourishing the soul as well as the body, and thus, this post on Spaghetti for the Soul).

 

Ingredients (for 2 adults and 2 children)

For the pasta

• Half a pack of spaghetti or linguine, cooked until al dente according to packet  instructions. 

Start making the sauce first. While the sauce is simmering, cook the pasta and save about 1/3 cup of the pasta water to add to the sauce.

For the sauce

• 300ml passata tomatoes (or canned tomatoes)
• 1 tablespoon of butter
• 1 tablespoon of sugar
• A pinch of salt and pepper
• 1 teaspoon of garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar
• 100ml chicken or vegetable stock (or water)
• 2 eggs

Pour everything except the 2 eggs into a pan and let them simmer merrily together for about 20 minutes, occassionally stirring it to make sure nothing sticks to the bottom. Season to taste. At the 15th minute, crack the 2 eggs in and cover, undisturbed. Check after 3 minutes that the whites are cooked and the yolks are still runny. Turn off heat and remove pan. We need the yolks runny for the sauce.

Breadcrumb topping

• Breadcrumbs from about 4 pieces of white bread (ciabatta, foccacia, baguette all work well or about 2 cups of Panko breadcrumbs)
• A pinch of salt, pepper and garlic powder
• A teaspoon of rosemary or dried herbs of your choice
• Zest from half a lemon
• A teaspoon of olive oil or butter

Put the oil together with all the other ingredients into a small frying pan. Stir and keep and eye on it as once it gets brown, it gets brown really quickly. Once the crumbs are light brown and crunchy and the lemony-herb scent hit your nose, turn of heat and remove breadcrumbs into a bowl.

Assembly

• Drain your pasta and pour back into the pot.
• Add the sauce to your pasta and stir stir stir to make sure that the yolks break and emulsify into the sauce and that each spaghetti strand is slickly coated. It is alright to leave some of the cooked egg whites in chunks.
• Add a half of the pasta water and stir again. Cover the pot and do not disturb for about 3-5 minutes. Add more pasta water if you need more sauce.
• Then stir again and place in bowls.
• Add a healthy serving of the crunchy breadcrumb topping and add some grated parmesan and lots of freshly cracked pepperand chilli flakes if you wish.

Twist and slurp away and feel better :-)

Moneypenny and Timesaver Chicken and Vegetables in Creamy Provencal Sauce

This chicken dish has saved my family many times from preservative-laden frozen foods or expensive restaurant takeaways.  Eating out here is expensive compared to Singapore where you can get a delicious meal for about 20 Euros as a family (even less at food courts).  A restaurant meal for 2 adults and 2 children with drinks will set you back at least 40 Euros, and that is for the pizza-pasta-burger-salad-and-the-occassional-small-steak variety at most places. And when we go out for sushi at our favourite Tokyo Sushi Restaurant in Mannheim - well it's more likely close to 90 Euros (doesn't help that my children gobble up a plate of sashimi each.) And there is nary a Thai, Malaysian or Chinese food place that does not use MSG (gives me debilitating headaches), although I do make an exception for Tiger and Dragon Cafe in Heidelberg that serves Thai/Vietnamese/Asian-influenced rice and noodle-based dishes as they seem to use the least of that stuff. But a really great bowl of Pho without MSG with broth made from scratch will set you back 12 Euros. And a plate or rice with beef rendang? 15 Euros! Not to mention 3 sticks of satay with condiments for 10 Euros!! Aarrrgh! And so you see, being able to cook here is actually a survival skill. And as my friend (you know who you are Mr K.A) and I fervently concur, "Eating well is the best revenge".

And so it's a blessing that I can cook and love to cook but being a busy work-at-home mom  (I am typing this after doing translation work for the university and organising my lesson plans for a class I will be teaching while the laundry stares at me, fervently hoping I will finish my to-do list before I have to pick up the children from kindergarten - oh shi* i still have to cook lunch!)  and that my children love chicken but my husband has his days when he feels "chickened-out" (due to a childhood chicken overdose) and for those days, I will add potatoes and more vegetables to the dish so he'll get the vegetarian version.

The leftovers are wonderful as a sandwich (mash the chicken pieces into the sauce and pile it up on a sourdough with crunchy salad on the side).  Or top it with some mashed potatoes and cheese and bake it until the cheese melts for a chicken pot pie + cottage pie mash up.

Ingredients (for 4 and some leftovers):

Note : If making the vegetarian version, leave out the chicken breast pieces, add more vegetables and use vegetable stock.

• 2 or 3 chicken breasts
• 1 large potato, peeled
• 1 carrot
• 1 onion
• A handful of french beans (or peas or brocolli or something green)
• A handful of mushrooms (I used brown button ones but any kind will do)
• 300 ml of chicken or vegetable stock (homemade or from concentrate or cube)
• 3 tablespoons of creme fraiche or cream (or in a pinch, cream cheese)
• A pinch of dried herb de provence or tarragon or thyme 
• A dash of garlic powder (you can also use 1 finely chopped garlic but make sure they don't burn)
• Shakes of salt and pepper to taste
• 1 tablespoon of butter
• 1 tablespoon of all-purpose flour

This is how we do it :

Cut the chicken breast meat and the vegetables into bite-sized pieces.

Add the butter (and a little vegetable oil to the pan to stop the butter from burning), to the pan and add the chicken, potatoes, carrots, mushrooms and onions. Let them brown a little before adding the flour.

Once everything is coated and slick with the flour and butter, add the stock. Let it bubble a little before adding the cream (or cream cheese). Season with salt, pepper, garlic powder and the dried herb de provence and stir with a wooden spoon until smooth. Let it bubble some more, thickening the sauce. Put the lid on and stir occassionally for the next 10 minutes or until the vegetables are tender enough to your liking.

Towards the end, add in the french beans (they take the least time to cook but if you are using broccoli add that together with the other vegetables). If the sauce is too thick, add in some water and if it still too runny, add in some more cream or parmesan cheese if you want.

And so, your creamy chicken should look somewhat like this :

Creamy Chicken Provencal (sans the carrots though, sorry)

I served it with steamed white rice with lots of cracked black pepper, but it also goes well over mashed potatoes, cooked polenta or eaten with with biscuits/savoury scones.

And definitely a winner as a tummy-warmer in 30 minutes.

I need Salmon Fishcakes more than I need Taylor Swift

I  caught my almost 3-year-old daughter singing 'shake it off, shake it off' the other day. I almost choked on my coffee. Not because she is one of the most articulate and talented 2 3/4-year-olds that I know (totally unbiased opinion of course), but most of all she is singing along to Taylor Swift! Having said, I must say though that her songs are getting (albeit annoyingly) catchier and even I caught myself humming 'shake it off' to myself while stirring risotto. Not a proud moment.

So anyway I decided to retreat to the kitchen and leave my children to their own devices for a while (dancing and singing to the radio) and stood in front of the fridge and looked at the assorted mix of leftovers and wondered what to make out of them. And saw that I had leftover baked salmon fillet and potatoes from yesterday's dinner. And thus, came up with the brilliant idea of making salmon fishcakes. And these were what I laid out on my counter :

Ingredients :

• 4 large boiled potatoes, cut into chunks and mashed
• 3-4 pieces of salmon fillets (each about the size of a smallish palm). If you don't have any, I suppose canned salmon fillets would work in the equivalent amount)
• 2 tsp tomato ketchup
• 1 tsp mustard
• 1 heaped tbsp chopped dill (or half a tsp of dried dill)
• 2 tbsp plain flour
• 1 small egg, beaten
• Dashes of salt and black pepper
• Sprinkling of garlic powder
• A handful of frozen or fresh peas (optional)
• Sunflower oil for pan frying 

Optional sauces for serving:

• Chilli sauce/tomato ketcup/tartar sauce
• Teriyaki sauce 

 

 So this is how we do it : 

Take everything (except the sunflower oil and sauces) and mash it into a bowl with your hands or a fork. Shape into patties (this time, you have to use your hands, I'm afraid). Pour sunflower oil into a shallow non-stick pan and when it's hot, add in the patties and cook for about 1 minute (depending on how hot your pan is) until brown, before flipping to the other side. Place on grease-proof paper and serve while still warm with steamed vegetables, a salad or cut vegetables or even fries if you are so inclined, and dipping sauces of your choice. (mine being chilli sauce, but tartar sauce works especially well too when you bite into the pickle-y pieces)

Or, the Japanese-inspired version will be to just pour Teriyaki sauce from the bottle over the salmon patties, or just as a glaze. Then serve it with steaming white jasmine or Japanese rice and a clear vegetable or miso soup.

Salmon Fishcakes with Lamb's Lettuce in Vinagrette dressing