Salmon and Sweet Potato

Salmon and Sweet Potato

20110429:
I had sweet potato and salmon to use, so I did a Google search and found a recipe that called for

1 sweet potato, peeled and thinly sliced; 1/2 medium yellow onion, roughly chopped; ginger; 1/3 cup orange juice (the original called for marmalade, but I only had orange juice); 2 teaspoons margarine*; 1/2 pound salmon, skin removed cut into pieces; 2 tablespoons of bread crumbs; parsley (makes 2 servings)

(Thinly) Sliced Sweet Potato

*To replace one cup of margarine one may use 1 cup shortening plus 1/2 teaspoon salt OR 1 cup butter OR 7/8 cup vegetable oil plus 1/2 teaspoon salt OR 7/8 cup lard plus 1/2 teaspoon salt.

Steps Taken:
Peeled the sweet potato.* Chopped up half an onion. Thinly sliced the sweet potato. Added 1/3 cup orange juice. Tossed all the ingredients, and laid the sweet potato slices out flat.

Lemon and Pepper (left), Teriyaki (right)

Topped one half with a lemon and pepper mix and the other half with teriyaki sauce. Put the glassware in the oven. Meanwhile, removed the skin from the salmon, cut it into little slices and cubes, and then melted a tablespoon of butter. While I melted 1 tablespoon, I probably only used 2 teaspoons. After forty minutes, I took the glassware out of the oven and laid the fish on top. Then I put it all back into the oven for another 12 to 15 minutes.

Out of the oven at forty minutes.

Finally, when the dish was ready, I removed it from the oven and decided to add some panko.

*This was my third or fourth time peeling a potato-like vegetable. Once I helped out trying to make potato chips and once I helped make the okonomiyaki.

Result & Comments:
The salmon with butter and pepper and lemon tasted great. The sauce also tasted great. Unfortunately, the sweet potato didn't taste that great. Perhaps it had more to do with the texture.

Topped with salmon!

The sweet potato might have been sliced too thinly, so that whenever I bit into a slice, I didn't get the full flavor. It's also possible the sweet potato was overcooked. The texture was alright if I got a lot of the potato into a single bite, but still not great. Actually, maybe it was undercooked! Ultimately, I only know the facts: the dish baked on its own for 40 minutes and then an additional 12 to 15 minutes for the salmon.

I ate half of it. I could slightly taste the BBQ sauce. Then, at 12:47 AM, I put the half I didn't eat back in the oven with the heat off.

If there was a fault to be found somewhere it'd be with the orange juice. And although I was skeptical that it would work when I was using it, I - against intuition - went ahead with it anyways. But that's why I tried to fix it with the lemon and pepper.

Topped with panko

Alternatively, a reason it tasted bad is that it didn't have pulp. OJ without pulp is somehow different. I normally drink OJ with pulp, but recently I went to a nearby store and all it had was pulp-free OJ. On a related note, using pulp-free OJ is quite the departure from the marmalade called for by the original recipe.

And, yet another theory, is that I just wasn't used to eating yams, and that my preconceptions about the OJ affected the dish's flavor. I came up with this theory, because it felt like the dish progressively tasted better as I was eating it.

On a different note, the panko didn't go well with the dish; the flakes got soggy too quickly.

Ready to make sweet potato chips!

Failed Side Project:
I had tried to make chips with the remaining sweet potato, but the slices that were sliced too thinly burned too quickly. And the slices that were unevenly sliced burned unevenly. Then, to top things off, I forgot about the slices that didn't burn and eventually those burned as well!

On the bright side, some of the partially burned ones that I removed early tasted great - though they could have been a little bit crunchier. And, aside from the crunchiness, they slightly reminded me of the chips I've gotten from the store (e.g., Trader Joes has sweet potato chips, taro chips, etc.).

I should have used more oil. In addition, I should have applied the salt afterwards instead of mixing it into the oil.

[20110531]

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Leftovers in an Omelette (20110501)

20110501:
Because throwing leftovers into an omelet is generally a good idea, I went ahead and tried it with the salmon and sweet potato leftovers: it worked wonders.

While I can't remember if I added cheese or not, I probably did add some cheddar cheese.

I definitely added one or two hot dogs.

The texture of the omelet and the saltiness of the hot dogs brought out a much more fulfilling experience from the salmon and sweet potato dish.

Note that the orange strips of color in the picture above are pieces of sweet potato, not cheese.

[20110601][20161106 Edit]