Burnt Salmon

On Sunday I was flipping through channels and I ended up watching Anna and Kristina's Grocery Bag. The premise of the show is Anna and Kristina pick a cookbook, make four or five recipes from it, and then a guest chef comes and tries the recipes. They do this as a sort of review of the book. The cookbook they were using for the episode I watched was Nigella Express.

I thought for sure Nigella was going to receive a rave review. After all, I have this book and I love it. And I love Nigella. However Anna & Kristina actually said they were "disappointed with Nigella". I am so angry. These two hacks, who have a TV show on the W network of all places, think that they are good enough to be "disappointed" in Nigella? As in Domestic Goddess Nigella? And I don't know who their guest judge was, but he kept saying Nigella's name with disdain, instead of the intense admiration she deserves. I had never even heard of this guy, and how many people could tell you who Nigella is?

So I am going to do a re-test. And this week I will be featuring recipes from Nigella Express, and I will be reviewing it myself, since Anna and Kristina have no idea what they are talking about.

Last night I made Mirin Glazed Salmon. Mirin is a sweetened Japanese rice wine, I picked up a bottle of it at the supermarket, not the liquor store (even though it has alcohol in it). Nigella uses skinless salmon, but next time I would make mine with the skin, as it fell apart really easily. She also didn't specify what temperature to heat the pan on. I knew I shouldn't have set it as high as I did, because there is brown sugar in the marinade and sugar burns, but I didn't listen to my intuition. So the first two fillets that I cooked, burned. Not a lot though since I planned to undercook them a bit because I would be heating them up for lunch, and I didn't want to overcook them during the reheat. The next two fillets I cooked on a lower temperature, and also included the step with the marinade.

I served it with jasmine rice, and topped the whole thing with green onions. I also served it alongside a salad that I made by tossing some broccoli slaw with chopped green onions, Renee's Asian Sesame Vinaigrette, and top that with crushed ramen noodles.

The salad (which is not a Nigella recipe):

I hate broccoli, but I do enjoy broccoli slaw which is made from the stems.

The salmon & rice (Nigella's recipe for the salmon):

I didn't show a whole shot of the salmon, because they fell apart really easily, and it looked messy. Overall the taste was really really great, and it was so simple to make. The hardest part was chopping the green onions. I would recommend heating the pan over medium, and using salmon with the skin on.