I wasn’t joking about having to detox after my weekend of burger eating and beer drinking. In my last post I might have failed to mention that I ate a beef and lamb gyro in addition to the three burgers in two days. And the day before that I ate a torta stuffed with not only ham and chorizo, but hot dogs, too. Hot dogs. OK, I took the majority of the hot dog pieces out of the torta because they were a little overwhelming, but still, that is an insane amount of meat to eat in three days. That’s an insane amount of meat to eat in a week. I’m grossed out just thinking about it. Oh, and let’s pretend that there was no late night Taco Bell run this weekend, because that would just be completely over the top (although they were out of beef, so it could have been worse, right?).
Thankfully the meat streak has ended, and vegetables have made a triumphant return to my plate. I’ve eaten this salad for the last two nights and will probably be eating more of it tonight, although without the salmon since I polished all of that off yesterday. There’s no real recipe for this salad; it’s basically just a bunch of veggies that work well together, some quickly marinated salmon, and a peanut dressing to top it all off. You can change the ingredients based on your personal tastes, what looks good at the grocery store, or what you already have in your kitchen.
For the most part I didn’t list ingredient amounts below, both because I wasn’t keeping track as I added stuff and because it’s easy enough to play around with the ingredients until they taste good to you. I thought about using tofu instead of salmon, but in the end I stuck with what I’m more comfortable cooking. I do have some freebie tofu to use up, so maybe I’ll try it out on the leftover salad now that I’m out of salmon. I was also thinking that some crunchy ramen noodles or rice noodles would be a nice addition. See? There’s a lot of room to improvise.
Salmon marinade: tamari, rice wine vinegar, juice of 1/2 lime, 1 glove garlic, small piece of chopped ginger, and a tiny bit of sugar. I more or less used the same marinade that I used when I made fried rice with soy-ginger salmon, so you can check out that post if you want precise measurements. Mix all the marinade ingredients, throw them in a bowl with the salmon, and refrigerate it while you get the salad ingredients ready.
The salad: 1/2 head savoy cabbage, a couple handfuls of watercress (which I would replace with spinach or romaine or just leave out next time), 1 shredded carrot, a few handfuls of bean sprouts, 1/2 cucumber, 1/2 red pepper, 1/2 serrano pepper.
The dressing: a few spoonfuls of peanut butter, 1/2 sliced serrano pepper, honey, soy sauce, lime juice, and canola oil. I stuck this in the microwave for 30 seconds or so to make the peanut butter easier to work with. This dressing was pretty good but kind of intense, so if you’re looking for something a little lighter I would use a vinaigrette.
Cook the salmon in a pan with little oil over medium-high heat, flipping once, until done to your liking. Drizzle a little dressing over a plate of greens, and top with a piece of salmon. Sprinkle with sesame seeds.
