Fish

Ikan Bakar (Malaysian Grilled Fish)

Ikan Bakar is a popular grilled fish dish (say that 3x fast) in Indonesia and Malaysia, usually sold by street vendors. The fish is marinated in sambal – a Southeast Asian chili-based condiment – and grilled over banana leaves. Popular fishes used for the dish include tilapia, skate, snapper, sea bass, or stingray.

While this is a very exotic-sounding dish, it’s surprising that all of the ingredients can be easily found during a trip to your local Asian market. Banana leaves are commonly sold frozen in large sheets for very cheap – usually a dollar will get you as many as 20 leaves. Bear in mind that frozen banana leaves are more brittle than fresh, and don’t hold up to heat as well – so you’ll want to get plenty of them, at least five leaves per fish.

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Fishcake Rice Noodle Soup

This is an update to a recipe I posted earlier, but with dashi (broth) made from scratch in order to reduce our MSG intake.

This dish has become our go-to easy lunch on the weekends, when we’re running around the house doing chores. Most of the “cooking” involves letting things soak or simmer, so with some agile timer-setting you can make this dish with minimal effort.

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Lomi Lomi Salmon

NOTE: An updated version of this recipe appears in my cookbook, The Ancestral Table.

Lomi lomi salmon is a traditional Hawaiian dish served in most luaus. It is served cold and is an interesting way to consume a good chunk of nutritious, fresh food. The words “lomi lomi” in Hawaiian actually translate to “massage”, and comes from the the mixing of the ingredients by hand at the end.

I should caveat here at that I can’t stand raw onions, so I’ve never actually had lomi lomi salmon. However, my wife loves it, and makes a killer recipe that I thought the world should know.

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