From last night: grilled fish in teriyaki glaze over rice. If the vague, MRE-sounding title leaves you cold, it's because to do this right, you should use top-notch ingredients, specifically good salmon. But the season is more or less over, and I don't have the cheddar for that kind of opulence, so instead you get GRILLED FISH OVER RICE instead of something sexier sounding. Step 1: ingredients. For sauce mirin, sake (you can do without if you're looking to cut cost further), sugar, soy sauce, fresh grated ginger. For fish if you have money, buy good fish, wild king salmon is best. If you're me, stumble over to the Fred Meyer across the street, find the cheapest, least questionable fish you can, wish you had more money, cry a little bit. I ended up with rock cod. The sign said "wild," and I had no choice but to believe it. It was less than $5 a pound. I don't want to know why. For pickled veggies bunch of radishes, rice vinegar, sugar, salt. Rock cod: not sexy at all. Step 2: pickled radish. Slice radish up, dump a bunch of unseasoned rice vinegar over the pieces in a tupperware container. Add salt (2 t), sugar (2 T). Let it sit refrigerated for a long time. Step 3: sauce. Mix 1/2 c mirin with 1/4 c sake. Gently heat, add 1/4 c soy sauce, 2 T sugar, a generous helping of grated ginger. Stir, reduce for about a half an hour give or take. Step 4: rice. If you have good rice, rinse under cold water in the sink for a few minutes until water runs clear. Then, with water running, "polish" the rice for a long-ass time. Ten minutes, maybe? Throw in rice cooker, forget about it until it's done. KB, I'd be lying if I said I didn't covet your stainless steel rice cooker. Fine looking machine. If you don't have good rice, rinse but don't polish. With good rice, polishing makes for a more tender, well-defined grain after cooking. With bad rice, it makes for mush. Step 4.5: drink, watch The Wire. Step 5: fish. Rinse off your cheap-ass fish and pat dry. Brush with home-made teriyaki sauce. If not for the nature of the challenge, I would have oven-baked at a high temp to get a good glaze, but in order to follow the rules, I just threw it on the grill. Grill at moderately high temp for five minutes per side. Careful not to overcook. Dear KB: thanks for picking the coldest, darkest week of the YTD to throw up a grilling challenge. Not pictured: me shaking my fist at the frigid, formless void above, cursing. Step 6: plating. Throw hot fish over rice, add a side of pickled veggies, drizzle with some reserved sauce. Crumble some dried seaweed over it if you've got some handy. Enjoy. Given how cheapo the fish was, tasted real good. Want to try again with good salmon when I'm wealthy.
Nice! Bueno on The Wire, bueno on the Fred Meyer shout-out. Know what kind of salmon you can get in Los Angeles? "Salmon." It's like ordering "coffee." If it makes you feel better, I'm jealous. I did my grilling in shorts. It's finally gotten down to the 60s down here. Which means it'll probably shoot back up to the 80s for Thanksgiving. We once roasted a turkey in 92 degree heat. It sucked.
Just finished season 3 tonight for the second time. Same thought this time around as I had the first: this show is Shakespearian. Don't know if I'll ever see TV this good again in my life. GoT is entertaining and all, but The Wire? That's HBO's golden age, right there.
The Wire is abso-fucking-lutely spectacular. I'm just kind of agape when I watch it. Generation Kill is pretty good, but it isn't quite The Wire. I suspect you missed this. There followed an anime club discussion. DO NOT GO HUNT FOR IT YET because Madoka Magika is something you have to just walk into, knowing nothing. But if you do, holy fuck. I am not a great big anime fan. I like Miyazaki. There are a couple others I tolerate. And I can say with no hesitation that Madoka Magika is one of the top three or four things I've ever watched. Give it through Episode 3. That's 66 minutes of your life. If it doesn't suck you in like a black hole I'll be amazed. By the bye? Thanksgiving day, the day I brined the turkey, it hit 87 on the porch.
Alright, I'll give it a crack. But it'll have to wait until I'm finished with the last two seasons of The Wire- can't leave something like that mid-stride. Thanksgiving at 87 degrees I could maybe wrap my head around. Christmas in that climate? Don't know if I could wrestle back that kind of cognitive dissonance.
You won't have to wait for shit, yo. The Wire came out a year apart. You're supposed to wait between seasons. Madoka Magica, meanwhile, is 12 20 minute episodes. In other words, the equivalent of four episodes of The Wire. Just do it. It's on Netflix.