“Gourmet” by name and taste

You don’t need to be a terrific chef with a showy culinary degree to enjoy gourmet meals at home. Whoops, strike that, make that “gourmet” because it isn’t really. It just sounds and looks gourmet, and that’s good enough for me and my stingy wallet.

I love my fish, especially fatty, flavorful fish like salmon and mackerel. But have you ever managed to find a decent fish entree outside in restaurants that doesn’t exceed at least $12~$14? Yup, fish is expensive, unless breaded and deep-fried into fish and chips, but then I can guarantee you that those “fish” are 50% deep-fried batter and the quality of the fish they use is questionable, especially since fresh fish don’t deep-fry as well as…not-so-fresh fish.

Fortunately, with just a tiny bit of time and effort, you can create this costly meal in your own kitchen for up to 1/6 of the price you pay in restaurants! Tag it with a snazzy name, and you’ve got yourself a “gourmet” meal fit to impress your friends and family!

So let me introduce you to the gourmet lunch I had yesterday: Pan-seared Salmon with Creamy Wasabi Sauce, Garlicky Greens, and Winter Squash Fries.

How nifty and sophisticated does that sound? *^_________^* And it took barely any effort! This is what I did:

I rubbed some salt, pepper, and Italian herbs onto a nice piece of salmon, pan-seared it on a skillet with a spritz of lime juice to keep it from going to dry. While the salmon was cooking, I whipped together some yogurt, finely chopped red onions, wasabi paste, lime juice, salt, pepper, herbs, and sugar. Meanwhile, I cooked up some greens with garlic, and had some slices of winter squash roasting up in the oven. The end result:

Mmm, mmm, glorious. Total time in preparation: 20 minutes. Total money spent: Approximately SGD$4.00, which is about US $2.80. Sweet deal, huh?

The sauce I just spooned over the salmon on the plate, and the coolness of the yogurt and the kick from the wasabi really shot the whole salmon up several notches.

Okay, these are not the most appetizing-looking winter squash fries, since it’s partially burnt, but believe it or not I like it that way. Call me crazy, but I absolutely love that burnt, charred taste.

The greens were just well, vegetables with a nice garlicky flavor. Simple, yet very tasty.

I also had a bowl of yogurt with red dragonfruit (more about this delicious glorious fruit later), apples, and white peach:

So lunch was quite high-class. Dinner was the opposite. Pastor Vincent invited me and a few other deacons over to his house for a steamboat dinner.

For those of you who don’t know what steamboat is, it’s an ultra-casual gathering around a huge simmering pot of soup with all kinds of different ingredients to cook in it. It’s a fun event where all rules of hygiene and double-dipping are tossed out and you gleefully share each other’s saliva and stuff yourself to your heart’s content.

These are just some of the ingredients we used for the steamboat:

Chicken, pork belly, beef liver, various fish cakes, imitation crabmeat, hotdogs, tofu, mushrooms, cabbage, prawns, meatballs…Am I missing anything?

Oh yeah…My favorite….Eggs…in the form of little quail eggs! Yippee~

To tell you the truth, steamboat can be quite bland, and I really don’t enjoy the food that much unless with tons of soy sauce and chili oil, but steamboat is all about the social time. You have tons of fun joking and talking and sharing this one big pot of boiling food and forcing each other to eat “more, more!”

Today’s food was less spectacular. But the fruits I had along with my usual breakfast sure was! Check this out:

Red Dragonfruit! How pretty! It’s just the color of pure glimming ruby…And so incredibly sweet and delicious!

My fruit bowl: red dragonfruit, grapefruit, tangerine, white nectarine, apple, pineapple, mangosteen. Yummy fruits galore!

After breakfast for some reason I was incredibly sleepy! So I took a 2 and a half hour nap! When I woke up it was already time for lunch and I had no appetite whatsoever. I even wanted to skip lunch, as breakfast was still sitting heavy in my stomach.

But I knew I had to eat, so I just turned to the food I knew that never fails to stimulate my appetite: eggs and oatmeal. So for lunch today I had scrambled eggs with red onion and Parmesan cheese, and a nice warm bowl of pumpkin oats using my leftover steel-cut oats.

By the first few bites, my appetite had returned and I chowed down each bite with gusto. It’s strange how sometimes no matter how bad your appetite is, when you actually get some food inside you, your appetite gets stimulated and suddenly you’re hungry all over again.

Especially if it’s eggs and oatmeal! They have never ever failed me yet!

On that note, what are some of YOUR choice of food when you lack an appetite? What are the foods that never fail to return your appetite?