Food pairings

Posted by spots (Singapore, Singapore) on 2 December 2006 in Food & Cuisine and Portfolio.

As important as how and what you cook, is how you pair dishes together to form a nice, balanced meal. I was particularly pleased with my food pairing for dinner a few nights ago - not only because both dishes were easy to whip up, but also because they complemented each other well. What did I cook? Grilled hoisin salmon and dashi bean salad, served with steamed rice. For the salmon, it was as easy-peasey as slabbing on hoisin sauce on a salmon fillet and grilling it for 8 minutes. And the dashi bean salad, something I made from memory (the ever creative SY once made it for all of us), was created by chucking the beans in boiling water till green and cooked, then mixing with 1tb sugar, 1tb soya, 1tb mirin, 1/2 cup dashi, 1ts sesame oil and roasted sesame seeds. There's something about salmon and green beans that go particularly well together, methinks. The deep sweet hoisin sauce was the perfect complement to the pink slightly undercooked and thus soft-and-not-too-jelat salmon meat, which contrasted in texture and taste with the still-crunchy and bright green beans, which were softened by the sweet-salty-and slightly nutty taste of the dressing. Yums!