Sesame Noodles with Spinach and Salmon

Hello friends! I hate starting out a blog post complaining about life. However, I really am in some sort of crisis right now and am quite non-functional even though I should really be working double time to meet my deadline! Agh!

Amidst all these crazy stress that I’m dealing with, cooking and eating well has been my savior. Sara, the woman behind Pidge’s Pantry, picked this week’s Food Matter’s Project… Sesame Noodles with Spinach and Salmon. Holy smokes, this dish is AMAZING! It was hard to go slow while eating. My full bowl was empty in a flash! I felt like I was dining at a nice Japanese restaurant.

  
All the flavors in this Sesame Noodles with Spinach and Salmon blended together perfectly… the tender and savory salmon flakes with some salty, crackly salmon skin; the slightly sweet greens with the garlicky, sesame crunchies; and the perfectly done noodles. There’s no butter, cream, or an incredible amount of oil in the dish. But the little bit of sauce that coated everything had a wonderful sweet and buttery taste. Oh, every bite was fantastic! Wish I could take full credit for the recipe and the cooking, but it’s Mark Bittman’s recipe and DFJ was the chef tonight, I was merely an assistant.

You would be pleasantly surprised to know that making this dish is not that hard nor complicated! It didn’t require too much preparation nor any fancy ingredients. One crucial element is to properly cook the salmon. The trick is to the have the oil really hot when you put the salmon in the pan. This way you get a crispy exterior and a tender and flaky interior. This also helps prevent the fish from sticking. DFJ followed Mark Bittman’s instructions exactly and cooked each side for 3 minutes.

We followed the original recipe closely, which you will find at Pidge’s Pantry. The recipe required 1 ½ lbs of spinach but we only had 8 oz, so we added two leaves of kale. It worked well because kale doesn’t wilt as much as spinach does. We didn’t have any soba noodles left in the pantry, so we used our Japanese green tea noodles and it was very tasty.

DFJ and I really loved this delicious and authentic Japanese dish and I’m sure we are not the only ones with happy bellies. Check out what the other FMP members cooked up at our website. If we were able to make this happen in our kitchens, so can you! Again, visit Pidge’s Pantry for the original Mark Bittman recipe.  

I am already looking forward to the leftovers! Happy Monday you guys!