Broiled Pike Mackerel

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What can I say, we love mackerel!

(I especially like to stare into their beady little eyes, but that's just me.)

With the absence of the grill (we haven't bought one yet!), we broiled these instead.

All they needed was a generous amount of salt and some olive oil. We broiled each side until the skin was slightly blackened and blistery. Lemon wedges are a must.

These pike mackerel were completely, thoroughly and utterly enjoyed with white rice.


left: out of the oven; check out the blackened parchment paper
right: these pike mackerel were not enough

So good!


[eatingclub] vancouver Mackerel dishes:
Torched! Shime Saba (Japanese Pickled Mackerel)
Grilled Pike Mackerel
Fried Hasa Hasa
Simmered Saba with Daikon Radish (Saba Oroshi-ni)
Broiled Pike Mackerel

Lemon Feta Dip

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Hors d'oeuvres. We don't really roll that way.

Probably because for us, "appetizers" just mean the same food, but perhaps in smaller quantity. (Operative word is "perhaps".) Hors d'oeuvre sizes won't even register. Plus, making tiny, tiny things is labor-intensive! But, hors d'oeuvres is the theme for this edition of First Thursdays at Thursday Night Smackdown, and we wanted to enter something, seeing as we missed the last 3 editions.

Granted, given the time constraints, we had to do something fast. We were first debating making breadsticks, but didn't have time. So, what could be easier than a dip!


that's me being too lazy to wipe the sides of the bowl

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However, I should also say:

Dips.
We don't roll that way.

Not usually, anyway. We decided to go with a simple one from the America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook.

They had a Creamy Dip Base recipe -- mainly a combination of mayo, sour cream, lemon juice and s&p -- then suggestions on different flavorings.

We didn't have sour cream on hand, so I used drained yogurt in its place. We didn't seem to have anything in the house to make any of their suggested flavors except lemons and feta.

It was a matter of combining everything into a bowl and finishing with some mint.



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All right, I cheated a little. The lemony feta dip was tasting too one-dimensional for me, so I added some leftover homemade Caesar-y dressing into it. Of course, the garlicky, anchovy-y, caper-y goodness enchanced this dip and just added a certain je ne sais quoi.



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We only had these crackers and some radishes in the house. Or, I should say, finding crackers and radishes was as far as I was willing to go in terms of looking for things to dip.



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Actually, the radish went really nicely with this dip. They provided a nice robust flavor (that the crackers lacked) to counter the lemony feta dip. One cannot beat its crunch as well.

My conclusion: this is better as a crudité dip as opposed to a cracker/chip dip. (Unless it's a very robustly-flavored chip, I guess.) I tried it with celery sticks and carrots the next day and it was great. That being the case, this will also work as a creamy salad dressing, perhaps loosened up a bit.



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Forgive the non-prettifiedness of my hors d'oeuvres. They're not put together that neatly. In my defense, it was already about midnight when I made this!

Knowing that we couldn't possibly eat all this dip as a dip (that is, in dip form), we thought of another way to use it. Stay tuned...


First Thursday posts:
Mario's Pine Nut and Ricotta Tart
Radishes, Three Ways
Semi-Lime-Cooked, Semi-Yucatecan Shrimp with Garlic Chips
Lemon Feta Dip
Chicken Marsala

We're submitting this to First Thursday: Hors d'oeuvres at Thursday Night Smackdown.

No-Bake Cheesecake with Ginger Cookie Crust

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Making baked cheesecake is something that I don't wish to do.

I like eating cheesecake, but making the baked kind seems to be fraught with all sorts of dangers.

Using a springform pan? Then there's that extra step of lining the pan with aluminun foil so the liquid from the bain marie doesn't seep into the inside of the baking cheesecake. (Excuse me? I have to bake it in a bain marie?) There's that waiting for the cheesecake to cool to room temperature, plus the additional overnight cooling in the fridge. Not to mention horror stories about cracked tops, undercooked/overcooked interiors... or other such disasters.

So, in the rare occasion that I make cheesecake at home (I think maybe just one time prior to this one), I've "cheated" and made no-bake cheesecakes. If I remember correctly, my previous cheesecake was a no-bake White Chocolate and Lime Cheesecake (made really tangy with lime, because we're acid-freaks) with a oreo cookie crumb crust. I made 2 of those for a party in 2006. For that version, I used gelatin.

But, my lazy self wanted to further reduce the number of steps for making even a no-bake cheesecake. (Yes, dissolving gelatin in some liquid is back-breaking work.)

When I saw Kevin of Closet Cooking make his version of no-bake cheesecake, I made a note to try it out.

We don't usually have cream cheese in the house, but not so long ago, we happened to have some lying around, doomed to languish in the refrigerator.

We don't usually have cookies in the house (bought or homemade), but we happened to have some Anna's Ginger Thins. (Apparently, according to their website, they are "[t]he most famous and beloved ginger cookie in the world. Since 1929.")

We don't usually have heavy cream in the house, but we happened to have some leftover from making butter chicken.

The forces in the universe wanted me to make this cheesecake!



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For the crust, I jammed our food processor with Anna's Ginger Thins and pulverized them. I added some melted butter and processing them, adding enough butter until the mixture was clumpy.



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To make the filling, I used Kevin's filling recipe as a guide. I whipped together cream cheese, sugar and lemon juice.



In a separate bowl, I tried whipping cream by hand. "Try" is the operative word. My arm was out of practice and failed miserably in the getting-air-into-the-cream department.

I folded the two white mixtures together.



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I had hoped that the two different shades of white would show up better in that photo.

I pressed down the buttered ginger cookie crumbs into a square baking pan lined with parchment paper. The whipped white filling went in.



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We happened to have some chocolate truffly things in the pantry as well. So I melted a few of those in the microwave and filled a mini-sandwich-bag-slash-pastry bag. Drizzle!



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Since I'm not only the lazy kind, but also the impatient kind, I placed the pan into the freezer (instead of the fridge) to chill.



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The "frozen" cheesecake was easier to cut, in terms of making nice edges, so we just kept the thing in the freezer. Also saves us the problem of it going bad and us having to throw it out.

To serve, slice and let soften a little bit.