Infinite Food Combinations

     For those of you that do not know me, I cook and eat more than just sushi. As I explained before, learning and practicing the art of sushi has spilled over into how I prepare and present my other food dishes, even salads! I will be showing many many different types of foods and desserts on the this blog in the future, so stay tuned! I have recently gotten written permission from Bon Appétit Magazine (to which I am an avid subscriber) to repost recipes from their magazine , get ready for some really tasty foods!
    I am not a chef, and I have not had formal training.I am just a foodie who was fortunate enough to grow up in a cooking household, where everyone, male and female, cooked! I have worked in about
6 restaurants, including: seafood, pizza, and country clubs too. I have picked up many hints and secrets along the way, and I just want to share them with all of you. This is my humble purpose.

 One tip I picked up that you can use in everyday cooking, is to not make your food homogeneous, especially sandwiches. I was quite guilty of this, because I tried to be thorough when I prepared food. If you spread mayo, or mustard to every corner of your bread, then you too are guilty of this. Here is what I mean. The next time you use mayo and mustard to make a nice deli sandwich, regardless of the meat or toppings, try to just smear the mayo on one slice of bread haphazardly, so that there is more mayo on one half than the other.  On the other slice, use a spicy brown on one half of the slice and a Dijon on the other half. Don't push it to every corner and make it flat and uniform. This would defeat the purpose; just slop it on! When you eat the sandwich, the taste will change with each bite. First you will get (depending on where you bite first) a Dijon and ample mayo taste, then you will get a Dijon/spicy brown taste as you progress to the middle, and as you finish, the mayo will be minimal and the spicy brown will dominate. In doing this, you will get three distinct tastes in the same sandwich! Your other choice is to use the mayo and mustard evenly on both slices and get just one taste, from first to last. Your choice!

Recipe: Janet McCracken Deputy Food Editor Bon Appétit Magazine May 2011

http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/quick-recipes/2011/05/scrambled-eggs-avocado-and-smoked-salmon-on-toast

The above salmon sandwich is delicious any time you want to make it. My favorite time is afternoon brunch on a lazy weekend. It can be very filling especially if you eat it with a sliced banana, apple or other fruit. It goes well with coffee or orange juice. My friend Derrick came over after he helped me with a photo shoot one morning, and I whipped two of these up for us to munch on, and all I had to drink was chocolate soy milk. He said it was perfect! The sweet after the salty was a nice combo for the tongue. The author of this recipe encourages you to experiment. I did with the dendê oil, which you can find in your local Brazilian grocery store. If there is not one near you, you can order it on the net. Here is one you can use:

http://www.amigofoods.com/chazdede200m.html

This is just one other way,as I used the dendê oil to cook the salmon. You only need a few tablespoons, if that. It has a buttery smooth flavor like hot sauce would have if you took all the hot out of it. The flavor is hard to describe, but very much worth buying and using! It goes amazingly well with garlic and shrimp, but I digress. In making variations of this sandwich, I used a huge glob of sour cream, and then the next time I made it, I used goat cheese. This is a great time to use my non-homogeneous condiment tactic, and use goat cheese on one half and sour cream on the other half of the bread slice. Delicious!

You will get addicted to this sandwich, as there are so many ways to make it, so it never gets boring! Enjoy, and thanks for reading!