Wednesday, April 16, 2008

WFDW

Fried Trout with Sweet Pork and Green Mango Salad:



Except without the trout and without the green mango.
I had good intentions, really. It's just that my grocery people sent me something labeled "steelhead trout" instead of the little rainbow trouts I had ordered (the recipe calls for head-on, skin-on trout), and what was in the package was most assuredly not trout at all but salmon. And then the rock hard, fully green mango that I would never in a million years have thought would be ripe, was nearly perfectly so. Disappointing because seeing what the deal is with green mango salad and using a variety of fish that we normally don't have was kind of the whole reason I chose the recipe in the first place.
Sigh.
But it was good, at least. The salad component turns out to be a lot like one of my favorite recipes ever that uses a lime juice based dressing with chiles, shallot, sugar and cilantro, and that I toss together with julienned romaine, red bell peppers, sliced mango and grilled chicken. Swap out the trout for chicken and add some lettuces, and you've basically got it. And since I was almost there with the salad component anyway, I figured I'd do just that.
Because I'm all about the salad.

The recipe has you doing a lot of dilly dallying with the pork, which, while it was a lot of screwing around, turned into a delicious salty-sweet condiment that was 100% worth the effort. It was sort of like a Thai version of candied bacon, but with fried shallots, too, and it would probably have made old shoe leather taste good. But if I were to make this again, I'd save it for an occasion when I have some leftover roast pork which would relieve one of a few of the fairly annoying and, IMO rather ill conceived steps.

Overall, I'd say hang on to the salad dressing and the sweet, crispy pork recipes and throw this stuff together with some lettuce to make an entree salad with the grilled meat of your choosing for a perfect summer meal.

p.s. New messenger bag on Etsy today. If red is your color, this one's for you!

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Comments:
Yum! That looks great!
 
Your dinner looks great! I'll have to try the sweet pork...

I think you've mentioned it before, but where do you get your fabric?!? The only fabric store I have in town is *gasp* JoAnns, so my fabric choices are limited. I've not done a lot of online fabric shopping as I'm scared by not actually getting to see it before I buy it. Any tips/tricks for making it less scary? And yes, if you couldn't tell, I'm very much a novice seamstress. Thanks for your help!

Bri
 
Your messenger bags are amazing! And I am totally impressed by your dinners -- the Ethiopian food especially. There is a great Ethiopian place down the street from me, and your lentils look pretty much identical to what they serve.

We did a candy swap a few years(!) ago, and it's nice to see that your craftiness has never waned.

Andrea
 
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