Salmon on a Bed of Pears, Jicama, and Cucumber with Chipotle Vinaigrette & Rice Noodles Stir Fried with Sesame Oil, Sugar Snap Peas and Peanuts

Well, this meal was the one I was talking about in my last post, that I was unable to complete because I thawed the wrong meat. We had this salmon last night for dinner. It lay on a bed of julienned pears and jicama, diced cucumbers, and a chipotle chile vinaigrette.

I really liked the combination of the cucumbers, pears, and jicama. The vinaigrette upon which it lay is a different story. It was made of a chipotle chili in adobo sauce, with a tablespoon extra of adobo sauce, rice wine vinegar, and fresh cilantro. And it was just gross! The chipotle peppers were really spicy, and the vinegar...there was so much of it, it just tasted too vinegary. At times, the taste reminded me of my own vomit, which makes sense because the vinaigrette was essentially a bunch of things ground up in too much vinegar, rather than stomach acid. The combination of the sharp vinegar taste and the spicy hotness was just too much to bear, and it overtook the rest of the flavors on the plate. Sad, because the rest of the flavors were really good ones.

If I made this dish again, I'd combine the fruit and vegetable salad with something much more mild, maybe a yogurt dressing of some kind, maybe the kind you'd make for a yogurt-based waldorf salad dressing. Then, I might include a little bit of heat by spicing the salmon with a bit of cayenne pepper, but not too much. I guess I am just a wimp, but I don't like really hot food very much, and if I do have it, I want it to be isolated in a dish like buffalo chicken wings, not all over my plate infecting everything it touches like that nasty vinaigrette.

The rice noodles were good...I boiled them while a few cloves of garlic and a package of sugar snap peas were sauteeing in a mixture of sesame and vegetable oil, and when the noodles were done I transferred them into the sauteeing vegetables and seasoned them with soy sauce. At the last minute I added some chopped peanuts.

Georg and I both agreed about the vinaigrette and had fun pouring the rest of it down the sink after dinner.