I have wanted to try poaching something in olive oil ever since Season 6, Episode 1 of Top Chef, when Kevin Gillespie made his Arctic Char with Salsa Verde of Turnips. The idea of poaching something in olive oil was totally new to me and it sounded delicious.

Fast-forward to this week, when the latest Fine Cooking landed in my mailbox. In it:

• brioche (I really need to start baking my own bread)
• a method for developing your own cheesecake recipes (guess what my mom and I will be doing when she comes to visit!)
• artichokes (love them, never tried cooking them)

…and poaching seafood in olive oil!

The basic method itself is very easy. The total prep time is about 90 minutes, but the active prep time is less than 10.

1. Season the seafood (more on that later) and let stand at room temperature for about an hour.
2. Place rack in center of oven and preheat to 225 degrees F.
3. Pour extra-virgin olive into a straight-sided sauté pan to the same depth as the seafood. Choose a pan that will just hold all the fish in a single layer. Heat the oil to 120 degrees F.
4. Place fish into pan with heated oil, then put the pan in the oven for 25 minutes. Small white droplets will have formed on the surface of the fish.
5. Remove fish from pan (carefully!) and place on rack to drain for a few minutes.
6. Serve.

Once you’re done poaching, you can strain the leftover oil through a coffee filter and re-use it once or twice. Keep it covered in the fridge for up to three weeks.

The sample recipes in the magazine included a couple of rubs (one for shrimp and one for halibut) and a couple of pastes (for salmon and tuna). I opted to make my own. This is a common flavor profile for salmon, but since I was playing it by ear I double-checked the combination in The Flavor Bible:

• 1 tsp. Kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
• Zest of half a lemon
• 1/3 tsp. dried thyme
• 2 sprigs fresh dill, finely chopped
• 1 clove garlic, smashed through a garlic press

This makes enough to season 4 6-oz. salmon fillets. Combine all ingredients in a small bowl, then drizzle in just enough olive oil to make a paste. Rub the paste all over the fish.

Tasting notes:

The texture of the fish was buttery-soft and silky. Delicious. And I think I may have even overcooked the fish a bit, judging from the amount of floaty white bits on the fillets. I was supposed to pull it when there were “a few” small white droplets on the fish, but I let it go for the full 25 minutes which produced the result shown above.

Recipe notes:

I didn’t have enough extra-virgin olive oil, so I just used regular. It came out fine, but I bet it would be even tastier with extra-virgin. Next time I do this, I’m springing for the better quality fish.

I don’t have a pan the right size, so I stuck a 9-inch baking dish into the oven when I preheated it, warming the oil in a non-stick pan on the stove. When the oil reached the right temperature, I took the baking dish out of the oven, poured in the warm oil, laid in the fish fillets, and stuck the baking dish back in the oven. It worked just fine.

I served it over a bed of steamed white rice with asparagus, which I quickly sauteed in olive oil with salt and pepper and then hit with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice at the end.

I was feeling groggy and cranky this afternoon, nursing a headache and a bad case of there’s-nothing-to-eat-in-the-house.

I was messing around the computer and came across a recipe for rice congee I’d bookmarked a while ago. A light bulb went on. There is plenty of rice in the house, and rice congee is an excellent tonic for when you feel out-of-sorts.

I took out the rice cooker and used the recipe for inspiration. I used one cup of rice, filled the bowl almost to the 1-cup water line for porridge, then topped it off with chicken stock. I threw in a few slices of fresh ginger and a large clove of minced garlic for good measure.

Now for something to eat with the rice. My husband was baking some chicken wings destined for buffalo sauce, so I asked him to save a few for me sans sauce—I’m a bit buffalo-ed out. Once the wings were done, I brushed them with a mixture of soy sauce and sesame oil, then stuck them back in the residual heat of the oven to help the sauce adhere without continuing to cook the chicken.

I had some napa cabbage and shiitake mushrooms I’d been meaning to use for quite a while now and figured they would go great with the flavors I’d already put in the rice congee. I sliced six or seven mushrooms and sauteed them quickly with some more ginger and garlic, added enough napa leaves to fill the pan, then covered to cook. Once the napa wilted, I seasoned with salt and pepper.

I topped it all off with some Chinese pickled cucumbers and fried gluten, then tried really hard not to gobble it all while it was still hot enough to burn my tongue.

I don’t usually pack Western-style bento lunches—heck, I haven’t been packing lunches, bento or not, at all these days—but the leftovers from tonight’s chicken actually fit perfectly into Ms. Bento!

This is also a good example of where packing a good bento can become very, very fussy. See all those celery sticks on the right? The lid wouldn’t close, so I had to take a bunch of them out and cut them precisely to the height of the container. I also had to choose the grape tomatoes and blackberries carefully to make sure they would pack tightly without crushing!