French cooking techniques have always fascinated me. Although I grew up with an “Asian Mom’s” cooking style, I learned how to cook a lot through YouTube videos, which developed my Western-style cooking techniques. Therefore, I learned to look in my fridge and just throw it together like my mother, who, unlike me, manages to make a perfect dish every time.

This is a salmon meunière, which requires the French technique of coating a piece of protein with flour and pan-frying it gently with butter. As the flour coating browns to a light, delicious crisp, the butter gives a deep, nutty flavor that keeps the salmon moist in the middle. To accompany the salmon, I utilized the leftover brown butter to make a beurre blanc sauce, which is a reduction of white wine, vinegar, butter, and shallots.

However, for my version, I wanted to make a French-Japanese fusion dish, so I replaced the vinegar with a traditional Japanese citrus, sudachi. The peppery, herbal notes of the sudachi pair perfectly with the buttery salmon and create a stable, yet unique dish. A final sprinkle of parsley ties the whole dish together and incorporates some freshness.