Recently, my company hosted a media event for the launch of Malaysia Kitchen NYC.  Part of the event included a Malaysian food cooking demo, so there were a lot of Asian vegetables, herbs and spices on hand, some of which were not put to use.  So when I walked into our office kitchen on Monday evening and saw a pile of baby bok choy, fresh turmeric and lemongrass, I knew I had to put them to good use in that night's dinner.  My fiance and I love brainstorming ways to use ingredients we have on-hand, so we decided to use a few beautiful Skate wings we had just had delivered from Fresh Direct.  We dredged the Skate in beaten egg and black-pepper spiked cornmeal then baked it for about 8-minutes on each side.  The bok choy was put in a steamer basket along with haricot verts, freshly chopped garlic and lemongrass.  We also added a few slices of lemongrass to the boiling water underneath to infuse their essence in the veggies and soba noodles, which we would later boil in the same pot.  While everything was baking/steaming, we made a quick vinaigrette consisting of balsamic vinegar, chopped turmeric (which, to my surprise, turned my fingers a shade of bright orange!), red pepper flakes, a shot of mirin and honey.  In about 30 minutes we had pulled together a healthy dinner using just-found produce and ingredients we had in our fridge.  The next night we combined the leftover cornmeal-crusted Skate with grilled catfish, black beans, homemade guacamole, steamed brown rice and spinach to create a Mexican-inspired salad.

What Asian-inspired dishes have you made recently?