TFF: Salt and Pepper Salmon

I'm almost embarrassed to post about this recipe for Salt and Pepper Salmon because it is dead easy, and took me 10 minutes start to finish. But I was thrilled to learn the technique, and the results, well, just read on!

cook's notes:

- If you have salmon, you have the ingredients you need for this recipe (salmon, salt, pepper, olive oil, and butter). I did an internet search for "Tyler Florence" and "salmon" and minutes later I was on my way. The most complicated thing was pulling out a few pinbones (well, OK, a lot of them).

- I used some wild-caught previously-frozen sockeye salmon.

- Tyler seems really big on getting the skin nice and crispy. None of us actually ate the skin, but it certainly scored high on the crisp-o-meter.

the verdict:

The three of us loved this fish and finished every morsel; not much left for the poor doggies. The salmon was beautiful in presentation and delicious in flavor. The oil and butter paired nicely and who knew salt and pepper could be the perfect way to season salmon?

This recipe is most definitely a keeper!

I've got to extol the virtues of Tyler Florence Fridays! It is the easiest cooking group ever - members each get to choose a recipe and can participate each week or not. We can even post on any day we choose - the TFF roundup is posted each Friday and if you've posted that week you're included. How cool is that? Very cool, I say, especially since Tyler Florence's recipes are scrumptious!

The best of summer

Tonight's dinner featured some of my very favorite summer ingredients: fresh tomatoes and fresh basil. Both homegrown in containers next to our front steps. I had an herb garden in our last house, but it took me 5 or 6 years to get around to planting herbs in this house. I'm so glad I got back to it - there's nothing more fun than to step outside the door with some scissors and snip ingredients for a recipe. Or a garnish.

We have one tomato plant. This, our first tomato, was huge. Isn't it beautiful? I'll have to say, it was the best tomato I've ever eaten.


The brown rice/basil/pine nut salad is a simple recipe from SuperFoods HealthStyle. If you follow that link, you'll see that the recipe calls for stuffing the rice mixture into hollowed out tomatoes. We've done that for dinner parties (and it's fabulous), but for "just us" dinners, I usually spoon the filling next to sliced tomatoes. And I'm a Northerner, so I don't peel my tomatoes. When I first moved here 27 years ago, I was shocked to find out how many people here in the South insist on peeling tomatoes that are going to be sliced or eaten raw.


I served this recipe along with spicy chicken wings leftovers from the freezer. My husband had lemon sorbet for dessert.

The Verdict:
The tomato was "to die for" and the whole meal was just a perfect light summer supper. The tomato recipe is a a great accompaniment to grilled chicken or meat. It can be made ahead, for easy entertaining.

Health in a bowl

In my forays around the food blogosphere, I came across a reference to walnut sage pesto. And was immediately captivated. We have a nice little patch of sage growing outside the front door, and I don't cook with it nearly as much as our other herbs. But my husband and I love sage, so I excitedly searched for recipes.

One of the first things I learned was that most walnut sage pesto recipes have a lot of parsley because sage is a very strong flavor. Anyway, I bookmarked a few recipes, then I came across this recipe for Sweet Potato and White Bean Soup with Sage Walnut Pesto from Cooking Light and I was smitten. The picture is gorgeous. Of course. (I was planning to serve my soup in a wonderful artsy bowl, but in the end I grabbed bowls that were the right size. I only remembered about photographing after we sat down to eat. Blogging about dinner is kinda tough that way. So there's my soup, above, in an Easter bowl from The Bay! My husband's bowl had little chicks around the border...)

With this recipe in mind, I ordered sweet potatoes as part of my box of vegetables. I had to go to two stores to get leeks and cannellini beans and chard. The whole time, I was irrationally excited about making this soup. Finally it was all assembled.


So, just a little chopping and processing and the pesto was done.


The soup came together quickly. The most time consuming thing was making sure the leeks and the chard were well washed. Saute the leeks, throw a few things in, and it's done!


Here are a few notes of how I made the recipe:
- I used olive oil for cooking the leeks.
- I used homemade chicken stock from the freezer
- I forgot to add the lemon juice to the soup, although I had it all squeezed and ready to go
- for the pesto, I increased the sage and decreased the parsley. I'd add even more sage next time.
- I used olive oil in the pesto because my walnut oil had gone bad, unfortunately.
- the mini chopper was perfect for the pesto

We served the soup with crusty bread and a salad.

The Verdict:
Not only did this soup live up to my insane expectations, it exceeded them! I loved it!! The soup is packed with nutrition, especially from the sweet potato and chard, plus it has protein from the beans. The best part is how all of the flavors blended into a synergy of warm deliciousness. I can't wait to have the leftovers.

And after dinner I previewed the recipe for cookies I am going to bake this weekend that have, oh, five or six kinds of chocolate.

Pizza time

This week daughter J.D.E. departed, after spending a summer at home. To distract myself from how much I miss her (sniff sniff), I got busy using the ingredients that she left behind in my kitchen.

I found a recipe for pizza with arugula and goat cheese on allrecipes.com that would use the Whole Foods pizza crust and the tub of crumbled goat cheese that were in my fridge.

I used pesto from the freezer and seasoned the goat cheese with red pepper flakes and a handful of herbs (oregano, thyme, rosemary) from the garden.


It was easier to make two separate pizzas, especially since my husband wanted tons of sliced onions on his. Once the pizza is cooked, I piled some arugula on top. It was an unusual pizza combination (pesto, goat cheese and arugula) but I liked the way the flavors combined. My husband wasn't so crazy about the finished product, and said it tasted like some salad thrown on a weird assortment of tastes.

Fruits and Nuts

Back in February I had the treat of tasting my friend Daisy's homemade granola. And I was lucky enough to get her recipe. I've been wanting to make granola ever since (especially after I lugged home a 9-pound box of oats from Costco), but first I had to use up all of the store-bought stuff in my cereal drawer.

My cereal drawer now has room, so Sunday was granola day (helped by the fact that the next Tuesdays With Dorie challenge recipe has granola is the main ingredient). Unfortunately I've managed to misplace Daisy's recipe. So I did a little research and devised a basic "test" recipe:

Beginner Granola

Ingredients

2 ¾ cups regular rolled oats
½ cup wheat germ
½ cup oat bran
1 cup finely chopped nuts (mixture of pecans, walnuts, and almonds)
½ tsp salt
1/3 cup honey or maple syrup or combined (I used half and half)
¼ cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla or almond extract (I used almond)
2 ½ T warm water
2/3 cup dried fruit (can use dried cherries, cranberries, currants, dark or golden raisins, flaked coconut - I used mostly dried sour cherries with a few dark and golden raisins)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 245 degrees. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment, or spray baking sheet with vegetable cooking spray (or use a non-stick cookie sheet)

2. In a medium bowl, mix oats, wheat germ, oat bran, nuts, and salt.

3. In a small saucepan, bring syrup, honey, oil, extract, and water to a simmer over medium heat. Then drizzle liquid over oat mixture and stir to combine.

4. Spread the mixture onto the baking sheet, squeezing lightly to help form clumps.

5. Bake for 30 minutes. Stir in fruit, then bake for 20 minutes more.

6. Store in airtight container for up to 1 month.

The Verdict:
We love this granola! It's not super sweet, nor is it extremely clumpy - I like granola exactly this way. The maple and almond flavors and the cherries are great together.

Add 2-3 T. brown sugar if you prefer a sweeter granola.

If you want clumpier granola, you should probably increase the quantity of the wet ingredients.

I made some of the granola without fruit to use in the next TWD recipe, which is Granola Grabbers. I baked them yesterday because I will be out of town starting on Friday. With any luck I will write the post and have it on delay until posting day, Tuesday, August 19.

Oh, and the honey was from a monastery in Connecticut, motto: "Where the Glory Bees are Sweeter"!

Good Guac

This is my recipe for the best guacamole ever. Today I made a small batch.

Guacamole

2 ripe avocados
1 large tomato, chopped
½ tsp. minced garlic
1 T. olive oil
½ tsp hot pepper flakes
½ lime, squeezed by hand
½ onion, chopped
1 T chopped fresh cilantro, or ½ tsp dried cilantro
salt and pepper to taste

1. Mash avocados with fork or potato masher.

2. Stir in other ingredients.

I say "tomato"

After making gazpacho, we still had tons of very ripe tomatoes on our countertop. Time for Delia Smith's Classic Fresh Tomato Sauce! We have plenty of basil, so with just some onion and garlic we were all set.

This sauce is very easy, you just let the ingredients simmer on the stovetop for a couple of hours until "jamlike." I got mine almost as thick as Delia's, but then it thinned out a bit when the remaining uncooked tomatoes are added in at the end.


The Verdict:
This sauce is wonderful and will be my "go to" recipe when I have an excess of tomatoes. The flavor is very concentrated but still fresh. Much brighter than anything I've had from a jar, and I've had some delicious specialty jarred sauce.


Food in the freezer is like money in the bank!

Here's the recipe, with some of my notes:

Delia's Classic Fresh Tomato Sauce

ingredients:
2 lb 8 oz (1.15 kg) fresh, red, ripe tomatoes (around 12 plum tomatoes)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion weighing about 4 oz (110 g), peeled and finely chopped
1 fat clove garlic, peeled and crushed
approximately 12 large leaves fresh basil
a little Parmesan (Parmigiano Reggiano), to serve
salt and freshly milled black pepper

directions:

1. First skin the tomatoes. To do this, pour boiling water over them and leave them for exactly 1 minute or, if the tomatoes are small, 15-30 seconds, before draining and slipping off their skins (protect your hands with a cloth if they are too hot).

2. Now reserve 3 of the tomatoes (around 10 oz) for later and roughly chop the rest.

3. Next heat the oil in a medium saucepan, then add the onion and garlic and let them gently cook for 5-6 minutes, until they are softened and pale gold in colour. Now add the chopped tomatoes with about a third of the basil, torn into pieces. Add some salt and freshly milled black pepper, then all you do is let the tomatoes simmer on a very low heat, without a lid, for approximately 1½ hours or until almost all the liquid has evaporated and the tomatoes are reduced to a thick, jam-like consistency, stirring now and then.

4. Roughly chop the reserved fresh tomatoes and stir them in, along with the rest of the torn basil leaves, and serve on pasta with a hint of Parmesan – not too much, though, because it will detract from the wonderful tomato flavour.

5. When serving this sauce, it is a good idea to give the pasta 1 minute less cooking time than you usually would, then return it to the saucepan after draining and give 1 more minute while you mix in the sauce.

Hot Summer Night II

A year or two ago, my friend AT introduced me to Steven Pratt's book Superfoods Rx: fourteen foods that will change your life. "I don't follow this slavishly," she said, "but I try to keep these foods in the house and I find that we naturally eat them more frequently." Reading the book re-energized me to think about nutrition, and I do try to keep the fourteen foods (and the additional 20 foods in the follow-up SuperFoods HealthStyle ) in mind.

Wild salmon is one of the super foods, and according to Pratt, should be eaten 2-4 times per week. I don't eat salmon even once a week, but I do try to pick up wild salmon when I'm passing the fish counter. I was looking for a new way to cook the most recent salmon purchase, and my trusty copy of The Hay Day Cookbook (now out of print) had a lovely-sounding recipe for a hot hot day.

I had about a pound of salmon, so made a partial recipe of the court bouillon to poach it. I halved the sauce recipe, knowing that I'd have extra. Canned green chiles come in very handy; I usually keep a bunch frozen in a Ziploc and take out just as much as I need.

The verdict:
This was very very good, and I'll no doubt make it again. I thought it was just the touch for summer - a good make-ahead dish that won't heat up the kitchen (since you make the court bouillon and poach the salmon ahead of time, ideally in the cool part of the day). The sauce was elegant and surprisingly creamy - although low in fat. I used regular whole milk yogurt, because we had a bit left in the fridge, but I'd like to try non-fat Greek yogurt. the leftover sauce was good the next day with citrus-y broiled chicken breasts.


Cold Poached Salmon with Avocado Sauce

Source: The Hay Day Cookbook by Maggie Stearns

ingredients:
1 four-pound fresh salmon (gills removed), poached* in Court Bouillon,** skinned and chilled
1 head leaf lettuce, washed and dried
1 lime, cut in wedges
1 T onion, finely chopped
1 T green chilies, seeded and finely chopped (can use canned, which I did)
1 very ripe avocado
1/3 cup plain yoghurt
2 T lime juice
salt and ground black pepper to taste
3 T olive oil
1 T fresh coriander (cilantro)

directions:
1. Arrange poached salmon an a serving platter that has been lined with curly lettuce. Garnish with lime wedges.
2. In a food processor, process the onion and green chilies until smooth. Add avocado and yoghurt with the lime juice and process 1 minute. Turn into a bowl and beat in salt, pepper, and olive oil a little at a time. Stir in coriander and refrigerate for ½ hour. Serve in a sauce boat topped with a little more chopped coriander.

*Poaching fish:Place in roasting pan, add hot Court Bouillon just to cover, seal with aluminum foil and bake at 375° until tender, approximately 10 minutes for each minute of thickness. Remove from broth while hot.


**Court Bouillon: the classic mixture for poaching fish is 2 cups of white wine, 2 cups of water, 1 stalk of celery chopped with its leaves, 1 chopped onion, 1 chopped carrot, 1 bay leaf, 10 peppercorns, and a little salt, simmered together for ten minutes before proceeding with the recipe.

Bread 2.5 x .40 = Bread 1.0

Just in case you don't have, say, 8 or 9 very ripe bananas lying around, or you just want to make 1 loaf of Bread 2.5, you could always make 40% of the recipe!

This should work:

Bread 1.0

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/6 cup white flour or a mix of white flour and white whole wheat (King Arthur)
1/3 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
scant 1/2 tsp salt
1 cup mashed ripe banana
1/2 cup brown sugar
scant 1/4 cup oil
1 cup plain nonfat yogurt or buttermilk
1 egg plus 1 egg white (or no eggs)
1 cup ground nuts/oats (no more than half oats)
1 cup fresh or frozen wild blueberries

Wholesome Goodness

Today it was time to bake bread - well the easy, quick variety. Over time I've devised a good and healthy whole wheat banana blueberry bread that I try to keep on hand. Whenever I have ripe bananas, I mash them and then measure and freeze the puree for baking time.

I call this Bread 2.5, because that is how much of just about everything goes into this bread. And it makes 2.5 loaves. AND it’s 2.5 times better for you than other muffins and scones - this bread is very low in fat and sugar and is packed with nutrients.

It changes nearly every time I make it. Once I left out the eggs completely (by accident) and it was delicious – dense and moist. So if you have anyone in your family with egg allergies (Hi, Bob!) you can omit the eggs. OTOH, if you wish to boost the protein content, you can use all 4. Today I used 2 eggs' worth of Egg Beaters.

Bread 2.5

Ingredients:

2 ½ cups whole wheat flour
2 ½ cups white flour
1/3 cup white whole wheat flour (King Arthur)
¾ tsp baking soda
2 ½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 ½ cups mashed banana
1 ¼ cup brown sugar (I use half dark brown and half light brown)
½ cup oil
2 ½ cups plain nonfat yogurt or buttermilk
0 – 4 eggs (or equivalent in egg substitute)
2 ½ cups of ground nuts (toasted is nice) and whole oats mixed (I used 1 cup walnuts, 1 cup pecan meal, 1/2 cup oats), no more than half oats
2 ½ cups fresh or frozen wild blueberries

{update: I've added a few ingredients that make this bread even more wonderful: about 1 tsp lemon juice to the wet ingredients, and some cinnamon and nutmeg to the dry - just around a teaspoon or less of each}

Directions:

1. Mix dry ingredients in bowl (flours, soda, powder and salt)

2. Mix banana, sugar, oil, yogurt and eggs in a very large bowl


3. Add the dry ingredients to the banana mixture in three stages, stirring to incorporate.

4. Stir in nut mixture

5. Stir in blueberries

6. Pour batter into 2 full size and one half size loaf pans.


7. Bake at 325 for 55 minutes or until done.



Slice and enjoy! It's really delicious toasted.