Broiled Salmon with Sweet Pea, Sun-Dried Tomato, and Lemon Fusili

Yes, that was a mouthful and so was meal that goes along with it.  Namely, this:

It doesn’t look too appealing, all red and saucy like.  Piled high.  Warm looking on these hot summer nights.  But I really liked it.  It had salmon and sundried tomatoes, two of my favorite foods to eat.  And pasta, from the Santa Cruz pasta man that comes to the farmer’s market, which is sneaking up on my list of favorite foods.

This was another dish where I thought, “What do I have in my refrigerator?” aka “What needs to be eaten right now?”  And then I searched around and found this recipe!  I had everything right on hand, except for Emeril’s Essence and peas.  So I made a few substitutions, tweaked it a bit to suit my taste and came up with this dish that I now present before you.

So, what are my thoughts?  My thoughts are that I can’t really remember this dish, as I made it awhile ago.  I really need to do a better create / picture take / relate turnaround  (and by the way, did you see how I managed to make all of that rhyme?  Freakin’ sweet …) so when I talk about foods, I can say more than “It done tasted good.”

I remember the sauce being a little on the thick side, because the pasta is coated in the sauce.  And not understanding what Emeril meant when he said to shingle 1/2″ slices.  Perhaps this works better if your salmon is more towards the center and not the tail (my favorite part and, therefore, the part I buy), so your “shingles” will be a bit longer in length. I did like how it incorporated sundried tomatoes.  And was a different way for me to prepare salmon.

With that said, I end this entry with a plea.  I love salmon and I probably buy it 1 - 2 times a month.  But I need new ways to prepare said salmon!  So if you have a dish that you made recently that made your heart skip a beat and features salmon, please, pass it my way!

Here’s the one I gift to you. 

Pan-Fried Scallops

So here are some scallops that I made recently:

I am a very big fan of scallops.  Love them, always have.  Baked, fried, cooked by pirates … there’s really no way I don’t like these things.

Martin, however, is not so big a fan.

But I took advantage of the fact that he graciously eats anything I make and decided to try to make them anyway.

So I researched a bunch of recipes, mashed them all up into one and fried them up one night.  They came out crispy and garlicky and not rubbery at all, perfectly cooked thanks to paranoid vigilance.

Martin?  Still not a fan.  Guess you can’t win them all.

But if your tastes are more like mine than Martin, then perhaps you will like these too. Here’s what you need to make Pasta with Veggies and some Pan-Fried Scallops.

Easy peasy, no?  That’s a lot of ingredients.  One of them is pappardalle pasta, which I have recently discovered and declare my new favorite type of pasta.  I like how it’s wide and thin, much like the noodles my dad uses to cook one of my favorite dishes.  I don’t know what kind of noodles they are, but it is known fact in my family that I hate thin noodles.

True story:  When I was little and we made our trips up to NY, we would always pack up noodles to eat on our journey down.  These noodles were those typical super-thin noodles, in broth, served with vegetables and either sliced barbecue pork or won tons.  I would always eat the toppings and take a couple obligatory bites of the noodles.  Leaving New York meant gross, thin noodles on the way home and I hated them.

Then, one year, my parents switched to wide, thin.  Same broth.  Same toppings.  My serving was demolished.  For the longest time, I thought I hated noodles.  Then I realized … I just hated those noodles.

That was a really long story just to explain why I am predisposed to like pappardalle.

So here we go.  Follow my three easy steps to success:

1.  Buy ingredients and assemble on counter.
2.  ???
3.  Profit!  Err, scallops!

Just kidding.

Here we go, for realz:

Pan-Fried Scallops

4 tbsp. butter, melted
1 lb. sea scallops
½ cup seasoned dry bread crumbs
1 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. garlic powder
½ tsp. paprika
1 tsp. seafood seasoning (like Old Bay)
½ tsp. dried parsley
3 cloves garlic, minced
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese

1-  Heat skillet with thin layer of oil.

2-  Combine all the dry ingredients in a shallow pan.

3-  Dip scallops into butter and coat with dry ingredients.

4-  Place on skillet and fry for 3 minutes.  Bottom side of scallops should be nicely brown.  Flip and repeat on other side.

5-  Serve hot.

Servings: 4

As a side note, I used panko crumbs because I thought it would create a better crunch.  Instead, they just decided to fall off the scallops.  So I think I might use finer crumbs next time.

For the pasta, I just boiled the pasta, steamed the broccoli, changed my mind about mushrooms, chiffonaded the basil and tossed everything in a big pot.

Tuna Melts and Penzey Sandwich Sprinkle

Lots of rye bread equals the perfect recipe for … sandwiches!  Were you expecting something more creative?

Me too.  Me too …

Everyone has their own way of making tuna salad, so I thought I’d throw mine out there too.  It’s got the usual suspects in there:  red onion and relish to add crunch, eggs for a touch of warmth and then something that not every tuna salad recipe has:  Penzey Sandwich Sprinkle.

Side note:  Penzey’s has been a great source of inexpensive, quality spices for me.  I was seriously impressed with how bright green the spices were, compared to the dull color of even organic spices.  These aren’t organic, but they have everything imaginable and for reasonable prices.  Go Penzey’s!

So there you go.  Tuna, boiled eggs, red onion, sandwich sprinkle and sour cream, all mixed to taste.  Put on lightly buttered rye, top with a slice of cheese and broil until melted.  I prefer provolone, because of its nicely stretchy quality when melted.  But just put on whatever you feel like putting on.  You’ll get something like this:

And receive something like this:

But only if you feed it to a Swede named Martin. 

Adventures in Shrimps with Chinese Barbecue Sauce

One thing I appreciate the most from Martin is that he will stand by what I cook and clean his plate, even if it’s not his favorite thing on earth. He will even dig deep into his heart and pay me a nice compliment, such as “This tastes good.”

Though he talks a pretty talk, we have scales to help determine true awesomeness.

It’s quite simple really. The scale is: “What is the frequency with which you would like to eat this dish?” Usually, the answer is a once a month, twice a month kind of thing. Then there’s “once every six months” or “once a year.” Not a good sign. Every now and then, I get a “once a week” squeezed out between rapturous bites, which is the supreme pinnacle of flattery coming from Martin.

No, this was not a “once a week” dish. Though I very dearly wish it was.

Shrimps with Chinese Barbecue Sauce is something I have eaten my whole life and my dad is master of it. Typically, my dad will buy jumbo North Carolina shrimp and cook them with the peel on. He’ll make extra sauce, because he knows I love to mix my rice with it. Once I moved out of the house, I would regularly request this dish when I joined my family for dinner. And as many of you know, I am scarily fastidious (yes, I eat ribs with a fork) but would willingly get my hands dirty while eating this dish.

I have a whole ritual on how I eat these shrimp: I pick them up with chopsticks and fish them around in the sauce a little, to make them extra saucy. Then I dab off as much of the sauce as I can onto my bowl of rice (hey, I said I’d get dirty, not disgusting). Then comes the sticky part - peeling all the shrimp before eating. I would probably do this a good handful of times - getting dirty is one thing but getting dirty clean dirty clean is a completely separate issue - until I had a nice pile of shrimp in my bowl and awesomely saucy rice. Then I’d go to town.

I am telling you all of this to show you that I very much love this dish.

So one day, I decided I had to have it and called my dad. I asked him how to make this dish so I could make it. He did what he always does …

He gave me a list, followed by “Mix to taste!”

Super. Great. Awesome. Totally … not helpful.

Here’s the list, by the way:

But I missed barbecue shrimp so I decided to try anyway. I peeled all those darned shrimps first, because Martin is kind of a wuss that way. Then I briefly sauted them, just enough to get them pink. Then I grated up some ginger, finely chopped up some garlic and went to town trying to figure out how to make the sauce. (Obviously, add the shrimp in at the end to finish cooking. You just don’t want them to overcook while you get the sauce right).

I got something that was thicker than my dad’s version (I even thinned it out with water) and a little too sweet. But the right flavors were there. Next time, I’m going to add more ginger and not peel the shrimp. Martin needs to learn that unpeeled shrimp is not weird!

Also, it’s totally part of the ritual.

Swordfish with Brown Butter Balsamic Sauce

Swordfish with brown butter balsamic sauce - trying saying that three times fast. What a mouthful!

At the market the other week, I was standing at the fish vendor and feeling uninspired by salmon. I love fish and I love salmon but enough was enough - for that week anyway. I decided to go with one of their other fish offerings. Swordfish jumped out at me because I’d never made it before. In fact, I couldn’t even recall if I’d ever even eaten it before. I decided to be bold and embrace the new. New fish! New vegetables! New … Melanie?

When I got home, I immediately started looking up recipes with which to try out the thick slab of fish I’d purchased. I’d never made it before, so I wanted a lot of hand-holding through this process. Turns out, there are not that many recipes that include swordfish. I searched all the usual sights before finally finding success.

This is all you need for this recipe:

I was about to type up the recipe, then realized I didn’t really have to, since I followed the recipe almost exactly. So here you go, for future enjoyment if you so choose.

I didn’t take any pictures of the final product, partly because I forgot and partly because, when I think back, the sauce was really tasty but kind of gross looking. Reviewers of this recipe note the difficulty of getting the sauce to “combine” and I will agree with this. I was ever-vigilant and whisk-happy and the minute I wasn’t watching over it and the sauce was poured over the fish, the butter completely separated from the other ingredients. And it wasn’t all that pretty. Perhaps Chef John Jones from Palm Beach knows how to solve this problem but he didn’t share the tip in his recipe.

Oh - and I almost forgot! If you make this, be very careful adding the balsamic to the butter. It will splatter and spray hot butter everywhere and that stuff hurts like nobody’s business! Trust me, I suffered so you guys wouldn’t have to. If you don’t have anything to prove (like how manly of a cook you really are), then take the pan off the heat for a minute before adding the balsamic vinegar.

Overall, pretty good but nothing to make it stand out above the rest.

Salmon, Chard and Beans - But Not Together! (Thank goodness).

Besides trying to kill my boyfriend with some sketched out salmon, I’ve actually done a lot of cooking lately! Lately, I’ve been wanting to host a dinner party, but pesky things like weekend obligations and Martin’s busy work / school schedule keep coming up.

Martin and I both have polarized thoughts about our dinner parties. He normally prefers to invite only 2 other people, mainly because our dining room table can comfortably seat 4 (and less comfortably and somewhat carefully seat 6). I am a “the more, the merrier!” type of person, especially because it means I can experiment with more dishes and generally have fewer leftovers. Hopefully Martin and I will overcome these obstacles soon and have people over. So if you are looking to be a scapegoat in my quest to try out new foods and are brave and entertaining, hopefully we will see you soon!

The other night, I made the brined chicken I challenged my friends and any willing participants to try out and paired it with some swiss chard I got at the farmer’s market. I tried Penney’s recipe. Now, I’ve never eaten chard before and didn’t quite know what to expect. I don’t even know quite what prompted me to buy it, but I was standing there, staring at the tall green leafy bundles, I thought t myself, “Hello! You look very green and leafy and full of exciting things like vitamins and antioxidants!” I was mostly correct about this.

I thought the chard was tasty but unlike anything I’d ever eaten. I don’t know what chard is supposed to taste like, but mine was a little bit bitter. I generally don’t like bitter tasting vegetables - bad childhood memories of my parents forcing me to try bitter melon because it was “Good for me!” tend to swim up and choke my psyche. But overall, I thought this was pretty good but I’m glad I didn’t do a simple saute and had other flavors to focus on.

Also, a friend of ours is moving away and she bequeathed to me many of the dried goods she didn’t manage to eat through before leaving. Two of them are dried beans. As some of you know, I am incredibly anti-bean. And now I have big jars full of these strange brown beans, which I can’t even identify. So, what do with beans? How do they acquire their edible soft state rather than this weird rock hard one?

P.S. I have just consulted Wikipedia (what does Wikipedia NOT know?) and have determined these to be pinto and kidney beans. I think the fact that I cannot identify these simple and most common of beans reinforces the fact that I am incredibly anti-bean. At least I know I can use the kidney beans for Alex’s tasty chili, which I made and never wrote about. Whoops.

Osso Buco-Style Halibut

Before I go any further, I would like to say that I am well aware that osso bucco means “bone with hole” and that it is weird that I used not any bones with holes, but fish instead (although the fish DID have bones!). However, the recipe I found called it “Osso Buco-Style Halibut.” Or, more precisely, “Osso Bucco-Style Halibut and Whipped Potatoes with Herbs.” So I felt free to call it that as well. I apologize to anyone whose refined sense of cooking I just stepped on (cough Alex cough).

This recipe started out like any other recipe: I have some ______ (in this example, halibut) and I don’t know what to do with it. What should I make? Let’s search the internets for tasty looking recipes!

This recipe took a very long time. Sometimes, I dream about a world where two people cook together simultaneously. Other times, I roll up my sleeves and get down to the dirty work.

When I look back at the recipe, it doesn’t seem like it should have taken so long. There is a lot of time where you just let it simmer and simmer. I think because I am a “clean-as-I-go” kind of cook, I feel like things are more involved because I am always actively doing something during every part of the process. That is just my fly-by-the-seat judgement call, I don’t know if this is actually true or not. I just remember being kind of tired by the time I plated this dish.

I did all of the steps but the mashed potatoes (I like mine just fine) and the gremolata (too tired of cooking to care at that point). It came out pretty tasty and hearty but nothing too special or exciting. Nothing that makes me warrant wanting to try cooking it again anytime soon, that is. The effort might be worth it if I was serving more than just me and Martin. It would be good dinner party food, I think, because it looked great and could be eaten completely with a fork only (my idea of WIN!).

I am just going to link to the recipe here, because I followed it exactly, except for halving it to compensate for having only 2 halibut filets.

And the obligatory pictures:

Plated and photographed.

What Martin’s plate looked like 10 seconds later.

Shrimp Risotto

I absolutely love risotto but I have never had any luck making it in my own kitchen. I pulled the shrimp out Monday afternoon and mentally started pepping myself up for it. You know - you can do it, rah rah rah, confidence is everything. Doesn’t everybody do that right before they cook dinner?

I had frozen, uncooked shrimp on hand and, literally, as I was pouring the proper serving size into a bowl to thaw, Alan called. He wanted Martin and I to go out to dinner with him and his girlfriend! Having never met her before, and not seen Alan in a month or so, I readily agreed. We decided to go out and that effectively put a hold on shrimp risotto.

The next day, I tried again. And oh boy! I will never have to wait until we go to an Italian restaurant to eat risotto again! It came out exactly the way I hoped, all creamy with a little bite to it, and spiced just the way I want. I think there might have been enough for 4 servings, but Martin and I liked it so much, we pigged and ATE IT ALL. That’s right, there were no leftovers in our apartment that night!

Now I want to make risotto all the time! I am drunk off my success! But I think my waistline would appreciate it if I did not, so I might abstain … for a week. Okay, really, maybe 3 days.

A couple of hints this time that Alex gave me that I think contributed to my success:

- Warm up the broth. Keeping everything at around the same temperature helps to prevent the cooking process from stalling.

Actually, that’s the best and only hint I took away from him. But I thought it was a good one. Also, another one is: make sure you don’t listen to Alex when he tells you 2 cups of chicken broth. Because that would be wrong. And it will prevent you from tasting your rice, reflecting on how crunchy it tastes and how it probably needs more broth and scrambling to heat up your refrigerated chicken broth very quickly.

With that, here is shrimp risotto. Obviously, spicing and ingredients are to taste and it’s easy to customize this dish to your own. But here is what I did for mine.

Oh, and another note: Because I like bite-sized food, I cut my shrimp up into smaller pieces. But, of course, that’s not necessary.

Shrimp Risotto

1 lb. extra large shrimp
1 cup Arborio rice
1 large onion
3 tbsp. butter
Olive oil
Pepper
4+ cups chicken broth
½ cup white wine (optional)
½ cup grated Parmesan
2 tbsp. heavy whipping cream

1- If shrimp is frozen, defrost. Peel and devein.

2- Finely dice onion.

3- In large skillet, melt butter. When butter is bubbly, add a little bit of olive oil.

4- Add onion to skillet and sauté until onion is translucent.

5- Add rice and let toast, 5+ minutes or until rice starts sticking to the skillet, and has turned a nice golden brown color.

6- Add wine here, if desired. If adding wine, remove from heat temporarily. Let rice absorb wine.

7- When rice has absorbed wine, add 1 cup chicken broth. Let absorb.

8- Keep adding broth slowly, until all the broth has been used or risotto has reached desired consistency. Taste to test.

9- When almost ready to serve, throw in shrimp. Let cook fully.

10- Add cheese, pepper to taste and other spices. Add cream. Stir to combine.

11- Plate, let rest for 2 minutes and serve.

Servings: Should be 4, was 2

Can I have some more? Right now? Please?

Shrimp Pineapple Curry

I’m sitting here, listening to Michael Buble’s Feelin’ Good. It’s Monday and, yes, I am feeling pretty good, despite having screwed up my sleep schedule this past weekend by staying out late every night. Couldn’t fall asleep until 1AM and even then, it was very fitful. Hopefully, tonight will be an improvement.

But I am nothing if not resilient and hyped up on sugar and so I’ve carried on. I made this sometime last week to help in my efforts to clean out the crisper of all the straggling vegetables that were just begging to be eaten. I used precooked salad shrimp (Martin grew up eating small shrimp and he prefers them over jumbo shrimp or prawns). I couldn’t decide if prawn was a synonym for jumbo shrimp and just looked it up on Wikipedia, which states: “In European countries, particularly the United Kingdom, the word “prawns” is more commonly on menus than the term “shrimp”, which is used more often in North America. The term “prawn” is also loosely used to describe any large shrimp, especially those that come 15 (or fewer) to the pound (also called “jumbo shrimp”).” Very interesting indeed.

I boiled the shrimp to reheat. I think they were at just the right stage then after I drained them, but I added them prematurely to the curry and they became slightly hard. Next time, I will know to add them right before serving but I was concerned with them cooling down too much and becoming cold. Also, my basil plant has long since passed on and so I used dried basil in the end, which probably made it taste a little less authentic, but which was just fine for a meal that needed to be prepared in 30 minutes.

Overall, a very tasty and easily put-together dish, but I always like curry better the next day, after the flavors have had time to sit and melt together. That’s what the little container of leftovers is doing in the fridge now, ready to be eaten another day.

I’m listing the recipe below, even though it was very simple, just in cases.

Shrimp Pineapple Curry

1 clove garlic
2 small carrots
1 small Yukon Gold potato
1 handful snap peas
1 handful green beans
1 handful button mushrooms
1 handful enoki mushrooms
1/2 can pineapple chunks
1 can coconut milk
Green curry paste
Garlic powder
Ground black pepper
Coarse salt
Dried basil

1- Chop carrots into rounds. Mince garlic. Snap off ends of green beans and cut into bite-sized pieces. Cube potato. Quarter mushrooms. Combine water and rice in pot or rice cooker and let cook until all the water is absorbed.

2- Heat olive oil in 12″ skillet. When hot, add garlic and cook until golden brown.

3- Add vegetables and cook until almost finished.

4- Add coconut milk. Add curry paste a little at a time, mixing after each addition, to taste. Sprinkle with garlic powder (if you want an extra kick), pepper, salt and dried basil.

5- Add shrimp, enoki mushrooms and pineapple and allow to be heated through.

6- Spoon rice into bowls. Top with curry.

Servings: 4

Say hello to sweet and creamy shrimp pineapple curry.

Stuffed Salmon

I was not too big of a fan of this meal but Martin liked it so I’ll post it anyway. It had all the promise of yumminess - crispy outer crust, creamy middle, happy salmon. Yet something about it didn’t quite work.

I felt that the cream cheese overpowered the actual salmon, which makes me think that I put too much in. But I had the bottom of a Philadelphia cream cheese container and I scooped some out with a knife and spread it on the salmon. Then I stuck the knife back into the cream cheese. That’s when I realized that I should probably use up the rest of the cream cheese, as it had now been touched with raw salmon residue. Maybe a little extra paranoid, maybe not, but all the cream cheese went in.

I served this with steamed broccoli and roasted potatoes. Maybe I will return to this after I’ve tweaked it; until then, there are many more horizons to explore. Also, maybe I’ll lay off the salmon for awhile.

Stuffed Salmon

1 salmon fillet
Cream cheese (flavored or plain - if plain, plan to flavor it with other seasonings)
Fine bread crumbs
Olive oil

1/ Preheat oven to 350-degrees and lightly grease baking dish.

2/ Cut a slit into the side of the fillet. Fill with cream cheese.

3/ Coat in olive oil and dredge in bread crumbs.

4/ Bake until salmon flakes with work. Serve.

Servings: 4