Salmon With A Not So Usual Side

Salmon is by far my favorite economical seafood. Now I am someone who really does appreciate a full flavored fish. I like those fatty acids that are so good for you. A piece of farm raised salmon in the end won't cost you much. Find it frozen and it can be even cheaper. It is so easy to cook and in the end not just healthy, but quick to make and delicious.

There are so many things that accompany salmon nicely. In the summer I often have it over a salad as a meal. Rice is always a easy one to do. However my favorite side dish for salmon is lentils. That is right lentils. The nutty flavor is perfect to compliment the richness of the salmon. On top of that they are easy to make and delicious.

My favorite trick for making them is to cook them in chicken broth. First though you have to saute up some celery, onion and garlic. You can add flavor to them if you like, such as tarragon, curry or whatever. In the end I think they are perfect with just salt & pepper though. Anyway here is my simple recipe for Salmon and lentils, hope you enjoy.

-boneless fillet of Salmon(with or without skin. I like it, Some don't)
-olive oil
-butter
-chopped yellow onion
-chopped garlic
-chopped celery
-lentils
-salt & pepper

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium size stock pan add butter and olive oil. Heat. Add chopped onion, garlic and celery. Cook until all are translucent. Be careful not to burn by stirring frequently. Add Lentils and cook about 1 minute. Add chicken broth to cover lentils and bring to a boil. Continue to add broth as needed. It will cook off as you go. Cooks in about 20 minutes, or until lentils are soft. When you add your last bit of broth cook until liquid is almost gone. Again stir often to insure that lentils do not burn. In a small to medium size frying pan add olive oil and butter. Heat on high. Salt and pepper your salmon. Add skin side up to pan and cook for about 2 minutes. Flip salmon and cook on skin side for another 2 minutes. Place pan with Salmon in oven and finish for another 10 to 15 minutes. Not any longer. Serve salmon either on a bed of lentils or on the side. A side salad on the plate is a great way to complete meal.

Sometimes I make a sour cream topping for the salmon with lemon juice, salt, pepper and tarragon. All you have to do is add them together and mix. Let it come to room temp then place a dab of it on the salmon. It is delicious.

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Stewing It Up

There are so many kind of delicious stews out there. I find nothing more perfect to cook up on a Sunday afternoon in the winter time. There is something so comforting about a large pot of simmering beef stew that makes the whole house smell delightful. I also like the fact that if you make enough you have leftovers for days. It is the perfect lunch item to get all your co-workers jealous.

Beef Stew is my favorite! Although I have to say seafood stews with saffron also rocks, more on that later. The classic beef stew is always a crowd pleaser. I have a few non traditional ingredients that make it unique that I will share. One thing that is a must is a good red wine. Not only do I like drinking it with the stew....and while I make it, but added to the stew itself brings a flavor that is perfect for the meat and the stock. However the key ingredient in my mind is the peanut butter. That is right peanut butter.

You do no need to add a lot. To a large pot I would not go over a cup, and that is being generous. What the peanut butter does is mellow the flavor and provide a fatty vehicle that allows the taste to linger on the tongue. I have made it both with and without the peanut butter and I have to say I will never again go without. A friend of mine from years ago who worked on Block Island in the summers at great restaurants turned me on to the use of it. He told me I would be amazed at how many different things have peanut butter in them. Now I know and make frequent use of it. Anyway here is the recipe.

-cubed beef for stew( a good steak cubed up is always the best, but ready cut works)
-flour
-butter
-chopped garlic
-chopped yellow onion
-chopped celery
-chopped carrots
-frozen corn
-cubed potatoes(I like yellow or red ones, sometimes I even use sweet potatoes)
-red wine(preferably one you like to drink. lately for me it is shiraz)
-beef stock
-peanut butter(I go for Teddy Bear Natural, but whatever you got)
-salt & pepper

On a plate pat dry the cubed beef and then coat with the flour. Add butter to the stock pot and heat up. Add beef and brown on all sides. Do not cook all the way through, just brown the outside to seal in moisture. Once browned remove and set aside for later. Add more butter to stock pot and melt. Add chopped garlic and onion. Cook, stirring frequently as not to burn, until translucent.Add celery and chopped carrots. Cook until celery is translucent. Add corn and cook a little. Add beef and potatoes to pot. Add beef broth and about a cup of red wine. Cover pot and bring to a boil. Once boiling add the peanut butter, cover and reduce heat and simmer for a few hours. Stew can be eaten after an hour of simmering but the longer the better. Salt and pepper to taste.

I like to add dumplings to my stew. That is up to you. Here is the recipe. You can always just use Bisquick though.

Place about a cup and a half of flour in a medium size bowl. Add a pinch of salt and a pinch, generous pinch of baking powder. Add a raw egg and mix in whole milk until consistency of flour is a thick paste. Mix well, no lumps just a thick paste. At the end of cooking bring stew back to a boil. Add heaping tablespoons of the dumpling mix to stew. Cook covered at a boil for 10 minutes. Uncover and cook another 10.

I like to serve the stew in a large soup bowl with a dumpling. If you do not use dumplings a tablespoon of sour cream is tasty. Serve with a slice of toasted Italian bread and of course red wine. Delicious!

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The Perfect Burger

There are so many possibilities and endless twists on this particular topic. Whole restaurants dedicate themselves to the very idea of the perfect hamburger. This does however mean something totally different to everyone. Determining the tastes of your dinner guests and family is key to making the burger a success. Also providing a wide option of toppings helps.

Sometimes I think of the burger as a light healthy meal. When that is the case I will often go for just a slice of Swiss melted on a burger made with say 93% fat content and then slather a bit of guacamole on top. Guacamole is so easy to make at home, it does not have to be complicated. Simply smash up an avocado, add a touch of olive oil and lime juice, salt and pepper and you are good to go! Serve with a side salad of some kind and presto, light and healthy burger.

My favorite however is not light and healthy, but loaded with all sorts of deliciousness. I like to also stuff my burgers. That is right stuff them. For example use a good 85/15% fat content ground beef, or even....dare I say 80/20. Make two 1/4# patties and then sandwich in between what you might want. For me....well some sort of pork. Whether that be bacon or some grilled ham, who cares it is oh so delicious. After adding your stuffing in between the patties just pinch them together. Then after grilling, I often use a grill pan on the stove that can finish in the oven, there you melt the cheese, maybe cheddar here, top with a fried egg and mayonnaise. Unbelievable. Serve only with crispy fries, or baked beans!

The point is to get creative. I highly recommend a trip to a Red Robin Restaurant if there is one in your local area. They not only have great burgers but the array of options gets the home cooks creative juices flowing. I find the burger makes everyone happy and can be rotated into the menu every 2-3 weeks. Keep it fresh though and mix up the flavors and sides. Again creativity here is the key, Don't get stuck in a burger rut!

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Ohhh....How I love Italian Sausage

So when I asked a good friend of mine about this next recipe idea I wanted to know if it was too much. Hold on.....the ingredients are coming. Anyway his answer was yes! Well I thought I would give it a whirl anyway. Why not. My testing ground this time was just my mom and dad. I figured if we did not like it well we would just not eat it.

What was to much you are wondering. Oh just the combination of bacon, Italian sausage, baby bella mushrooms and pesto. Served on pasta of course. Yup I thought it might all be a bit much as well. However a little bit of each, mellowed in a coating sauce of pasta water and a hint of cream seemed to work. The trick here was to use just a little of all the ingredients. I wanted a mingling of all the powerful flavors, with non overpowering the other.

I was delighted at how it came out. The best part was because of the richness of the ingredients you only needed a little to fill you up. A small bowl was all we ate and we both felt content all night long. The meal of course was accompanied by some delicious Yellowtail Shiraz. Ohhhh how I love the red wine!
Anyway here is the recipe, hope you enjoy it.

-2 Italian sausage links (precook a little to help with slicing)
-2 slices of bacon (Chopped)
-about 2 cups of sliced baby bella mushrooms
-tablespoon of pesto (you can make your own but I use Progresso brand)
-chopped garlic
-light cream
-pasta of choice (I find smaller kinds work best: ziti, gemmelli, penne ect.)
-about a cup and a half of pasta water(left over water from cooking pasta)
-extra virgin olive oil

In a medium sized sauce pan begin cooking whole sausage links. You are just cooking enough to make slicing easy, a good browning on all sides. Remove and let cool. Add chopped bacon to pan. The bacon fat being cooked off will serve as the fat for sauteing the rest of the ingredients. Begin heating water for pasta. Add chopped garlic to pan with bacon. Stir frequently and do not let the garlic burn. After sausage has cooled a bit slice into thin rounds. Add to pan. Cook a bit, stirring often and then add mushrooms. When the water boils for pasta add the pasta. How much depends on how many you are cooking for. I did about half a box of penne. Continue cooking the ingredients in pan stirring frequently. When the pasta is done strain pasta reserving about a cup and a half of the liquid. Add to saute pan. Allow to come to a boil and add the cream, just a touch. Bring back to a boil and reduce heat by half and allow liquid to reduce down significantly. Coat pasta with olive oil. When liquid has reduced and thickened up add the whole thing to the pasta. Add a tablespoon of pesto and stir the whole thing up. Note the liquid should have reduced to a point that you are not drenching the pasta just coating with the sauce. Serve with grated Parmesan if desired.

This was a simple and delightful meal. Like I said because of the richness you do not need a lot of food. I hope you enjoy!

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Quick And Delicious Recipe

So I think it is important to always have in your recipe arsenal dishes that are quick and well……delicious. Ha, how about that for reflection on the title. In the future of this blog I plan on revisiting this idea often. I don’t know for sure if I believe in the idea of a 30 minute meal. I mean come on, food = love, and to have good, tasty and crowd pleasing food one need to not rush it. However I promise, this meal and the others will come close to 30 minutes…...maybe.

So I am sure that many of you who are going to read my blog are family chefs. With that said I mean you have kids and all the distractions that come with that. So in the end cooking is not something that you are going to start and then finish without a single distraction. So cooking time….well let’s just say if you had the time to just start cooking and then stop when it is on the table well it would be a quick meal. However I bet that for a lot of you there will be many distractions. Be prepared for that. Start early.

This meal here like I said is simple. Just chicken, potatoes, a side salad and veggie. I am going to make some of it kid friendly and some adult friendly. Why in the end should you have to sacrifice your taste for the unfortunate limited taste buds of a kid? I know we love them but really. I refuse to give up the food I like for……dare I say it, all food dipped in ranch dressing. Don’t get me wrong…that is yummy, but if I want McDonald’s I will go to McDonald’s. Anyway, enough of that here we go.

-trimmed and cleaned chicken breast (I am a fan of Perdue perfect portion)

-red bliss potatoes (cut into cubes)

-red bell pepper (sliced into ½ length’s)

-sweet yellow onion (sliced into 1/2” strings)

-side salad fixings (this one is up to you)

-ranch dressing

-salt

-pepper

-chopped garlic

-good garlic powder (not garlic salt! hate that stuff)

-extra virgin olive oil

-butter

-white wine or chicken broth

To get started, remove chicken from the refrigerator and allow it to come to room temperature. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Cut the potatoes. Chop the red pepper, onion and garlic. Place aside on a plate until ready to use. Place cut potatoes on a cookie sheet or roasting pan. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and garlic powder. Coat with a small amount of olive oil and toss it all together by hand. Place a small tab of butter on potatoes and place in oven. Mix up every 15 minutes. Start early as I said because these can take a while. Make your salad. I like a simple salad with just green leaf lettuce, cherry tomatoes and maybe some cucumber. Again this one is up to you and what you like. When your potatoes have about 25 minutes left, they average 45 minutes or so in the oven, heat a little olive oil and butter in a frying pan. Get it good and hot. I use a pan that can go strait from the stove top to the oven, however in this recipe you want to transfer chicken to a cookie sheet. When the pan is good and hot salt and pepper the chicken and sear on both sides for no more than 2 minutes. Place on cookie sheet and finish in oven for 20 minutes. In the pan you used to brown chicken add a little butter and olive oil. Heat good and add onion, chopped garlic and red pepper. Stir frequently as to not over cook. When onion and garlic are translucent add either the chicken broth or wine until it covers all the veggies. I like the broth better. Again that is just a preference. Bring the liquid to a boil then reduce heat and simmer until liquid reduces by half. Add a touch of butter, salt & pepper to taste and continue reducing until liquid is almost gone. Remove chicken and potatoes from oven.

To serve. For the adults leave chicken breast whole. Lay down a generous spoonful of sautéed veggies. Place chicken breast on top. Serve with salad on plate and potatoes. For the kids. Cut the chicken up and serve with potatoes. Have the ranch dressing on the table. Serve with a side salad in a bowl. They just like it better that way. Let them dunk chicken and potatoes in ranch dressing and umm….if you want to as well go ahead. I think the veggies add enough flavor but who am I to say.

Enjoy, let me know what you think.

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Remebering Summer.

Oh........It is true. Summer is gone for the year. How did that happen? Dunno. As with every year however it has come and gone. Now we look forward to hearty meals, warm comfort food and more time indoors. That is not bad however. Don't you just love coming home to the smell of a delicious beef stew that has been cooking for hours? Or warm meatball subs while you relax on Sunday afternoon with football games. Yes it is true winter has it's perks.

However before it is to late let's revisit just once more something that is great about summer. I grew up all over the east coast. I have lived in the heart of the south in North Carolina, more to follow on awesome barbecue, to New England.... wait for my clam chowder recipe. However my roots always go back to the mid-Atlantic. With that blue crabs and delicious Maryland Crab Cakes.

I have many fond memories of vacationing at my grandparents on the Delaware shore. Growing up in Baltimore it was the place to go. Some of my fondest memories were the times we would go crabbing off the docks of the Indian River Bay. My sister and I loved to tie up chicken thighs to a long string, throw it out and wait for that little tug that let us know a crab was on the other end. Carefully we would pull it in, nice and slow. Then one of us would grab the net and scoop up the crab. So much fun!

Eating them was even better. Not just for the delicious sweet flavor of the meat mingling with the salty Old Bay Seasoning, but the sheer joy of cracking them open, fishing out all the meat and creating a massive pile of shells It was truly a lot of fun for a young boy to rip apart the crab! I still love to sit down to a pile of crabs when I get a chance. However adult life is so different and my New England life does not afford as much opportunity to do so. Still if you know where and when to go you can find the blue crab all the way up here.

Tonight though I am going for a visit to my parents. They were just in Delaware. They now own the house my grandparents did. I try and get there as much as I can in the summer but as I said adult life is so different. My parents are retired so they have more time. While they were down there they picked up and brought back some lump Blue Crab meat. Tonight my mother is making her signature crab soup and the end all be all of Blue Crab heaven, the Maryland Crab Cake. I can't wait. The recipe for the cakes has been in our family for many generations. I probably should not reveal it, but why not! I know I am going to enjoy eating them tonight. I hope you get a chance to make them yourself. Anyway here is the recipe....

-1 to 2 pounds of back fin lump crab meat (Specialty stores may have it, or try online)
-mayonnaise
-old bay seasoning
-saltine crackers
-spicy brown mustard
-Worcestershire sauce
-salt & pepper

Now just to let you know and I will blog more about this later, I am not a cook who is into exact measurements. I think cooking is something that you feel your way, intuitively, through. It takes a little time to figure it all out, and some mistakes, but in the end not relying on exact measurements is the way for me. With that said here goes.

In a large bowl dump all the crab meat in. Pick through carefully with your hands to remove any left over hard pieces. It usually is pretty well cleaned but some bits are still there. After mix in a couple heaping spoonfuls of mayonnaise and a touch of the mustard. A generous dash or two of the Old Bay, a splash of the Worcestershire Sauce and a pinch of salt and pepper to taste. Add the crushed crackers a little at a time while mixing it all up with your hands. Keep adding crushed crackers and mixing until it all starts to pull together. Form cakes by hand using about the size of a tennis ball, maybe smaller. In a frying pan melt some butter, about 1/4 of a stick. When pan is nice and hot put cakes in and brown on both sides. About 3-4 minutes each side. Serve immediately with crackers and Worcestershire Sauce. A broccoli slaw salad with a light coating of blue cheese dressing is a nice side.

Hope you enjoy, Michael.