The Easiest Way to Prepare Salmon

Ok, so I’m not a big fan of cooking fish. And I usually don’t have the patience to do things like marinating the fish for an extended amount of time. So tonight, I turned to:

The Easiest Way to Prepare Salmon.

1. Generously coat stainless steel skillet with olive oil. (I don’t use teflon/non-stick pans.)
2. Put heat on medium high. Let oil heat up a bit.
3. Plop skinless salmon fillet, which you have seasoned with something, like lemon pepper, onto pan.
3. Watch out that you don’t get burned by the sizzling oil. (There’s probably a better way of doing this so that the hot oil doesn’t start to splatter. Maybe the pan is too hot?
4. Turn fillets over after 4-5 minutes (depending on how cold/icy they were to start with.)
5. Remove from heat in another 4-5 minutes.

So this wasn’t the most moist salmon of all time, but salmon is healthy (especially if it’s not farm-raised), and as I said – this was quick!

Along with the salmon, I made some collard greens (with miso ginger dressing) and buckwheat soba noodles (with a ‘dressing’ of flax oil, rice vinegar, reduced sodium soy sauce, and freeze dried chives).

How do you like to prepare salmon?

The Lower East Side, re-visited

I’m a big fan of bagels & lox. Sweet and salty smoked salmon meets cream cheese – that’s the stuff right there.

Tonight, I made a version of this old favorite. Kind of healthified it.

Smoked salmon from PA’s own company: Wild For Salmon. Topping a toasted Ezekial English muffin, with a layer of reduced-fat cream cheese. On the top, a few sprigs of fresh dill.

The open-faced ‘sandwich’ was beside some fresh spinach leaves with a balsamic vinaigrette.

I also made a soup, using beets, potatoes, onions, garlic, green cabbage and dill – seasoned with cumin, tumeric, chili powder, salt & pepper. I spiced this up in an additional effort to restore me to health. It definitely had a strong kick!

If I was truly taking you on a tour of NYC’s Lower East Side in the olden days, I might have also had a nice sour dill pickle. Maybe next time.

On a side note, I went shopping today for groceries, but it was tough going. My sense of balance was a little off, which must have something to do with my sinuses. Now that I’ve been sitting the rest of the afternoon, it’s been better. Even though it was kind of rough walking around today, I’m encouraged that I continue to feel better than yesterday!

My husband and I just watched about 3 Top Chef episodes in a row. They were old episodes ‘on demand’, which I hadn’t seen before. I find that the cheftestant’s dishes are always super creative, but alas – I wouldn’t be interested in eating probably 50% of them. (Mainly due to them being meat-related.) I’m always left with questions after watching that show, actually. I would like to see more footage of the cooking techniques. I guess most of the audience would be bored by that, so that’s why they don’t show it.

Are you a Top Chef fan? Or, do you watch other ‘cooking reality shows’?

Chocolate Soup, Raw Foods, and Kanten

I’ve had soup for breakfast before, but I’ve never had…

Chocolate soup!

In your blender, mix: Plain yogurt, Choco-berry powder, a dash of milk, a very ripe banana, and flax seed. Voila – a chilled creation!

Lunch was fun: a trip to an as-yet-untried restaurant: The Enchanted Kitchen.

A super-cute ambiance combined with fresh, healthy foods makes for a refreshing experience! I had the sunflower-pate wrap, which came in a sprouted tortilla.

Later on at home, it was time for me to sample the kanten I had been chilling since yesterday. My husband had tried it soon after it set late yesterday evening. I asked him what he thought of it, and he said that it was a kind of ‘delicacy’ – which he explained meant that it didn’t really have enough sugar to be eaten on its own as a dessert. It would work better paired along with some turkey or chicken, as akin to cranberry sauce. The black cherry juice I had used as the base wasn’t sweet enough – next time I’ll know to either add extra sweetener or use something with more natural sugars, like grape juice.

Here it is in it’s weird glory:

In real life, it’s one hue. I’m not sure where the camera is picking up the multiple shades from! But I guess it’s flash allows it to see more than we can see.

I had a great mid-afternoon snack, a new kind of granola for me:

On plain yogurt and with some almond butter and honey, it was great! An excellent blend of sweet and salty.

As for dinner: I had purchased Chilean Sea Bass a few weeks ago at Wegman’s, as I had never tried it before. After buying it, I saw that not only is it an overfished species, but that it is on the list of fish high in mercury. So I will try not to eat this fish too often! Maybe once a year, if that. There’s a possibility that Wegman’s has a sustainable fishery for this species, but I’m not sure.

But, since I had the fish in the freezer, I had to use it:

There were some challenges when the olive oil in the pan heated up more quickly than I thought and started to smoke as I was thinning and flouring the fillets…but after airing out the kitchen and newly cleaning the dangerously sizzling oiled pan (I had to toss water into it from a few feet away, so it wouldn’t splatter oil on me!), I was ready to go. I served the fish with some mashed polenta with feta, and steamed kale with a very garlicky dressing. I ended up using a Bobby Flay recipe to make the fish, and it turned out tasty with some sauteed spinach – even though I used less than 1/6 of the butter recommended in the recipe.

It seems like it’s always possible to use less butter than these recipes call for…

Question for you, the reader:
What creative substitutions for butter have you used in your recipes?