Sunday dinners and simple pleasures: Seared Salmon Fillets with Dill Dijon Sauce

The Dill Dijon Sauce on this Seared Salmon Fillet tastes rich, calorific and sinful, but is in fact 100% fat free. Recipe below.

Susan over at Food Blogga recently waxed eloquent and passionate about reviving the tradition of Sunday dinners. Of course, the Sunday dinners of her childhood memories took hours to prepare, with “every Italian-American woman with any pride starting the ‘gravy’ [East coast Italian-American for tomato sauce] at breakfast to be ready for 2:00 Sunday dinner.”

Most of us just don’t have that kind of time these days—or at least the desire to devote that kind of time to a meal on a weekly basis. But Susan’s right—there really is something special about Sunday dinners. Marion and I used to host regular Sunday dinners with a rotating cast of characters. Dinner was anything from a simple pasta with red sauce to Chinese [Marion is insanely good at Chinese—her Szechuan dish Ants Climbing a Tree is legendary, both for its taste and its heat] to the biggest pot roast in the store.

Whatever the food, though, dinner also always included wide-ranging conversation, laughter and numerous bottles of wine. And at some point in the evening, Sunday dinner regular John could be counted on to lean back in his chair, make a sweeping gesture toward the stereo and say, with complete conviction and satisfaction, “This is the perfect music for a Sunday evening.” It didn’t matter if it was Mozart on the turntable or Ella Fitzgerald singing Cole Porter tunes or Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys or Coleman Hawkins’ muscular tenor sax. Whatever it was, John always proclaimed the music to be perfect. And somehow, he was always right.

But things change. People move. The Sunday dinners fell by the wayside. Sure, many dinner parties have followed, but there was something so magical about the anticipation of those Sunday evenings and the way they prolonged the weekend, adding a beautiful finish and staving off the inevitable switching to gearing-up-for-the-work-week mode.

So we’re reviving Sunday dinners. Not every Sunday, but more Sundays than not. And if this past Sunday was any indication, it’s high time we did. This one was just family—Marion’s sister Lena joined us. But anytime you get her and our daughter Laurel in the same room, hilarity ensues, as too many bad sitcom descriptions say. Both were in fine form.

I kept the food quick and simple. The whole weekend had been a busy one, so there wasn’t time to fuss over something all day, even if I’d had the notion to do so. If you’re a regular visitor to Blue Kitchen, you’ve probably noticed that such notions rarely strike. In fact, terms like quick, easy and the ever-popular “brainlessly simple” are far more likely to appear in my posts than, say, “time-consuming, but worth it.”

I also don’t mind repeating myself. Deb over at Smitten Kitchen recently confessed to an aversion to ever repeating recipes, always choosing to try some thing new. I have no such issue. Marion and I had so enjoyed the Endive Salad with Blue Cheese and Walnuts I posted last week that I trotted out a bigger version as our starter. It was awesome [another term whose gratuitous overuse has caused me to generally avoid it, but it really was]. Oooohs and aaaahs all around. I had a few bites with everyone, then took my wine glass to the kitchen to continue cooking. When I came back later to check in on conversation, the plate had been picked so clean that a less fastidious person might have been tempted to just return it to the shelf without washing.

The rest of the dinner was equally simple and well received. Garlicky mashed potatoes and steamed green beans tossed with a little butter for sides. And quickly seared salmon fillets with this, yes, brainlessly simple sauce that had people doing everything but licking the bowl. Seriously.

Continue reading “Sunday dinners and simple pleasures: Seared Salmon Fillets with Dill Dijon Sauce” →

In a bind[er]: Seared Tuna Pepper Steaks

Sesame oil, soy sauce and sherry give a subtle Asian taste to Seared Tuna Pepper Steaks. Recipe below.

The vent above our stove in the new kitchen has us cooking more seafood these days. And that has me looking for more recipes and ideas. Last week, I saw beautiful tuna steaks at the store. So I nabbed a couple with no real game plan, knowing I’d figure out something to do with them once I got them home. We have tons of cookbooks—well, actually more like pounds, but anyway lots—but I turned first to the binders.

The binders started out as a binder, one of those blue cloth-covered ones with maybe one-inch rings. And for a long time, that was plenty. Occasionally, we would clip a recipe from the newspaper or photocopy something from a library cookbook, and into the binder it went.

Then came epicurious.com. Does everyone go as nuts as I did when first stumbling on this site? From my first visit, I was hooked. There were recipes, thousands of them. There was the advanced search feature that let you specify cuisine, course, key ingredients, cooking technique… There were even dictionaries—one for food and one for wine, for crying out loud.

I visited every day, sometimes several times a day, checking out the Recipe of the Day [an evil feature designed to keep you coming back for more] or just doing random searches based on any ingredient or food substance that popped into my fevered brain. And like crack or eBay or any other addiction, it interfered with my work. Well, maybe a little. Not that it mattered—my creative director at the time was a fellow foodie, so as long as I shared my findings with him, all was good.

Perhaps most telling, though, I printed out vast quantities of recipes. Scads of them. Reams of them. The single blue binder was replaced by two, these with three-inch rings and dividers with tabs. This seemed like an ambitious step at first, even foolish. But soon these were swollen and ready to call for reinforcements.

And then the obsession stopped, as quickly as it had begun. Oh, I still love epicurious.com—I have a permanent link to it in my blogroll. But now I use it responsibly. I log on, find the recipe [or more often, a basic technique based on a few recipes], then get out.

And the binders are still around. They continue to grow, but at a much slower pace now. So when I came home with the tuna steaks last week [remember how this rant started?], I flipped through the seafood section of one of them and adapted this recipe from one I found there. It originally appeared in Bon Appetit, sent into the Too Busy to Cook column, one of my favorite sections of the magazine. Because as much as we love to cook, we’re all often too busy, aren’t we? Continue reading “In a bind[er]: Seared Tuna Pepper Steaks” →

Spicy Salmon with Mango Salsa

Mango salsa with a touch of chili powder brings bold taste to salmon fillets with a hint of cayenne pepper. Recipe below.

The kitchen is open. Again. Sort of. Our new apartment is still filled with boxes and chaos, but we’re making headway. I was on the phone with a friend the other day and said, “It still looks like a bomb went off in here, but a much smaller bomb.” Marion added, “And a bomb that folded a little laundry.” I’ve decided that we either have to move more often, so we don’t acquire too much stuff, or else never move at all.

But I’ve actually managed to cook a few meals now. It feels good to be back in the kitchen—even a kitchen where I can’t find anything yet and the stove and fridge are in completely different places from where my brain says they should be. It’s almost like cooking in a parallel universe—pans and utensils seem reassuringly familiar, but everything is slightly out of whack, slightly off kilter. Cue ominous background music.

The good news is the new stove is vented, a first for me. I’ve been itching to try it out since the first time I saw it; I figured pan seared salmon would be the acid test. I had learned from Helen over at Beyond Salmon that one reason my Salmon Tarragon on a Bed of Vegetables didn’t stink up the place with my unvented stove was that I was using a cooking method involving liquid, steaming it. She also said that pan searing does cause the house to smell, particularly with fatty fish. Enter the salmon.

The mango salsa is a variation on one I’ve been making for a while. Fruit alone—the mango and strawberries, in this case—would be too sweet for the fish. The addition of green onion tops [you could also use chives] gives it a fresh wildness and just a bit of a bite, making it play nicely with something savory—the salmon, for instance, or grilled chops or chicken. You could also use minced shallot, but I think this would cause a definite onion taste to take over, rather than just the lively green flavor of green onions or chives.

Adding the chili powder gives the salsa just the tiniest bit of heat, but it really ramps up the taste. Similarly, the cayenne pepper only adds a hint of heat to the salmon; don’t expect a fiery Thai dish intensity with this meal. Continue reading “Spicy Salmon with Mango Salsa” →

Salmon Tarragon on a Bed of Vegetables: Better late than never

Steaming salmon over a bed of vegetables in wine keeps fish moist and delivers delicate flavor. Recipe below.

This is the salmon dish I was going to prepare last week, before painting the living room got in the way. So it’s a week late—and given my history with fish, it’s much later than that.

Fish and I haven’t always been on the best of terms. I grew up in the midwest—St. Louis, to be exact—before reliably fresh fish was readily available in just about any supermarket. Fish for my family was frozen, breaded ocean perch, fried up and served with canned stewed tomatoes, cold from the fridge, and my grandmother’s sour German cole slaw. Even though we weren’t Catholic, this dreaded meal appeared without fail every Friday. So Friday became my day of semi-fasting at the evening meal, breaking up the fish and tomatoes with my fork and redistributing them around the plate, while consuming as little as humanly possible. I don’t think I fooled anyone at the table—I just outwaited them. Eventually, I would be excused so dinner dishes could be washed.

If this weren’t enough to put me off fish, every winter also brought daily tablespoon-sized doses of cod liver oil, which tastes exactly like its name. I can’t remember now what my mother thought this vile, viscous liquid would ward off. What it in fact warded off was any hope of me liking fish for many years to come.

So of course I married a fish lover. Marion, to her credit, was patient and gentle with me as she gradually reintroduced seafood to my palate—much as one would be with any rescued abused creature. She only served fish occasionally and then, only milder-flavored species. That she is a superb cook also helped. But it took years before I willingly chose fish in a restaurant if any creature that had walked the earth was also offered on the menu. And even more years before I attempted to cook fish.

Now I really like fish—like cooking it too. Thanks, Marion! After you try this simple, quick, delicious dish, I think you’ll thank her too. Continue reading “Salmon Tarragon on a Bed of Vegetables: Better late than never” →

Scallops with Sautéed Spinach: Simply Impressive

Scallops are as impressive as they are easy to make. Recipe below.

Okay, let’s all just admit it. One of the big pleasures of cooking is serving a dish that is so delicious, beautiful, sophisticated or [D] all of the above that your guests are blown away. And when said dish is also quick and brainlessly easy to make, you’ve got a real keeper.

Dishes with scallops tend to fall squarely into this camp on all counts. Both the larger sea scallops and their smaller brethren bay scallops have a delicate, slightly sweet and decidedly unfishy taste. And like mushrooms and tofu, they readily take on flavors of herbs, sauces and other seasonings.

Visually, their plump, drumlike shapes—think marshmallows [sea scallops] or miniature marshmallows [bay scallops]—lend themselves to an array of beautiful presentations.

And in terms of simplicity, it just doesn’t get much easier than scallops. In fact, the hardest part of cooking them may be trying to rinse away any tiny particles of sand that can get lodged in the scallops while they’re inside their shells [yes, they are shellfish, so check with guests for any shellfish allergies before adding them to your menu].

I rinse them under cold running water while gently brushing a finger over all surfaces, feeling for grains of sand. It’s a mostly successful method, but occasionally you may bite into a teeny grain that escaped your attention. Big deal. It’s sand, unlike the euphemistically named “vein” in shrimp [which, as we all know, is the shrimp’s, well, guts]. I did look online to see if there was any secret to washing scallops that I didn’t know about. Pretty much everyone just said, “wash scallops to remove grit.” One person did opine that if you’re getting grit on your scallops, you should change sources for buying them—but with so many others telling you to rinse the grit away, one can only wonder at this person’s rarified fishmonger sources. If anyone has a secret tip, I’d love to hear it.

Scallops aren’t just easy to prepare—they’re quick. About the only way you can really screw them up is to overcook them, in which case they’ll come out tough and chewy. So you’re forced to cook quickly [we’re talking minutes here] and not belabor things.

Here’s a quick, impressive recipe that’s actually two great dishes. You can make them separately, but they’re especially wonderful together. Continue reading “Scallops with Sautéed Spinach: Simply Impressive” →