Salmon – Blue Kitchen

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” →

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” →