Selective Palate

So this week we had to tighten our belts; don’t we all! So dinner was made from foraging in the fridge and freezer. I managed to whip up quite a yummy dinner if I don’t say so myself!

Back in the recesses of my freezer I found a nice salmon filet, perfect for M and I. In fridge I had a head of cauliflower that needed to be used and I had a container of grape tomatoes that were getting a little over ripe.

I decided to make broiled salmon, roasted tomatoes with garlic and parmesan, and a garlic cauliflower puree.

Cauliflower Puree:

Recipe:

1 head cauliflower
1/4 cup warm milk (I used 1%)
1-2 tsp. butter
1-2 cloves garlic chopped
1/2 sweet white onion chopped
salt & pepper

Start out by coring the cauliflower and breaking it off into florettes. Then set up a steamer and steam them for about 10-15 minutes, untill they are fork tender. You want your fork to insert easily but not automatically slide back out. In a seperate pot melt the butter and over low heat gentely sweat the garlic and onion. You don’t want any color here just cook them enough to make them tender and bring out the sweetness. Warm your milk in the microwave. Now add about 1/2 of the cauliflower to a food processor along with the butter, garlic and onions. Pulse until smooth then add the rest of the cauliflower and as the processor is going slowly stream in your milk. Only add enough to make your puree smooth and creamy, if you need more liquid you can use the leftover steamer water or more milk. You want this to be a similar consistency of mashed potatoes; a little thinner. Season with salt and a good bit of pepper. You can keep this warm in a pot over very low heat until you are ready to serve, just make sure to stir it from time to time to make sure nothing burns or sticks.

Now on to the salmon and tomatoes. This is real easy. Pre-heat the oven to low broil and adjust the rack to the upper part of the oven. Toss the tomatoes with fresh minced garlic, a little parmesan cheese, salt, pepper and olive oil and spread out on either side of a baking sheet leaving the center free. Pat the salmon dry, very dry! And rub down both sides with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic salt. Place in the center of the baking sheet skin size down. My broiler’s flame is directly in the center that is why I have it set up like this, so set it up similar depending on your broiler. Broil for 7 minutes on this side then flip to skin side up and broil another 7-10 minutes depending how thick your fillet is. You want to crisp up the skin really nice.

To serve, place puree in the center of a plate or shallow bowl. Place filet skin side up on the puree and top with the tomatoes and fresh shredded basil!

Very healthy and VERY yummy.

This once a week deal is really not working so well I know. This blogging thing isn’t as easy as it looks!

Well this week though busy has been great so far. I am so happy to have our farmers market back. I knew I missed it but I didn’t know how much. Now up here the market starts in the beginning of June but we don’t start seeing any real produce until towards the end of the month. So this Saturday I headed on over (its across the street, how cool is that!). I lucked out with some great finds. I came home with a lunch of locally produced aged goat cheese, with freshly baked croissants. In addition, I was able to score some fresh butter lettuce and radishes and the biggest score of the day was a fresh ham steak from a local farm who raise their livestock from birth with no hormones/antibiotics, fed on food from the farm! It is really amazing. We had the cheese with the croissants and saved the produce and fresh ham for Sunday dinner.

Saturday night we decided to go to Jazz Fest in Burlington and we had an awesome dinner at Luenigs and enjoyed great music from Trio Gusto with Mike Martin. They were fantastic and we really enjoyed ourselves. So much so that I will follow up with another post all about it!

So on to Sunday Dinner!

With everything being so fresh I didn’t want to cover up any of that flavor so I kept it really simple. I started with a short brine on the pork. A combo of brown sugar, kosher salt, cloves, coriander, and black pepper corns and water. Once the brine cooled I soaked the pork for about 2 hours. It was only about 2 pounds so it didn’t need much. Once out of the brine I mixed up a rub consisting of toasted coriander seeds, cumin, garlic, salt and pepper mixed with a drop of liquid smoke and a drizzle of (fresh from the farmers market) cold pressed sunflower oil. By the way this stuff is like liquid gold. It has a nice nutty taste and is light and really full of flavor. You could of course use olive oil and no one would be the wiser! I ground all this up together in a mortar and pastel until a nice paste formed. I slathered that all over the ham steak and let that sit for about an hour as I got the rest of dinner prepped and ready to go.

First, I pre-heated the oven to 450 and placed my grill pan in the oven to heat up. I don’t have an outside grill so I use this set up whenever I want the same effect. Then I began work on the salad. The butter lettuce was picked that morning so as you can imagine it was a little dirty; I gave it a good washing and let it dry while I cleaned and sliced the radishes nice a thin and sliced some vidalia onions very thin as well. I threw it all in a bowl and that is where it sat waiting its dressing. Again I went real simple here. The dressing was nothing more than 1/4 cup lemon juice, 1/4 butter milk, 1-2 T. fresh dill, salt and pepper, and of course a drizzle of the Sunflower oil. It made a great light and tangy ,perfect for the salad. I held off tossing together until ready to serve. Then I began a light BBQ sauce to serve with the pork.

My mother used to make this sauce when I was a kid. In fact I had never even had store bought until I was grown and out of the house. I still prefer mom’s!

This is not an exact recipe but more like a method and a taste as you go kind of sauce. But here ya go, just don’t tell mom I gave out her secret!

Melt about 1-2T. butter in a sauce pan then add about 2-4 cloves garlic minced, 1-2 T. onion minced and saute until fragrant (NOT BURNT!) to this add about 1/4 cup brown sugar and let it get all carmally. To this add a few gluggs of beer, any kind really, whatever you like to drink. You could sub out hard cider or just stock if you don’t want the alcohol. Let this bubble away and add some tomato paste, I add a good squirt from the tube I would say about 2 tsp. Stir in and then add about 1/2 bottle of catchup and 1/4 cup red wine vinegar. This is usually where my mother stops, I however like things with a bit of a kick and I added 1 tsp. of cayenne and a couple good dashes of hot sauce. And don’t forget the salt and pepper! That’s it; it’s real simple and lends itself to experimentation. Really its hard to screw it up!

Ok Lets put this meal together!

Now that the “grill” is hot I gently laid the ham steak in the pan and closed the door. Cook on this side for about 10 minutes. I got some nice grill marks and accumulated some nice juices in the pan which I used to baste the steak as I turned it over and cooked for another 5 minutes or so. I took the pork out of the oven and let it rest while I took some corn on the cob I had handy and just placed them on the grill pan and put them in the oven.

By the time the ham steak had rested, the corn was done and I tossed the dressing with the salad. Serve with the sauce on the side and dinner was done!

So how many times can’t I ask for forgiveness before you all (all 5 of you that is) tell me f%^& off? Well I hope I its not now. Work has kept me so busy as of late that not only have I not posted but I have not made much of anything. I did get to make 2 very large quantities of guacamole 2 weeks in a row for friend’s parties and thanks to a friend I discovered that vidalia onions instead of say red onions in guac are very very good indeed! Other than that I have been shall we say lacking inspiration.

That is until the other night. M has been a bit of a funk as of late and the only way I know to help cheer people up is with food, yeah I know I am a diet’s worst enemy! Anyhow, I thought he could use a little pick me up after work so I thought I would combine 2 of his favorite foods into 1 tasty treat. And guess what; it was not all that bad for you either!!!!

Buffalo Chicken Burgers (combo of, you guessed it burgers and buffalo wings!) I got the initial inspiration from this lovely post and as always tweaked it to my liking.

Recipe:

2 chicken breast about a pound, cubed (leave the fat on!!!!!)
2 T. egg beaters or regular egg but I find it easier to just use the egg beaters.
1/2 a small onion (I used vidalia)
3 cloves garlic
1/4 -1/3 cup (palmful) of seasoned breadcrumbs
dash of hot sauce, pinch of cayanne, salt/pepper – all to taste
1/2 cup flour seasoned with cayanne (to taste)

Buffalo Sauce:

1-2 T. butter
2-3 cloves garlic minced
1/2 – 1 Cup hot sauce of choice (or you can mix like I did, 1 part Tabasco, 2 parts Franks)
pinch (or more) cayenne
1-2 T. red wine vinegar
salt & pepper

Place the onion and garlic in a food processor and pulse a few times to rough chop. Add the rest of the ingredients and pulse until a nice mix forms, should look like, wait for it, ground meat! Mix together your flour and cayenne. Now wet your hand; helps with sticking, and make 4 patties out of the ground meat mixture. It will be sticky and it will be a little loose. Lightly dredge the patties in the seasoned flour and pat off excess. Place patties on a plate and refrigerate til ready to use. Chilling them helps to keep them together while cooking just like you would do for a crab cake. Meanwhile make the sauce. Melt to butter and saute the garlic for a few minutes until fragrant/brown but not burnt. Now lower the heat and whisk in the cayenne then the rest of the ingredients. Turn off heat. When ready to cook your patties heat a fry pan with enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan, when hot gently lay your burgers in. Cook for about 5 minutes per side. Each side should be golden brown. When fully cooked, completely submerge in the buffalo sauce. Place on a bun with blue cheese!

I used an English Muffin and seved with a side of celery and carrot stix. It was a great meal especially for summer. I think you could do these on the grill too but you would have to cook them on greesed aluminum foil. If you placed them on the grill it self I don’t think the flour would cook right and give you that great crust. Plus it might just fall through the grating. But hey if you try it and it works let me know; I am way to chicken (ha) to try it!