Dinner the past two nights --
Dinner the past two nights --
Tonight: Copper River sockeye with herb coating, asparagus with rhubarb sauce
Last night: Wood grilled chicken with zaatar and roasted garlic, levantine cucumber tomato salad
I need to work on my food photography. The rhubarb sauce was pink, and the salmon was this really orange salmon color. Oh, well. I tried this new thing I read about where you cook at a low temp in the oven with pans of water at the bottom. It worked super well, and even faster than they said it would.
The rhubarb sauce came from my weird brain and my current thing about using fresh, seasonal whatever. My brain thought it's traditional to serve a lemon sauce with asparagus, but rhubarb is tangy, too, why not that? So I simmered some fresh cut up rhubarb with a little sugar and when it got a little soft I let it sit off the heat until it thickened up. Then I thinned it a little with a squeeze of fresh lemon. I suppose I could have gotten fancy and strained it and thickened it with egg yolk, but who has time for that?
The salmon got a tiny bit of black pepper, then the herb coating which was minced up shallots, tarragon, parsley, chives, lemon zest, and chervil. The only thing that wasn't fresh was the chervil because ha ha try and find fresh chervil. After you mix it all together, you add a little olive oil, just enough so that it will stick together on the salmon. You could also use dill instead of the chervil.
Set oven at 250F, put two pie pans with some water in them in the bottom of the oven. Wiped a baking rack with some olive oil to prevent sticking, placed it in a baking/cookie sheet. Placed salmon (skin down) on rack, did the little bit of pepper, covered with the herb paste, cooked for 20 minutes (2 half pound pieces of 1 inch thick center cut salmon). Would have been ok to cook for just 15 minutes; recipe had said 25, but that would have been way too much.
Tasted really awesome, would totally do again.
--- ---- ----- ---- ---
The chicken was a whole chicken, hacked up with bones in. Rubbed with olive oil, generously coated with zaatar, grilled over hardwood, slathered with paste of roasted garlic. Skin got super crispy and the chicken was really juicy.
Salad was the little cucumbers and cherry tomatoes diced up with diced up white onion and a dressing made of zaatar, sumac, fresh mint, fresh chives, fresh parsley, lemon juice, sweet white vinegar.
Also yummy would do again. Only thing about the whole grilling with hardwood is there are messy cleanup aspects that I am not overfond of but I love the flavors, so will probably continue to suffer the cleanup.
Tonight: Copper River sockeye with herb coating, asparagus with rhubarb sauce
Last night: Wood grilled chicken with zaatar and roasted garlic, levantine cucumber tomato salad
I need to work on my food photography. The rhubarb sauce was pink, and the salmon was this really orange salmon color. Oh, well. I tried this new thing I read about where you cook at a low temp in the oven with pans of water at the bottom. It worked super well, and even faster than they said it would.
The rhubarb sauce came from my weird brain and my current thing about using fresh, seasonal whatever. My brain thought it's traditional to serve a lemon sauce with asparagus, but rhubarb is tangy, too, why not that? So I simmered some fresh cut up rhubarb with a little sugar and when it got a little soft I let it sit off the heat until it thickened up. Then I thinned it a little with a squeeze of fresh lemon. I suppose I could have gotten fancy and strained it and thickened it with egg yolk, but who has time for that?
The salmon got a tiny bit of black pepper, then the herb coating which was minced up shallots, tarragon, parsley, chives, lemon zest, and chervil. The only thing that wasn't fresh was the chervil because ha ha try and find fresh chervil. After you mix it all together, you add a little olive oil, just enough so that it will stick together on the salmon. You could also use dill instead of the chervil.
Set oven at 250F, put two pie pans with some water in them in the bottom of the oven. Wiped a baking rack with some olive oil to prevent sticking, placed it in a baking/cookie sheet. Placed salmon (skin down) on rack, did the little bit of pepper, covered with the herb paste, cooked for 20 minutes (2 half pound pieces of 1 inch thick center cut salmon). Would have been ok to cook for just 15 minutes; recipe had said 25, but that would have been way too much.
Tasted really awesome, would totally do again.
--- ---- ----- ---- ---
The chicken was a whole chicken, hacked up with bones in. Rubbed with olive oil, generously coated with zaatar, grilled over hardwood, slathered with paste of roasted garlic. Skin got super crispy and the chicken was really juicy.
Salad was the little cucumbers and cherry tomatoes diced up with diced up white onion and a dressing made of zaatar, sumac, fresh mint, fresh chives, fresh parsley, lemon juice, sweet white vinegar.
Also yummy would do again. Only thing about the whole grilling with hardwood is there are messy cleanup aspects that I am not overfond of but I love the flavors, so will probably continue to suffer the cleanup.
More #zeyneping
ReplyDelete