surf & turf with chimichurri

Chimichurri is a salsa (a sauce) originally from Argentina, and is used widely in South America on grilled meats. It consists of different things depending on the region and the cook, but the most basic version is a mixture of fresh parsley, cilantro, green onion, olive oil, vinegar, and garlic.

I had some salmon I wanted to cook, and some leftover sirloin steak tips from the night before, so I figured I'd try to combine them for a bit of a surf & turf. I seared the salmon in my cast iron pan in some melted bacon fat - it took about 5 minutes per side because the filets were quite thick. This was actually my first time doing salmon in the frying pan, and I'm a convert. The skin comes out so wonderfully crispy...yum! My steak tips were already cooked from the night before, so I just threw them in the still-hot pan with the fish and let them warm through.

The sauce itself is ridiculously easy....if you have a blender or food processor that works. I found out the hard way that my blender doesn't like to whiz up parsley, so I had to scoop everything out onto a chopping board and go at it the old-fashioned way with a big knife. It was good for stress relief, at the very least!

When the sauce was done, I plated everything up and spooned it over the salmon:

It was a very yummy combination. The acid and herbal brightness of the chimichurri cuts through the fattiness of the salmon very nicely Even my husband, who is not generally a fan of salmon, said he liked it and would eat it again, so we'll add this one to the repertoire. :)

Here's a quick listing of what I put in the chimichurri - you can just chuck it all in a food processor or (dependable) blender, or chop it by hand, or even mortar-and-pestle it if you want to go really old-school:

1 1/2 cups fresh parsley
1/2 cup fresh cilantro
3 green onions, chopped
2 cloves of garlic
3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
3 tbsp red wine vinegar
pinch of salt
pinch of black pepper

crispy salmon cakes with lemony yogurt sauce

Something I've been interested in trying to make for a while now is salmon cakes. Traditionally they have mayonnaise and often bread crumbs incorporated into them. I wanted to see if I could make them without either one of those things. I came across this recipe on Epicurious which sounded quite nice, so I figured I'd tweak it a little and give it a try.

The recipe calls for pitas or bread. Obviously, that had to go. I also ixnayed the mayo that the recipe called for. Instead of bread, I added a 1/4 cup of gluten-free baking mix (I like King Arthur Flour brand). I mixed everything else up the same as the recipe, and it didn't seem too dry in the least, so I just skipped the mayo altogether. I formed the mixture into patties and fried them in a little bit of coconut oil, about four minutes per side. The cakes crisped up nicely, but stayed very moist inside. When they were done, I mixed up the yogurt sauce and spooned it over the top, and served with some quickly-steamed asparagus. The sauce was good not only on the cakes, but on the asparagus as well.

Next time, I think I might go for less lemon in the cake itself. I think would also be quite good done in a ginger-garlic-sesame direction rather than lemon and chive.

Crispy Salmon Cakes with Lemony Yogurt Sauce

salmon en papillote

In an attempt to be more healthy last weekend, I decided we need to eat more fish. I bought a bag of frozen wild-caught salmon fillets at the grocery store and chucked them in the freezer. Yesterday afternoon, whilst peering into the depths of the freezer and thinking about what to make for dinner, the bag of salmon caught my eye. It was honestly less of a burning desire to eat the fish and more of a guilt thing over having spent money on it but not used it that made me pull two fillets out of it...but the point is that I DID pull two fillets out, defrosted them, and cooked them for dinner.

I wanted to jazz the salmon up a little, since frankly neither my husband nor I tend to get too excited about fish unless it's beer-battered and served with a heap of fries and malt vinegar. Flipping through several cookbooks yielded little inspiration - everything seemed to be calling for sugary glazes to coat the salmon with, and we're doing our best to cut sugar out of our diets. I remembered an episode of Good Eats I saw years ago, where Alton Brown cooked salmon in these nifty parchment pocket things - you pack the fish and whatever else you want to go with it into a parchment pocket, seal it up, cook it, and everything lightly cooks itself in the trapped steam. It sounded like the beginnings of a good idea, so I turned to trusty Google and found an old Julia Child recipe for Salmon en Papillote with Tomatoes and Shallots. Winner, winner, fish for dinner!

The recipe, found below, is super simple as long as you can get your hands on some parchment paper. All you really need to do is season the fillets and then place them on the parchment with your chosen vegetable accoutrements, like so:

Then, you do a little origami practice to seal the packets up, like so:

 NOTE: Gods, how I tried to do these packets into nice neat rectangles by folding the ends of the parchment over in the middle and then creasing the ends closed, but they WOULD NOT stay closed no matter what I did, so I regrouped and did it Alton Brown's way. Worked so much easier. I wish I'd have just done it that way to begin with, as it would have saved me a good 20 minutes of paper-crackling and swearing and muttering about having quit drinking too soon.

These packets then go into a 425 degree oven for about 8 minutes or so. The only thing I found frustrating about this cooking method (other than the above-mentioned packet-making debacle), was that when it came time to check the fish to see if it was done...I couldn't, at least not without ripping open one of my carefully constructed packets. That was mildly annoying. I cracked one open and deemed it done, but if it hadn't been, I suppose I'd have had to just stick them back in the open ripped open and hope for the best.

Anyway, this was the end result:

It was pretty tasty, though I'd like to try the same recipe again with fresh fillets rather than previously-frozen ones. I think, with salmon at least, freezing just does something unfixable to the texture of the fish. I enjoy fresh a whole lot more than frozen, but this was still certainly decent. As you can see, I added some asparagus and a side-salad with a nice bright lemon-garlic dressing.


Salmon En Papillote with Tomatoes, Shallots and Asparagus
Serves two

1 medium bunch of asparagus (or about 6-8 spears per person, depending on how much you like asparagus), woody ends broken off
2 Roma tomatoes, washed and chopped
1 large or 2 small shallots, chopped fine
2 4oz salmon fillets, fresh or defrosted
salt and pepper
small amount of butter for applying to parchment and topping vegetables
parchment paper

1. Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees. Season salmon fillets with salt and pepper. Rip off a piece of parchment about 16" long. Lightly rub center of parchment with a bit of butter. Arrange half of asparagus on parchment. Place one salmon fillet atop asparagus. Add half of chopped tomatoes and half of chopped shallots atop salmon fillet. Top with a dab of butter.

2. Carefully fold parchment over fish and vegetables and work your way around the edge, folding paper over and crimping as you go.When you get to the other corner of the packet, crease the paper and fold the remainder UNDER the packet. This will keep it closed and keep the packet air-tight.

3. Repeat with remaining ingredients.

4. Place packets on a cookie sheet and place in 425 degree oven for about 8 minutes (my fillets were about 3/4 inch thick. If you have thicker ones, you'll need to adjust your cook time up by a couple minutes).

5. Remove packets from oven, open carefully, and serve.

Note: If you're interested, the dressing on my salad was a vinaigrette made with the juice and zest of one Meyer lemon, some extra virgin olive oil, a small dash of white wine vinegar, a little salt, and one clove of garlic, minced.

salmon with roasted asparagus and sauteed spinach

In an effort to be more healthy, I'm trying to transition our diet back to a focus on vegetables and protein and far less grains. Thus, tonight we had salmon and two different veggie sides!

I actually cooked the salmon and the asparagus together in a super hot (500 degree) oven. To prep the salmon, I just rolled it in some olive oil. The asparagus was the same, except I also sprinkled a little kosher salt over it. I arranged it all on the same pan and baked it for about 10 minutes at 500 degrees.

Sauteed spinach is something I really love, as there are so many different flavors you can incorporate into it. For this batch, I chopped up three slices of uncured bacon and cooked them until they got quite crisp. I scooped the bacon out and put it on some paper towel to drain while I chopped up half a white onion and sauteed that in the accumulated bacon fat (don't worry, it wasn't that much). When the onion was soft and golden brown, I added some balsamic vinegar and let it cook out for a minute or so. I added a whole bag of baby spinach to the hot pan and tossed it until the spinach wilted. So yummy!