Roast Salmon and Broccoli with Chili-Caper Vinaigrette

I always have my eyes peeled for new salmon and chicken recipes.  I have my favorite recipes, but I can't help thinking that there might be something better (or just different, but still worth trying) out there.  When I have a really nice thick wild salmon fillet I want to sear it and eat it medium-rare, but when the salmon doesn't seem quite as fresh or it's not quite as thick, I like to roast it. This time the salmon was a little too skinny for searing so I decided to roast it.  And then I poked around online for a bit.  The thing that really drives me nuts about salmon is how many people seem to love it lacquered or glazed with some sort of random and quasi-Asian sauce.  I feel like every third recipe I found either called for teriyaki sauce or sugar/maple syrup/honey in the marinade or glaze.  I have been suckered into one or two of those recipes and regretted it every time.  I don't want my salmon to be sticky sweet - sweet fish just doesn't do it for me.  I also don't want dairy with my fish (unless it's lox and cream cheese on a bagel).  I will make an exception for creme fraiche (on rare occasion) and butter is always fine, but I can't understand the combination of mayonnaise and salmon.  It just weirds me out.  

This recipe, which I had considered making a few times in the past, looked both easy and intriguing, which is a really nice combination for a meal mid-week.  More importantly, it didn't trigger any of my instinctive aversions (i.e. there was no mayonnaise, teriyaki or sugar required).  When we were making dinner and I saw the chili-caper vinaigrette I was a little worried that the elements of the dish wouldn't really work together.  The combination of jalapenos, rice wine vinegar, capers and evoo just seemed (and looked)... strange.  But once you put it all together the flavors worked surprisingly well together.  One commenter on Epicurious called the combination of flavors "surprisingly delicious" and that's exactly how I felt.  I thought it would be interesting at the very least, but I didn't have high expectations.  I used the vinaigrette pretty sparingly because I didn't want it to overpower the flavor of the salmon and I thought that the bright, briny and slightly spicy flavor worked really nicely with the richness of the salmon and the slightly nutty flavor of the roasted broccoli.  This recipe won't replace my favorite Salt and Pepper Salmon, but I can definitely see us making it again - it's easy and tasty.

Recipe after the jump!

Asian Glazed Salmon and Aaron McCargo's Broccoli Slaw

Sometimes I am really creative in the kitchen - the creative juices get flowing and I start conceptualing dishes from seemingly out of nowhere.  Sometimes I have a case of cook's block.  We had wild Coho salmon from Whole Foods in the fridge and while I am generally pretty excited about wild salmon, I literally couldn't think of a single recipe I wanted to make.  My fallback recipe for wild salmon is this Salt and Pepper Salmon by Tyler Florence, but I wanted something new.  We had just made the Salt and Pepper salmon two weekends ago when we had Alex's brother over for dinner.  Plus these fillets were on the thin side so they weren't exactly ideal for the recipe.  I briefly considered making a variation on Rachel Ray's Roasted Salmon with Lemon-Herb Matzo Crust, but I wasn't really feeling it.  I halfheartedly proposed it and Alex shot it down.  So then we were back to having salmon in the fridge with no idea how to cook it.  So I decided to back into the recipe by deciding on the side dish and then figuring out what to do with the salmon.  I knew I wanted to make a broccoli slaw at some point so we settled on the broccoli slaw recipe (which, I kid you not, is called "Packin' A Punch Broccoli Slaw") and then went back to finding a simple salmon recipe to go with the slaw.  In the end we settled on an Asian Glazed Salmon recipe from the New Legal See Foods Cookbook that I found online.  I'm not typically a fan of glazed salmon (it's generally too sweet for me) but I literally couldn't think of anything else that sounded better.  And this glazed salmon was no different, even though we cut back on the amount of brown sugar in the glaze (partially because we ran out).  I think I should learn to stay away from anything with "glaze" in the title.  Beyond being a little too sweet from me, I just thought it was kind of blah.  And that is as much my fault as the recipe's since I was never really that excited about it in the first place.  It didn't do much to highlight the flavor of the salmon so it was probably not the best recipe to use with nice wild salmon.  It might make more sense with farmed salmon that doesn't have quite as much flavor or to those who don't particularly enjoy the flavor of salmon.  As for the broccoli slaw, I thought it was ok.  I liked it more than the salmon, although I wouldn't say that I loved it.  I liked the hint of heat from the jalapeno and the red pepper flakes and the acidity from the cider vinegar and lime, which I thought contrasted nicely against the sweetness of the salmon.  What I enjoy most about broccoli slaw is the crisp texture.  I think I will buy another bag of broccoli slaw mix from Trader Joe's and go with some sort of Asian-inspired slaw and see how that turns out.  I know that if I played around a little more I could come up with a kickass broccoli slaw.  Perhaps I will add some slivered almonds for additional crunch and then go from there...

Recipes after the jump!

Mustard-Crusted Salmon

 

Every time we drive down to Maryland to visit my parents we come back with a cooler full of random food and a trunk full of clean laundry.  We also tend to come home with Cost Co-sized bags of toilet paper and paper towels, but that is entirely beside the point.  This past visit I appropriated a few things from the freezer for the trip home - including a salmon filet and some pre-marinated Korean spicy pork.  I couldn't tell what kind of salmon it was, but it looked really red like Coho or sockeye salmon.  Rather than stick with our tried and true salmon recipes I decided to do something new.  This recipe was vaguely inspired by a Rachel Ray recipe I found awhile ago for salmon with a matzo and herb crust.  I started trying to think of creative ways to use up the herbs we bought for Thanksgiving with the salmon and that made me think of the herb and matzo-crust.  I didn't bother to look back at the original recipe but the idea of an herb-y crumb topping stuck with me.  We don't tend to keep matzo around the apartment so I didn't have any matzo to use, but we did have some leftover baguette from the night before.  So we whipped up some fresh bread crumbs and crusted our salmon with a mixture of bread crumbs, mustard and fresh thyme.  Oh and we threw in some butter for good measure.  And since we both love crispy salmon skin Alex and I decided to crisp up the salmon skin in a pan on the stove-top and then broil the salmon quickly to brown the bread crumbs and to cook the top side.  I think in the future I would use finer bread crumbs.  Our crumbs were more like small bread chunks.  I also might trip throwing in some fresh parsley or other herbs.  Otherwise I think it was a really nice and fairly easy recipe.  And our salmon was very nicely cooked.  The next time I pick up some matzo I might try the Rachel Ray recipe, but seeing as that almost never happens, maybe we will just stick with our own mustard-crusted salmon.

Recipe after the jump!

Mark Bittman's Roasted Salmon with Butter

I am always looking for easy recipes that you can make with one arm tied behind your back and that don't require a ton of ingredients.  Oh and it helps if those dishes are at least relatively healthy.  This recipe has exactly those qualities.  It really doesn't get any simpler than this - both in terms of the effort required and the number of ingredients.  Including the salmon, the dish only required 5 ingredients.  And since the dish was basically just salmon (with a little butter coating the pan), s&p and parsley, the dish is also relatively healthy.  Hurry omega-3 acids!  Considering how tasty the dish was, it is rather unbelievable that the dish was so easy to throw together.  The salmon was really nicely cooked and seasoned.  We cooked our salmon for 8 minutes and it was perfect - with a pink, slightly translucent center.  And it was so easy!  We served it with a simple arugula salad and watermelon and it was a perfect mid-summer mid-week meal.  This is the second post in a row where I have to thank Serious Eats for a lovely meal!  And Serious Eats also includes various riffs on this recipe using different herbs, or evoo in lieu of some of the butter that provide a few interesting modifications on this recipe, which makes it even more fun and attractive.  So I will have to try some of those out (or come up with my own interpretations) and figure out which is my favorite!

Recipe after the jump!

Salmon Bulgogi with Bok Choy and Mushrooms

Now that work has calmed down a bit, we have time to cook again.  I'm hoping that this entire month is on the slower side so Alex and I can cook and eat a bunch of meals at home, but we will have to wait and see what happens.  It has been so long since I had the time to really sit down and plan my meals that I find that I am a little rusty.  When I was trying to figure out what to make for dinner this week I literally had no inspiration whatsoever.  I couldn't think of a single thing I wanted to make, so I just dug through the freezer until I found a few proteins, picked up a few veggies at the farmers' market and then searched Epicurious to come up with some recipes.  This salmon dish was what resulted.  I do have an idea for some Chinese-inspired lamb burgers for this weekend, but we haven't made them yet so I can't take any credit.

When Alex took his first bite of the salmon he predicted I would have two thoughts - that the marinade was kind of salty and kind of harsh.  My first thought was actually that the marinade was almost ridiculously gingery.  We kind of eyeballed the proportions here so the abundance of ginger could be Alex's fault (he did the solids) and the saltiness could be my fault (I "measured" the liquids).  My second thought was that the bok choy and shiitake mushrooms were underseasoned.  But I found that when you tossed the veggies in the reduced marinade that the dish worked out pretty well.  The veggies on their own were kind of bland and the salmon with the reduced marinade/glaze on top was too highly seasoned.  When you put them together (and scraped some marinade off the salmon) it balanced out.  I was a little worried about cooking the salmon at such high temperatures, but that worked out pretty well too.  The salmon turned out to be very nicely cooked - still a touch pink in the center (which I like) and not dry like I had feared.  This will never be my favorite way to cook salmon, but with a few tweaks I think it could be a very pleasant weeknight meal since it is very simple to put together and doesn't require a ton of time, effort and/or ingredients.

Recipe after the jump!

Spice-Crusted Salmon with Ginger-Cilantro Yogurt Sauce

The smell of this salmon is going to stick with me for days to come (in more ways than one because the smell of cooked fish is still lingering in our apartment).  When I was crushing up the fennel and coriander seeds they were both releasing a wonderful scent. They were so aromatic that I could smell them through the ziploc bag.  The crushed coriander seeds smelled nicely floral (and just slightly peppery), whereas the crushed fennel seeds smelled like licorice or anise.  And then when we cooked the salmon you still got those aromatic scents, combined with the smell of the salmon itself.  I thought that overall the salmon was nice.  The floral warmth of the coriander and fennel rub paired nicely with the richness of the salmon and the lime juice (and the yogurt sauce) really cut through the richness and gave the dish some acidity.  I thought the flavor of the yogurt sauce was a little overpowering at times - particularly when you happened to bite into a piece of minced ginger.  In the future I would probably grate the ginger instead of mincing it to avoid any such mouthfuls of ginger.  I would also probably cut back on the amount of yogurt sauce that I serve with each piece of salmon.  I don't think you can get rid of the yogurt sauce entirely because the spices might otherwise prove a little too powerful - I think you need the creamy coolness and acidity of the yogurt sauce to act as a counterpoint to the spices.  All in all, I would say that this was a nice salmon dish and a nice alternative to our usual salmon recipes, but it was just "nice" and nothing spectacular.

Recipe after the jump!

Smoked Salmon and Egg Tartines

Growing up my parents would buy bagels and lox for us on random weekend mornings.  I was always so excited when I would come down for breakfast and see the bag of bagels on the counter with cream cheese and lox in the fridge.  Once I moved to NYC all of a sudden bagels with cream cheese and lox became insanely accessible.  And then I discovered that lox and scrambled eggs work really well together too.  I guess I should say thanks to the guys at Barney Greengrass for teaching me that.  I don't know why smoked salmon and eggs work so well together, but they do.  This morning for breakfast I was thinking about making scrambled eggs with some smoked salmon that I picked up from Zabar's, but then I decided that I wanted to make an egg salad with smoked salmon instead. So that's what I did.  I had some fresh dill that I picked up for another recipe and dill is such a natural pairing with salmon so I threw that in.  I don't like too much mayo in my egg salad, so I added in some whole-grain mustard, which I do with every salad, including tuna salad.  You don't want more than a touch of mustard because you don't want the flavor to fight with the flavors of the smoked salmon and the dill, but a little mustard is the perfect touch for me.

Recipe after the jump!

Pan-Seared Salmon with Pumpkin Seed-Cilantro Pesto

I have to admit that Alex and I have been in something of a salmon rut recently.  I know that Tyler Florence's Salt and Pepper Salmon is absolutely delicious, but that is no reason for it to be the only salmon recipe we cook.  You have to mix it up every once in awhile.  When I saw this recipe in the November issue of Bon Appetit I just knew this would be a good addition to our repertoire.  The pumpkin seed-cilantro pesto both compliments and cuts the fattiness of the salmon.  The pesto adds a really fresh and punchy element to the dish, with the flavor of the lime and cilantro.  And the pumpkin seeds give the dish crunch, which contrasts nicely with the silky texture of the salmon.  I would totally serve this salmon dish for guests - I think my parents would enjoy it and it's really easy to make.  It would be a wonderful meal served with this Mache and Avocado Salad with Tortilla Strips and some simple grilled or roasted asparagus.  If you had some pesto leftover you could probably lightly drizzle it over any leftover asparagus (although I probably wouldn't serve the pesto over both the salmon and the asparagus in one meal).

Recipe after the jump!

Four-Spice Salmon with Refreshing Watermelon and Heirloom Tomato Salad

I would say that this dish came about pretty randomly.  As far as I am concerned, the two components were never meant to go together.  Sometimes our meals are planned from beginning to end - I know that I want to serve a main course and I come up with a side dish to compliment it (or vice versa).  This meal was two completely separate dishes that I threw together into one meal just because it was all we had in the fridge.  And the ingredients weren't so crazy that we couldn't combine them.  So we did.  And it worked out ok.  The flavors didn't exactly compliment each other, but they weren't completely at war with each other either.

Alex thought that the salmon was ok, but a little dry.  Spice rub seared onto the surface of fish always reminds me of blackening seasoning on catfish and redfish.  The spices dry out and get a little charred.  I thought that the flavors of the spice rub that went on top of the salmon were pretty nice.  Alex wanted more of the spice rub (or at least more powerful flavors from the spice rub).  I liked the flavors the way they were - subtle, but highly aromatic.  This wasn't my favorite salmon recipe, but I thought it was an interesting variation on our typical Salt and Pepper Salmon.  The watermelon salad was probably my favorite part of the meal.  I love watermelon salads and we have made several versions over the years.  But I have never combined watermelon with heirloom tomatoes.  I really liked the sweetness of the watermelon, the acidity of the tomatoes, the fresh mint flavor and the punch of saltiness from the feta.  The dish was just so summery and fresh and the flavors really work amazingly well together.  It was delicious.  Word to the wise - be careful when reducing the balsamic glaze, otherwise you end up with a really thick sticky mess that is less of a glaze and more of a molasses-like taffy substance.  Even with the balsamic candy/taffy instead of a glaze, I thought the salad was fabulous.  As a side note, in case you are confused by the pictures we used yellow watermelon and a red heirloom tomato.  Pretty, no?

Recipes after the jump!

Slow-Baked Salmon with Lemon and Thyme

After a few crazy weeks at work and a weekend in St. Louis I am back in the game!  It feels so great to be back in the kitchen again.  Sunday night when I talked to Alex I told him that I was dying for salad and healthy food.  The past few weeks I had been eating crap and over the weekend in St. Louis I ate like a kid again - Chick-fil-A (which was absolutely delicious), turkey sandwiches on white bread with mustard, Doritos and cheeseburgers.  It was all awesomely nostalgic and tasty, but by the end of the weekend my system was crying uncle.  If things had gone as planned, I would have been back in NYC Sunday night eating salad, but to make a long story short the hurricane hit and my flight back to NYC on Sunday was canceled due to the hurricane, which resulted in my boarding a flight to DC and then taking the bus up to NYC today.  Once I got to NYC I was all about salad and seafood, both of which I haven't had in far too long.

This recipe was one that I saw in Bon Appetit earlier this summer.  I am always trying new salmon recipes, even though I am fairly well convinced that no salmon recipe could possibly be better than Tyler Florence's Salt and Pepper Salmon.  Even though I don't think I can beat that recipe, I keep gathering new salmon recipes to try.  I have a recipe from Mark Bittman for Four-Spice Salmon that is next on my list.  I guess hope springs eternal that one day I will find the absolute perfect salmon recipe.  This recipe was nice, and very different from most of the other recipes we have tried, but it still can't compare.  I liked the flavors of the thyme and lemon with the salmon.  I also liked how moist the salmon stayed from roasting it at such a low temperature.  But the flavors of the lemon and thyme mixture didn't penetrate down into the fish was much as I would have hoped.  So if you got a bite of salmon that didn't have any of the lemon and thyme mixture on it, the salmon was fairly bland.  But if you had a bite with the lemon and thyme mixture, it was very flavorful.  I guess there are two solutions to that problem: (1) make more of the lemon and thyme mixture and rub it all over the sides of the salmon as well as the top and (2) marinate the salmon in the mixture in the refrigerator overnight.  I'm not sure which option is the better one.  I suppose you could hedge your bets and do both.  All things considered it's not a bad recipe, but I have other salmon recipes that I prefer.  And the search continues...

Recipe after the jump!

Salmon with Lemon-Pepper Sauce and Watercress-Herb Salad

Look!  No brown!  Well, a little brown but there is only so much I can do about the color of my dining room table.  But it's still a pretty dish, huh?  Salmon and greens look so pretty together.  There were supposed to be lemons on this dish too, which would have been even prettier, but we ran out.  Oops.  This is what happens when I am busy with work.  Suddenly we run out of staples.  Right now we are out of lemons, scallions and coffee (which Alex would consider a staple and I would not).  But we have plenty of yogurt, sandwich bread, peanut butter, OJ and ice cream (Alex's staples) because he ran out and stocked up yesterday.  I go to the grocery store for things like salmon, pomegranate seeds, dark chocolate and cockles.  And then I go to the farmers' market for tomatoes, fresh corn, and other randomness (like the lemon basil, Thai basil and avocado squash I picked up today).  Alex goes to the grocery for yogurt and sandwich bread.  Clearly we have different priorities.  Haha.  Every household needs someone like Alex to buy the bare necessities for daily survival and someone like me to keep track of what we have, what we need and then go to the grocery store and buy all sorts of randomness.  You never know when you might need some creme fraiche for example.  Speaking of creme fraiche, that ugly white smear to the left of the salmon is the creme fraiche-based lemon pepper sauce for the salmon.  See?  It totally comes in handy.

This salmon dish was one of the more interesting meals we have made recently.  The salmon on its own is more than a little sweet.  But when you take a bite with the watercress-herb salad, it works really well.  The same thing goes for the lemon-pepper sauce.  All of the components are a little overpowering (in one way or another) on their own, but they work together really well when you combine them all.  The sweet, richness of the salmon gets balanced against the freshness and acidity of the watercress-herb salad, which is then balanced against the brightness of the lemon-pepper sauce.  Somehow it all works.  Is it my favorite salmon dish ever?  No.  But it's pretty and it's tasty.

Recipe after the jump!

Roast Broccolini with Parsley, Garlic and Anchovies and Salt and Pepper Salmon

For whatever reason, broccolini is a vegetable that we don't often make in our apartment.  I honestly don't know why that is because I love broccolini.  Broccoli I can take or leave, but broccolini is delicious.  Broccoli has a tendency to turn to mush, but I find that well-cooked broccolini has a really nice tender consistency and sweetness that I thoroughly enjoy.  It also adapts to different flavor profiles and cooking methods fairly easily.  I generally saute broccolini, but I have found that roasting it gives it a nice nutty flavor.  I adapted this dish from a recipe in Cooking in the Moment, which called for broccoli rather than broccolini and grilling rather than roasting.  But I figured that the sauce that the broccoli was tossed in sounded intriguing.  So I went ahead and modified the recipe and we served the broccolini with our favorite Salt and Pepper Salmon.  I can't believe that I haven't posted the salmon recipe before (although I know that I have included the link to the recipe in several of my past posts), but if you have a really nice center-cut salmon fillet I am of the opinion that there is no better way to simply prepare it.  With just a little evoo, butter, s&p you end up with a phenomenally crispy skin and buttery medium-rare salmon.  As for the broccolini, it is delicious.  The dressing has a ton of flavor and is very well-balanced.  If you are worried about the anchovies, don't be.  They don't taste fishy at all - instead they are salty, nutty and savory.  Their rather intense flavor is nicely balanced with the bright lemon zest, the fresh parsley and the spice of the chili flakes.

Recipe after the jump!

Soy Cured Salmon, Asian Pear, and Cilantro Creme Fraiche

Every once in awhile I get sick of the dishes we always make and want to find something completely new and different.  That is how I found this salmon recipe.  Generally when we have a really nice piece of salmon we follow Tyler Florence's recipe for Salt and Pepper Salmon (or a variation of that recipe like Crispy-Skin Salmon with Buttermilk Mint Sauce).  We have also tried a few Asian-inspired salmon recipes, like this Miso-Marinated Salmon with Cucumber Daikon Relish.  So we have roasted salmon (either in a pan or in the oven) about a thousand times, but we have never tried curing salmon before.  That alone seemed like reason enough to try this recipe.  Plus the recipe was one of the easier Jean-Georges recipes from his Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges cookbook, and I am always talking about trying more recipes from that cookbook, so why not?

When I first tasted the dish, the first adjective that came to mind was elegant.  It is a very elegant dish - which I think comes from the cilantro creme fraiche.  The flavors are very subtle and delicate, which also contributes to the elegance of the overall dish.  The texture of the fish reminds me of gravlax or lox, but the taste is very different.  Don't leave out the diced Asian pear because it gives the dish some much needed textural contrast and sweetness.  We also threw some chopped scallion greens on top of the salmon for some color, but I'm not sure that they were necessary.

Recipe after the jump!

Salt-Roasted Salmon and Frisee Salad with Lardons and Poached Eggs

I seem to be in something of a rut these days.  I keep cooking meals from the same cookbooks or genres, over and over and over again.  It occurred to me the other day that it has been some time since I last cooked salmon (or fish of any sort if I really stop to think about it).  We cook shrimp fairly often, but to my recollection we haven't cooked fish once in 2011.  How sad is that?  Instead we have been cooking tons and tons of meat.  For the next few months I resolve to cook more seafood and vegetables, and less meat.  We used to be really good about cooking vegetarian meals and seafood at least once each a week, but we have failed lately.  Granted, it is winter so there aren't a ton of fruits and veggies in season, but what is my excuse for not making fish for at least the past 3 months?!  There isn't one!

So I found this recipe the other day when I saw the recipe for the Pan-Roasted NY Strip in my Tom Colicchio cookbook.  I have never tried salt-roasting anything, but I figured why not give it a shot?  So the salmon was perfectly cooked, with a lovely crispy skin.  And you know how much I love a good crispy salmon skin.  I really enjoyed it, except that in certain bites I couldn't get past the salt level.  I'm not sure if there is a way to remove more of the salt from the flesh of the salmon, but some bites were just so salty.  We tried brushing it off as instructed, but there was a certain amount of salt that was just stuck on there and impossible to remove.  Perhaps we didn't pat the salmon dry enough or perhaps we should have tried brushing the salt off with a basting brush or a clean kitchen towel.  Either way, we did our best to remove the salt from the salmon but we just couldn't quite get enough off.  As for the salad, I was thinking it would be nice to have a traditional French bistro salad to go with our salmon.  I wanted something a step or two up from our typical arugula salad (partially because we already had arugula salads with our dinner twice this week), something with a little bitterness and richness.  I wish I had added a little Dijon mustard to the dressing to give it a little more acidity and richness.  It would also have thickened the dressing just a little bit.  The red wine vinegar gave it a little acidity, but I really could have gone for just a little more.  I also wish we had toasted a little bread to serve on the side.  So if we could have made just those few tweaks, I think it would have been a phenomenal bistro-esque meal. 

Recipe after the jump!

Crispy-Skin Salmon with Buttermilk-Mint Sauce

 
While growing up I don't think that I had any idea that buttermilk existed.  The only time I might have been exposed to it, even peripherally, was when I was at college and grew to seriously love buttermilk biscuits.  In the past year I have discovered that buttermilk might just be one of the best things ever to have in your fridge.  Buttermilk is great for marinating chicken - either real fried or oven-baked "fried" chickens both benefit from a bath in buttermilk.  The chicken is so much more flavorful and moist after a buttermilk bath!  Buttermilk is also instrumental in making some of the moistest cakes I have ever had the pleasure to bake (and then eat).  And then there are buttermilk biscuits.  Which I love.  You obviously can't make a buttermilk biscuit if you don't have any buttermilk in the fridge.

I grew up eating salmon, but the idea of eating salmon skin never occurred to me when I was younger.  We ate a lot of salmon, but it was always roasted in the oven and the skin was certainly never crispy.  Then I tried Tyler Florence's recipe for Salt and Pepper Salmon and it totally changed my life.   Who knew crispy salmon skin could be so delicious?  We eat salmon fairly often now for a variety of reasons.  First, unlike a nice tuna steak, it doesn't have to cost $20 a pound (although I must admit that this wild salmon I bought today for tonight's dinner did in fact cost $19.99 a pound, which is totally scandalous).  Second, it is so versatile and can be delicious if prepared correctly.  Lastly, salmon's fattiness makes it a little more forgiving to cook than a lot of other fish.  There is nothing worse than spending $20 on a pound of fish and then having to throw the entire thing in the trash because you didn't cook it quite right.  And to be perfectly honest, that has happened to me more than few times.  Depressing, I know.

This recipe combined two things - buttermilk and crispy salmon skin - that have become relatively recent faves of mine, with a few things I have always loved, like fresh mint.  We served the salmon with baby spinach and Swiss chard simply sauteed in evoo with shallots, garlic, and a touch of lemon juice.  It was a lovely meal.  The salmon skin was nice and crispy, and the buttermilk-mint sauce made the whole dish seem very tangy and fresh.  Salmon cooked medium-rare is very rich, but when served with this sauce and the sauteed veggies it made the whole dish seem much lighter.  Either way it would have been delicious, but I really did enjoy the sauce.  It was a very interesting and delicious take on one of my favorite ways to prepare salmon!

Recipe after the jump!

Miso-Marinated Salmon with Cucumber-Daikon Relish and Green Tea Soba

I am always interested in new salmon recipes.  I have my favorites that I make over and over, but it's nice to mix it up every once in awhile.  Salmon is one of my favorite fishes - it can be prepared in hundreds of ways and is fairly forgiving.  I think it's a good gateway fish for people who don't cook a lot of fish.  The fat content is high enough that it stays moist, and it's hardy enough that it doesn't fall apart easily.  This miso-marinade is one of the best I have tasted in a long time.  The marinade gave the fish so much flavor during the two hours it marinated in the refrigerator.  The salmon was sweet from the mirin, but not overpoweringly so, and had nice savory undertones from the miso paste.  I don't think I have ever described salmon as rich before, but that is the word that comes to mind to describe this salmon - rich.  The cucumber-daikon relish cuts the richness nicely.  Without the relish the salmon would still be a good piece of fish, but I think the relish makes it all come together in your mouth.  You definitely want to use a nice piece of wild salmon for this dish if you can get it.  Then again, I think you should always use wild salmon.  

The green tea soba was a nice accompaniment to the salmon.  It was light and fresh, but still had nice flavor.  With the richness of the salmon and the flavors of the relish, you really needed something simple to not compete with all of those tastes already on the plate.  I really liked the dipping sauce and might actually try it out with regular buckwheat soba next time for some additional nuttiness.

Recipes after the jump!

Smoked Salmon and Goat Cheese Frittata

I woke up this morning to an almost unbearably dreary, rainy day.  It's the type of day that just makes you want to curl up on the couch in your pajamas with a nice steaming mug of hot tea (or hot chocolate) and a nice book to read.  And never venture outside.  On days like these, a bowl of cereal just doesn't cut it.  I seriously considered making homemade buttermilk biscuits, but somehow I just wasn't feeling it.  Then it occurred to me that I had some amazing Gaspe and Irish organic smoked salmon from Russ & Daughters sitting in the fridge.  Thus this smoked salmon frittata recipe was born.

I went through the fridge and started pulling out things for my frittata - eggs, creme fraiche, goat cheese, herbs, scallions, and the Irish salmon.  I don't know about the rest of you, but the idea of adding cream cheese to a frittata, which is what most smoked salmon frittata recipes calls for, was just very strange to me.  I am a big proponent of cream cheese in frosting, on bagels, and in cheesecake, but somehow I cannot see using it in a frittata.  It's a quirk of mine that certain ingredients belong in certain places and it takes some pretty convincing proof before I can be swayed to believe otherwise.  Either way, I just prefer goat cheese to cream cheese anyway.  What's not to love about goat cheese?  It's creamy, tangy and just utterly delicious.  And I think it pairs incredibly well with buttery smoked salmon.

Recipe after the jump!

Mirin-Glazed Salmon and Mint, Scallion Soba Noodles

For evening #2 of my all Asian-inspired Chinese New Year week menu, I decided to go ahead and make some Mirin-Glazed Salmon with some soba noodles.  I guess this is my fully Japanese-inspired meal for the week, whereas I would say last night's noodles were Chinese-inspired, with a dash of Japanese.  Anyway, when I was planning out my menu for this week I noticed that I had some nice wild salmon that has been hanging out in the freezer for awhile and some soba noodles up in the cupboard, so this sounded like a good time to break both of them out.  After tonight I am done with the noodle component of my menu for this week.  This meal also marks the conclusion of my Japanese-inspired portion of the menu.  Now I get to move on to the rest of Asia!

I usually make these soba noodles during the summer.  They make a wonderful cool summer meal or side dish.  But I thought they would provide us with a nice contrast from the rich sweetness of the mirin glaze on the salmon.  The salmon was good, but I think it needs some tweaking.  I am not sure what I will add to it the next time I make it, but it needs something else for contrast - perhaps some acid.  However, while this is not a spectacular meal, it's solid.  It is also quick to prepare and very easy, which counts for a lot.

Recipes after the jump!