I have made a similar recipe with chicken and don't know why I've never tried it with salmon! It came out moist, spicy and delicious. I usually add more cayenne because we like the extra kick.
Recipes like this are my favorites because I always have the marinade ingredients on hand. It is easy to throw together and is done in advance so requires very little last minute prep.
I usually make some aloo saag as an accompaniment and always serve it with basmati rice.
4 salmon fillets, skin on, about 4 oz. each
1/2 cup plain yogurt, low fat is fine
1 tablespoon minced coriander
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and minced
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/8 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
pinch of salt
freshly ground black pepper
Place the salmon, skin side down, in a shallow container. Whisk the yogurt and next 10 ingredients together and pour over the salmon so the fillets are completely covered.
Cover the container and place in the fridge to marinate at least a couple of hours, although overnight is better.
Heat the oven to 400 degrees.
Place the fillets in an oiled baking dish, skin up, and bake for 5 minutes.
Turn the fillets over, baste with the remaining marinade and cook another 10-15 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fillets, until the salmon flakes easily with a fork.
Serves 4
Chow Tips starring me!
I could spend hours surfing over at Chow.com. It's that hip food site that was briefly a magazine. It includes not just recipes but blogs, stories, message boards, cool videos and one of my favorite features, Chow Tips. At 45 seconds a piece, they don't take much time to watch and give you just the details you need.
When I talked to the video producer at Chow I suggested six different ideas for tips, and to my surprise, she said yes to all of them! Here are the first four, two more are on their way. I hope you enjoy watching them as much I enjoyed shooting them.
As an added benefit, Chow has also also posted the recipes for Roasted Baby Artichokes with Meyer Lemon-Saffron Aioli andCheese Stuffed Risotto Cakes from the cookbook I wrote, Williams-Sonoma New Flavors for Appetizers.
cheers,
Amy
A Cheese Odyssey
Two years ago I impulsively decided to take on the whopping task of tasting each and every cheese produced in France. Today, April 18, is the two year anniversary of la Fête du Fromage.
I think that calls for a celebration!
Each and every cheese...just how many is that exactly? Apparently there is no definitive answer. Some say as few as 350 and other sources cite as many as 1000. The most common answer is that there are around 400-500 French cheeses.
In the last two years I have tasted about 130 of the 350-1000. That means I've got another 3 to 10 years of delicious French cheese tasting to look forward to. Here's to that!
A few highlights from the last 2 years:
Tomette des Corbières,
Langres
Le Napoléon Commingeois
Tomme de Maquis
la Taupinière
Cabretou
La Courounne Lochoise
Gaperon
.
Peas, Ricotta and Bacon with Orecchiette
In general, I'm the kind of cook who appreciates simplicity.
I don't find architectural stacks of food on my plate interesting and I don't get excited about eating sugar orbs filled with sesame oil or cuttlefish ravioli filled with rabbit brain espuma.
Occasionally I'll wake up in the mood to spend the morning in the kitchen cooking coq au vin or boeuf bourguignon or a slow simmering bolognese sauce which needs several hours to mellow and meld it's flavors together. It is a perfect, lazy Sunday with Pink Martini playing in the background activity. And then I like to freeze it in several containers so I have it available to make a delicious, impromptu lunch or dinner.
Most days, however, it is nice to have some recipes on hand that don't take hours and hours. I love a good pasta sauce that can be made in the time it takes the water to boil and the noodles to cook. This frees up time to make a salad or yummy dessert when you want to invite friends or family over for dinner. And I've never met anyone who doesn't like pasta.
I recently discovered something amusing about our French friends, a couple for whom I've always made the most spectacular of dishes from my repertoire because they always do the same for us when we're at their house...they prefer Italian food to any other! And here I've been for the last four years, trying to serve them interesting, American dishes (no, that isn't a contradiction of terms) that they have never tried before and all this time they just wanted some good, Italian food!
Here's something simple I made the other night.
8 ounces frozen baby peas, thawed
1/3 pound slab bacon, cut into lardons
1/3 pound fresh ricotta
1 tablespoon butter
1/3 cup freshly grated parmesan
salt
freshly ground black pepper
1 pound orecciette (medium sized shells will also work, but you want a shape that will hold the sauce and the peas)
Bring a pot of water to a boil and cook the pasta.
While it is cooking, heat the bacon over medium heat until lightly browned. Pour off most of the bacon fat, leaving a couple of tablespoons in the pan. Add the thawed peas and cook for a couple of minutes, stirring to coat with the bacon drippings.
Mix the ricotta and butter together in the bowl you'll serve the pasta in.
Drain the pasta, reserving about 1/2 cup of cooking water and add it to the ricotta and butter and toss it all together quickly. Pour in the bacon and peas, mix again then add the parmesan and pepper and mix again. If it seems too dry, you can drizzle a little of the reserved pasta water to get the sauce to the consistency of your liking.
Serve with more grated parmesan at the table.
Serves 4
I don't find architectural stacks of food on my plate interesting and I don't get excited about eating sugar orbs filled with sesame oil or cuttlefish ravioli filled with rabbit brain espuma.
Occasionally I'll wake up in the mood to spend the morning in the kitchen cooking coq au vin or boeuf bourguignon or a slow simmering bolognese sauce which needs several hours to mellow and meld it's flavors together. It is a perfect, lazy Sunday with Pink Martini playing in the background activity. And then I like to freeze it in several containers so I have it available to make a delicious, impromptu lunch or dinner.
Most days, however, it is nice to have some recipes on hand that don't take hours and hours. I love a good pasta sauce that can be made in the time it takes the water to boil and the noodles to cook. This frees up time to make a salad or yummy dessert when you want to invite friends or family over for dinner. And I've never met anyone who doesn't like pasta.
I recently discovered something amusing about our French friends, a couple for whom I've always made the most spectacular of dishes from my repertoire because they always do the same for us when we're at their house...they prefer Italian food to any other! And here I've been for the last four years, trying to serve them interesting, American dishes (no, that isn't a contradiction of terms) that they have never tried before and all this time they just wanted some good, Italian food!
Here's something simple I made the other night.
8 ounces frozen baby peas, thawed
1/3 pound slab bacon, cut into lardons
1/3 pound fresh ricotta
1 tablespoon butter
1/3 cup freshly grated parmesan
salt
freshly ground black pepper
1 pound orecciette (medium sized shells will also work, but you want a shape that will hold the sauce and the peas)
Bring a pot of water to a boil and cook the pasta.
While it is cooking, heat the bacon over medium heat until lightly browned. Pour off most of the bacon fat, leaving a couple of tablespoons in the pan. Add the thawed peas and cook for a couple of minutes, stirring to coat with the bacon drippings.
Mix the ricotta and butter together in the bowl you'll serve the pasta in.
Drain the pasta, reserving about 1/2 cup of cooking water and add it to the ricotta and butter and toss it all together quickly. Pour in the bacon and peas, mix again then add the parmesan and pepper and mix again. If it seems too dry, you can drizzle a little of the reserved pasta water to get the sauce to the consistency of your liking.
Serve with more grated parmesan at the table.
Serves 4
This week's theme? Thai noodles! Two posts on Thai noodles really made me crave them. And if you aren't in the mood for Thai noodles, check out a more post for the "holiday".
Chubby Hubby shares his Thai noodle adventures, including cooking school in Chiang Mai and a recipe for Khai Soi Gai a tangy delicious curry noodle dish. Check out those gorgeous photos!
Meanwhile closer to home, Tea and Cookies has her own Thai noodle adventure, discovering a broccoli and noodle dish then ordering the wrong thing and finally a recipe for Pad See You. I think I may now have to try Osha, her recommended Thai noodle spot.
Finally for those celebrating the holiday, Brownie Points serves up lots of good suggestions for creating something appropriate. See her own efforts here.
FOOD + NOODLES
German Potato Pancakes
In my family, however, potato pancakes have always been thick. A crisp crust that resists the teeth at first, but crumbles into a silky center of potato spiked with onion. These are the kinds of cakes that shoulder the weight of apple sauce and sour cream without so much as a shudder. And if you have leftovers, they can even be enjoyed again the next day (but please re-crisp them in the oven).
As with all of my old family recipes, these come straight out of tradition and I haven't messed with them. My grandmother claims that this is the way her mother made them (although now we use a food processor, we're just not that home-spun). Maybe you'll want to have a go at it as well.
German Potato Pancakes
5 red potatoes, peeled
4 eggs
1 onion
1/2 cup flour
1 tablespoon salt
Olive oil
Olive oil
Cut the potatoes in cubes so they fit in the food processor. Place one potato and one egg into the food processor and pulse until the potato is shredded so that it doesn't become mush. Transfer the potato mixture to a bowl. Repeate with the rest of the potatoes and eggs, adding in 1/2 an onion to two of the potatoes before processing. You will have 1 more potatoe than egg.
Once all of the potatoes are processed, add the flour and salt and fold it in. As you stir, look for large chuncks of potatoe that may have slipped through and remove them.
Coat the bottom of a pan with oil and heat on medium until the oil shimmers. Add the batter to the pan in quarter cups, just as you would with normal pancakes. Cook until golden brown and then flip. Once cooked through, transfer to papertowel lined plates to drain, keep in a slow oven if necessary to keep warm before serving with a generous dollop of apple sauce or sour cream.
Which One Would You Choose?
Consider the above birthday cakes for Cuisine Quotidienne! On December 23rd, 2006 I wrote my first post for this blog. But actually I have another subject to write about today, so won't spend much time musing over the creation and continuation CQ...
For the first dozen years I lived in France, I never really gave bûches de Noël much thought. I couldn't imagine making one myself, and those I saw for sale looked frosting-heavy and generally unappealing. I'm sure in big cities, pastry shops have always been making classy, creative versions of these French Christmas desserts, but here in Aveyron I've definitely noticed an improvement in the variety of Yule Log Cakes available over the past few years.
The traditional bûche is filled with buttercream but, if the flyer above is any indication, it may be losing ground to "bûches mousse" -- also called "bûches légères" -- and bûches glacées, which can be quite delicious but don't always taste right for the season. The local bakery chain where I picked up this ad was doing some heavy promotion of their thirteen varieties of bûche last Wednesday, offering samples and giving a 10% discount to customers ordering them before Friday.
I didn't go for their pitch, but I am ordering two small bûches through the local grocery store because my children, who grew up with Christmas cookies as their main Christmas dessert, have fallen in love with the mousse-based varieties. It's a good thing, because I didn't have time to bake Christmas cookies this year anyway!
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