Home again and hungry

My sweetheart is an excellent cook. He is also a little more experimental than I am. I stick to fairly concrete flavor palates, whereas he'll mix and play around. Sesame oil and oregano? But of course! Tomatoes and ginger? Why not! Sometimes, this leads to... some less than successful dishes. But over the years, the experimentation has lead to some winners.

Salmon salad quesadillas is one of his keeper recipes. A big hit after a day of skiing or hiking or... 36 straight hours of travel. As soon as I walked in the door yesterday, I asked him to make them for dinner. They're fabulous year round, but are especially good in the winter when you're trying to get through a freezer full of frozen fish. The secret (and slightly odd) ingredient is caraway seeds, which add a nutty fragrance.
  
Salmon Salad Quesadillas

For the salmon salad:

1 salmon fillet (about a pound)
3 spears of dill pickle
1/2 a small onion, finely diced
1 stem of celery, finely diced
2 cloves of garlic
1/4 c. mayonnaise
1/4 c. plain yogurt
1 tsp. caraway seeds  
Fresh ground black pepper to taste
1 tbs. lemon juice (if needed)

To complete the quesadillas
  
Tortillas (we like the raw flour tortillas you can buy at Costco!)
Grated cheddar cheese
Bacon! (cooked)
Red cabbage, or another crunchy green. 
Salsa/hot sauce

Preheat oven to 375F. Thaw salmon, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and cook in foil for 10-15 minutes until well cooked. We cook it quite a bit longer than we would if we were eating it in fillet form. You don't want to over cook it, but if you do it's okay- that's what mayonnaise is for.  Now's a good time to fry the bacon, too. Cool fillet in the fridge, or outside if it's cold.

While the fillet is cooling, chop pickle, onion and garlic. Chop together, as finely as possible so that the flavors can meld together. Flake fillet into a bowl. I usually flake it with my hands first as I drop the fish into the bowl, and then with a fork to get it really fine. This also helps weed out any pin bones that may have been in the fillet. Add chopped pickle, onion, and garlic, celery, mayo and yogurt, caraway seeds and black pepper. I stop here and taste. Sometimes, it needs a little lemon juice to brighten it up. 

Heat up a pan on med-high heat, cook or heat tortilla and add grated cheese. Fold in half to melt cheese. Once the cheese has melted and the tortilla has toasted a bit, take off heat, open the tortilla and add salmon salad, cabbage, bacon and salsa. Fold up, and enjoy!

PS- leftovers are great for open-faced salmon salad melts, or... Salmon cakes!

Party tart

I'm guessing this might be a social week for folks. It is for us- our little neighborhood is a-hopping. We had a dinner party on Saturday night, one tonight for the solstice, and one tomorrow night as well. I'm going to be doing a lot of baking this week, that's for sure, but one of the things I have to keep in mind is water.

Big, complicated recipes that create a bunch of dishes are doable, but overwhelming when you have to melt snow for water. Plus I like simple dishes that show off one or two ingredients. This recipe couldn't be easier- I hesitate to even call it a recipe- and shows off two fine (and common) ingredients: apples and butter. It calls to mind the lovely apple tarts in boulangerie windows.

Ingredients

1 batch of pie dough. (I use Julia Child's food processor recipe, but store bought is fine)
3 apples
2 tbs sugar  

Preheat oven to 375 F. Roll out dough to a long rectangular shape, 8x18ish. Slice apples very thinly. Arrange them overlapping in three long rows leaving 1 in around the edges, sprinkle with sugar, fold over edges. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown. Serve with vanilla ice cream and port.

Mountain Fondue

One of my fondest memories from college was an evening with my cousin Hannah, who lives in the French Alps. One night she came home from work with a literal mountain of local cheese to make fondue. After her kids had gone to bed, we stayed up eating fondue, drinking wine and talking til pretty late. Before then, I hadn't really developed a taste for swiss cheese. I'd thought it too... sour. Not creamy enough- I was a triple cream kind of girl. But that evening marked my conversion to the dark arts of melted cheese.

Fondue is easy. And really really really good when it's cold out. It's been cold here at the cabin- barely above 0 most of the day. Even though I don't have access to a mountain of handmade local cheese, I made perfectly tasty fondue with the stuff at Fred Meyers. It's actually more cost effective to buy the cheese at Costco, but then you have So. Much. Cheese. Which requires more fondue than I'll allow myself to eat.

A note: This fondue isn't super gooey- you won't be twirling strings a cheese around your bread, because I like to taste the tartness of the the wine. If you want gooey, just reduce the wine to 1/2 bottle.

Mountain Fondue
       Serves 4, or 2 with leftovers
 
1 1/2 pounds of swiss cheese. I use three: Emmenthaler, Appenzeller and Gruyere
2 Tbs flour
2/3 a bottle of decent chardonnay
2 cloves of garlic, lightly crushed.
freshly ground nutmeg
pinch of salt
freshly ground pepper
1/2 tsp cherry brandy/Kirsch*

*optional, but damn good 


Grate cheese, and toss with flour. Rub heavy-bottomed pot with garlic, and leave in pot. Pour in white wine, and bring up to a gentle simmer. Let garlic simmer in wine for 10 minutes, then fish out. Wisk in flour-dredged cheese, and turn up heat to med-high. If it looks a little funny- don't worry keep whisking. Once it's melted, add nutmeg, salt, pepper and Kirsch.


Serve with whatever you feel like dipping in cheese! This includes, but is not limited to:


Cubed bread
Boiled/roasted potatoes
Apple slices
Cherry tomatoes
Pear Slices
Grapes

Last night, I'd roasted some butternut squash along with the potatoes- it was delicious! Leftovers can just go in the fridge in the pot. Reheat, adding a little more wine to thin if needed.

Maple Mustard Skillet Salmon

Salmon is tasty. Fresh out of the ocean or Copper River, you don't need to do anything to it. You don't even need to cook it, really. Maybe a sprinkle of salt and pepper, but that's it. I probably won't be posting any fresh salmon recipes here. You don't need them.

But as summer ends, so does the supply of fresh salmon. Our freezers are full of frozen salmon now, and frozen salmon, frankly, needs a little help. We do a bunch of different things with frozen salmon in this house: Salmon salad, salmon cakes, and quiche come to mind. But my current favorite is putting a fillet skin-side down on a hot cast iron, brushing on a maple syrup and mustard glaze, and sliding it in the oven til it's done. The sweet, spicy glaze stands up to the strong flavor of the salmon and gives it a little oomph. Enough oomph so you can drink a light red wine with it.

Maple Mustard Skillet Salmon

   Serves 2

1 16-20 oz fillet

For the glaze:

 

1 tbs of good quality mustard

1 tbs of maple syrup

1 tsp olive oil   

1/4 tsp powdered ginger

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (or to taste)

Preheat oven to 400F. Heat cast iron skillet on medium-high heat. Mix glaze ingredients together in small bowl. Should be fairly viscous. Lightly salt and pepper the fillet, and place in skillet. Brush on one layer of glaze. Wait 2 or 3 minutes, brush on another. Slide skillet in oven, and cook until fillet is cooked through (still slightly pink in middle) about 5 minutes.

Mexican Dreams

 It's been a little gray here. 

Not that I mind. I'm quite content to sit and watch the weather move in and out. It's not deathly cold- the temperature has been hovering around freezing- and I've been dreaming. 

Dreaming of Mexico, to be exact.  Tonight we head to the Pacific coast, and warmer weather for a few weeks. November isn't a very pleasant time in Alaska, and we try to leave for a chunk of it. 

So, to get in the mood- and prepare my eyes for colors other than off-white, gray and cedar, I made myself a colorful salad last night. It's a pretty simple salad- just carrots, red cabbage and a strong mustard vinaigrette. A play on carottes râpées- a favorite in my house when I was growing up. Nothing special, just color.

Carottes Râpées with cabbage 
      4 small servings, or two large

For the vinaigrette:

1 tbs good mustard
2 tbs red wine vinegar
4 tbs olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp dried dill (optional)

For the salad:

4 large carrots
1/4 head of red cabbage
juice of one lemon or lime


Grate carrots, slice cabbage very thin. Run knife over sliced cabbage once  so the pieces are a bit smaller. Mix in bowl. Add vinaigrette to taste. I added a squeeze of lemon at the end and it brightened up considerably. Leftovers are lovely the next day, or even the day after that.
 
PS- Since we'll be in Mexico, posting will be scarce, but I've prescheduled a few posts to go up while we're gone!

Mountain halibut for mountain man

I've been very hungry.

This isn't wholly unexpected. For the last 8 years or so, I've been pretty much paid to sit and think. Sometimes there's been some scurrying around involved, but for the most part I've had a desk job. I've generally gotten exercise very deliberately-after work runs, weekend hikes, etc- and my metabolism has adjusted accordingly.

But all this physical labor is different. Lugging things around. Lifting things up, setting them down. Swinging a splitting maul for an hour or so every morning. By the end of the day (or the end of the morning!) I'm starved. The boy just laughs. He's a carpenter, so this kind of work is literally in his job description.

So we've been eating a lot. Mostly meat: Steak, chili, chili nachos, chili on potatoes (I made a big batch!) bacon and pancakes, bacon and eggs. Nowhere near enough vegetables. You get the idea.

The other night, I finally stepped away from the freezer full of stew meat, ground beef, new york strips and the like. I wanted something else. I settled on the mountain dal recipe from the phenomenal cookbook/travelogue Mangoes and Curry Leaves by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. If you haven't heard of them, I highly recommend you check out their books. The photographs and stories that accompany a treasure trove of recipes are gorgeous, and they travel all over the world; this particular book focuses on the Asian subcontinent.

As I was starting dinner, Tory came over to survey the work. "Where's the meat?" Sighing, I was reaching for some chicken to saute when I came across our last fillet of halibut. I topped it with some tumeric, grated ginger and garlic to echo the flavors in the dal, and slid it in the oven. It was a great addition, alongside dollops of yogurt and chutney I piled on top when everything was done.

The superb leftovers

Mountain Halibut

1 fillet of halibut or another white fish
1 tsp. turmeric
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped or microplaned
1 inch of ginger, finely chopped or microplaned
olive oil
salt
pepper

Preheat the oven to 400F. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper over the fillet, then the turmeric. Smear the garlic and ginger onto the fish, and drizzle a little oil over the top. Let come to room temp, cover with foil and slide in the oven. Uncover after about 5-7 minutes. Cook for another 5-7 minutes until the fillet is just opaque inside. Serve alone, or with a good hearty dal.