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!

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.