Lex Culinaria

March menu: Warm Salmon Nicoise

Since having Baby Cakes, I've discovered that popping out to the grocery store is not the easy task it used to be.

In an effort to reduce the numerous trips to the grocery store necessitated by my tendency to cook whatever I want, whenever it suits me, I'm experimenting with setting weekly menus that I can shop for all at once. So far so good. I've avoided repeated trips to the grocery store and have tried out a few yummy new (fast!) recipes. Last week, among other things, I made a really delicious & simple salmon Nicoise. The fact that it's pretty healthy too is just a bonus. You can serve it warm, as I did, or chilled. It tastes even better the next day, so would make an excellent brunch dish or packed lunch. I didn't do a traditional Nicoise salad dressing with anchovies because I had just made up a huge batch of this dressing for having on hand, and it went wonderfully.

This one is definitely going in the rotation!

400 gm (about 12-14) new potatoes, any variety, halved
250 gm fresh green beans, topped & tailed
1/2 large fennel bulb, thinly sliced
1/2 sweet onion, thinly sliced
3 tablespoons capers (salt rinsed off), minced
1/3 cup fresh Italian parsley, chopped
2 large ripe tomatoes, in thin wedges
20 large pitted olives (whatever kind you like), halved

(90 ml) 1/3 cup of Glen's Mama Ro's Wicked Salad Dressing.

4 salmon fillets (you could also use halibut or tuna)
1 lemon
salt & pepper

Put a cold pot of salted water on the stove and place the eggs in it. Bring it to a boil, cover with a lid and remove from heat. Allow to stand for 9  minutes. Remove the eggs from the water. Set aside.

Return hot salted water to stove and bring to a boil again. Drop halved potatoes into the boiling salted water. After 5 minutes drop in sliced fennel. After 5 minutes more, drop in green beans. Reduce heat and simmer 5 more minutes, or until potatoes are cooked through but still firm and fennel and beans are also cooked. Drain vegetables and rinse under lukewarm water to stop the cooking, but allowing the vegetables to remain warm. Toss in a bowl with the onions, parsley, olives , capers and tomatoes. Toss with dressing . Set aside.

Peel cooked eggs and slice lengthwise into quarters. Set aside. Heat a large nonstick pan, sprayed with oil, over medium high heat. Cook the salmon steaks on each side until cooked, about 8 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fish. sprinkle fish with salt and pepper and squeeze lemon over it.

Spoon marinated salad onto 4 salad plates or soup plates.

Chop or break up the cooked fish and distribute over the tops of the salad. Top each serving with 4 quarters of egg.

Vegetarian Tostadas: Fiddly but worth it

Last weekend I splurged a little and bought 4 new cookbooks. Of those 4, three were from the Williams-Sonoma Savoring series. I promptly sat down and flipped through each. Halfway through the Appetizers book I spotted a vegetarian tostada recipe and decided it was going to be dinner one night this week. Never being one to feel constrained by someone else's recipe instructions, what I made was a bit different from what was written in the book, but it did turn out beautifully and, despite the amount of prep-work involved in dicing and cooking 8 assorted vegetables separately, I reckon I'd make it again in a heartbeat. The sauce isn't spicy at all, but has a great Latino chili flavour. If you can't find dried Latino chillies where you are, you can order them online for next to nothing. Although, if you can get them in a place like Edmonton, you can probably get them anywhere.

I usually buy my Latino cooking supplies at Edmonton Latino on 118 Avenue at about 101 Street, just behind NAIT. They sell really excellent Mexican chocolate disks for making Mexican hot chocolate there, as well as dried Ancho chilies, annatto paste, several kinds of masa harina and lots of good brands of refried beans. You can also get masa flour at Superstore and tostadas can be found at Save-On. For this recipe you can use tostadas, which are crisp corn tortillas about 5" in diameter, or you could substitute small (5") soft flour tortillas, which don't make quite as much mess. Feel free to also substitute any of the vegetables for what you have on hand or enjoy and lastly, if you can't find decent refried beans, you can make your own pretty easily. There are about a zillion recipes available online.  I reckon these would make excellent party food if you made tart cases out of cut tortillas or some such....

Sauce

• 6 large dried Mexican chilies (Ancho, Guajillo, or New Mexico or a combination - I used half Guajillo and half Ancho)
• 6 large cloves garlic (roasted if you can be bothered), crushed
• 5 Tablespoons white vinegar
• largish pinch ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
• 2 teaspoons ground oregano
• 1 teaspoon salt

Vegetables

1/2 pound each, diced:

•     new potatoes
•     fresh green beans (trimmed)
•     carrots (peeled)
•     baby zucchini
•     chayote squash
•     sweet potato

• 1/2 cup small cherry or grape tomatoes, quartered
• 1/2 medium yellow onion, diced
• salt

Tostadas

• 12 good quality 5" corn tostadas (or tortillas)
• 1 tin refried beans
• 1/2 lb queso fresco ( you can substitute feta or goats cheese)

Trim stems off the chilies, cut in half and roll them in your fingers to dislodge most of the seeds. Place them in a shallow bowl and cover with boiling water. Allow to soak 20 minutes. Drain and reserve water.

Place soaked chilies and the remaining sauce ingredients in a food processor, mini chopper or blender. Whiz to form a sauce, adding as much additional chili-soaking water as needed. Strain through a mesh sieve and set aside.

Make sure all your veggies are diced roughly the same size. Bring a medium pot of salted water to a boil and set a large metal bowl full of cold water to the side. Cook diced potatoes for 5 minutes, use a slotted spoon or small sieve to transfer them to the cold water to stop their cooking. Repeat with green beans & carrots (4 minutes cooking time) and  zucchini, sweet potato, chayote (3 minutes cooking time). When all veggies have been cooked and cooled, drain and dry on a kitchen towel. Toss with tomatoes, onions and sauce, set aside.

Spread each tostada/tortilla with a tablespoon or two of beans, top with a mound of vegetables and sprinkle over some of the cheese. Serve cold.

The "V" word

Since we had the baby I've become keenly aware that practically everything we eat, sleep in, drink from, floss with or inhale is toxic. We're bombarded daily with the message that everything we do (and above all everything we eat) is bad for us and we'd best make sweeping changes to our homes, work, diet etc. lest we perish horribly in the very near future. Oh, and would we please buy this uber-expensive solution to our mortal peril.

I am a skeptic, especially as regards this zealous North American fear mongering about everything in existence. I am also a person who does not *ahem* take orders very well...or in fact at all. So this veritable avalanche of frequently alarmist (and not infrequently biased, green-washed) information is kind of grating on my nerves at the moment.

The problem is, as a new mother you're bombarded not only by the media, but by everyone else around you. People you normally like start proselytizing about the horrors of plastic and how disposable diapers will leach dioxins directly into your baby's tender little bottom. I've had it up to the gills with hearing about this stuff and especially hearing others list off, for the millionth time, all the steps you should be taking to protect your darling. I mean, honestly, who cares if your q-tips are organic?

Maybe that's why I'm having a hard time with the "V"-word. I can certainly rattle off a string of expletives that would curl my mother's hair. Well, if it weren't already curly. But I can't bring myself to say the "V"-word, lest I sound like one of those crazy Type-A Consumers who will have to take out a mortgage to pay their grocery bill because they'll only shop at a well-known lifestyle/image store masquerading as an actual healthier alternative to mainstream groceries. I buy from farmers markets, because I like knowing where my food comes from and because I think it tastes better. I am not, however, about to buy that $6 imported organic mango out of a sudden fear of pesticides because, come on - flying a fruit halfway around the world isn't exactly "organic", is it?

I guess I can't ignore some things much longer though. After my husband, having perused the weekly menu up on the white-board beside the fridge,  asked rather directly, "where's the meat?", I can't help but notice that we've been eating a lot less of the red stuff and a lot more of the green stuff lately. Not that it was ever a conscious decision...it's just sort of evolved that way over the last couple of years.

So no, I'm not a vegetarian. And I most certainly am not one of those "I'm a vegetarian, but I eat chicken and fish" sorts either. In fact, I'm going to cook me up a great big steak now. Bloody rare too. Well, I would, except I'm rather stuffed full of refried beans and avocado...