Forty-ninth Post ~ Citrus Salmon with Sugar Snap Peas

This post is very similar to the Salmon en Papillote from a few months ago; however, it is a simplified version inasmuch as it is all about the fresh salmon and bright green veggies! No potatoes in this parcel!

I got a salmon fillet from Wegmans, and, after looking in my cart, realized I must be craving some serious Vitamin C - a lemon, a lime, grape tomatoes and a basil plant all graced my basket screaming out to me with the warmth of sunnier places!

Here's what you'll need for tonight's dinner:

~ One salmon fillet

~ Veggie of your choice

~ Lime slices and juice of half

~ Dried or fresh parsley

~ Dried or fresh tarragon

~ Dried or fresh basil

~ Course-ground salt

~ White wine (I didn't add any to this papillote package and it really could have used a little sweetness to balance out the pucker-power of the lime. It was still tasty, but could have benefited from a little vino!)

Place your salmon fillet on one half of your parchment heart. Add salt and herbs. Cut two slices of the lime and juice the other half. Place the slices over the salmon, add your veggie, and crimp the edges, pouring the lime juice and wine (about two tablespoons total) into the spout at the point of the heart.

Bake on 350 for about 12-15 minutes. I enjoyed tonight's meal with some light and sweet Vetter Vineyards Cracker Ridge Rose - a sauvignon blanc would probably also be great with it! The sweet rose actually helped offset a bit of the tartness from the lime, making it an enjoyably balanced meal.

All in all, a fresh, healthy, quick dinner!

Yours in the love of good food and wine,
AL

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The blogger is not an experienced chef. She takes no responsibility for the quality of the meals prepared while following her advice. Use your own judgment regarding cooking times and proper food handling.

Fortieth Post (Yay!) ~ Rustic Beef Stew

This stew is very easy, and it fit the bill the other night when I wanted to throw something together that would cook itself while I worked. Here's what you'll need for this stew, which is good to have on hand during stormy winter weather!

~ One package stew beef

~ Carrots (about two handfuls)

~ 2-3 slices from small onion

~ Mushrooms (I used pre-washed criminis and thew them in whole)

~ 5 or so small red potatoes cut into wedges

~ 2 cups water with 5 beef boulion dissolved

~ A splash of red wine

~ Herbs (I used fresh thyme and tarragon. While I recommend the thyme, the tarragon gave the stew a distinctive "sausage" taste and aroma, since, come to find out, it's one of the key herbs used in sausage. So if you like that taste, go for it, if not, find a different herb!)

Here's the tough part - get your crock-pot out of storage and dust it off. Then dump everything in it, slap the lid on, put it on high, and stir every so often. It takes a few hours, but the resulting aroma and taste are worth it! Plus, prep doesn't get much easier than this!

I paired this stew with Sangre del Toro's tempranillo, since that's what I splashed into it to give it a nice balanced taste. It helped diffuse some of the stronger herb taste (ahem ) and its earthiness brought out the flavors in the beef. A good pairing, and a good stew for lunches and dinners to come!

Yours in the love of good food and wine,

AL

Nineteenth Post: Duck with Spiced Apricot and Wine Glaze

Duck is my favorite fowl. Hands down. Many people don't care for its gamey taste, but to me, it's heaven.

I've never made duck before, and was unsure how to even go about purchasing it (or does one simply wait patiently by a lake with a bag of Wonder Bread?) so I was pleasantly surprised when I found prepackaged duck breast filets by Maple Leaf Farms in the meat case at (wait for it) Wegmans. I wasn't sure how good it would be... I had been planning to surprise my mom by cooking dinner for her this weekend (Surprise!) and I thought this might be a nice treat... if it was good. But what if it was terrible? Only one way to find out.

I was also unsure about sauce. I was out of time this week for a special shopping trip, so I decided to see what I could put together with what I had on hand. My mom makes a fabulous orange glaze for pork tenderloins (recipe to come in a future post) and I decided to adapt that to my needs and available food supply.

Here's what you'll need for tonight's (successful) experimental dinner:

~ boneless duck breast

~ apricot jam

~ terragon

~ cinnamon

~ ginger

~ onion

~ red or white (or both) wine

~ vinegar (I used red wine vinegar)

I made cauliflower for the side (frozen, pre-cut, easy) and added a little fresh cut basil and chive for extra flavor.

Start the wine simmering in a sauce pan. I had some leftover Norton Cabernet that was, at this point, practically vinegar itself, so I used that. (As I was cooking the sauce, I added some Vesuvio white.) Spoon in a generous couple tablespoons of apricot jam. Break the jam apart a bit. Add some vinegar, terragon, cinnamon and ginger. Finely mince some onion and add it. Let simmer some as you prep the duck.

::PAUSE::

As I said, I've never cooked duck. I used to wonder how they can stick around as the weather grows colder, but now I know. Ducks are no slim birds. There was a rather unpleasant layer of fat under the meat itself. It was thicker than I'm accustomed to seeing, but it didn't matter to me because this was DUCK and I wanted to cook and eat it. I set aside my squeamishness and sliced it away with a knife. This was not an easy proposition, and I had to turn the sauce off part way through as it took longer than I expected. Finally, it was trimmed, and I sliced it into strips in placed it into a Corningware dish. Foolishly, I had thought the duck might stick while baking, so I had added some olive oil to the dish. This is probably an unneccessary step.

::UNPAUSE::

So now that you've encouraged the duck to part company with all that ... er ... padding ... Pour the sauce over the duck in the dish. Pop it into the toaster oven and bake on 350 until the duck is done to the level you like it.

In the mean time, cook your veggies. When it's all done, put it on a plate. I chose to use a separate dish for the juice so it wouldn't run into the veggies and I could dip the meat into it.

Now... what wine to serve?

This posed a bit of a quandary. On the one hand, I had a 2007 Bordeaux from Chateau Briot. It smelled like slicing into a fresh grapefruit - very citrusy and light. I had, on the other hand, the wonderfully earthy Lacryma Christi del Vesuvio. I couldn't decide, so I poured a part of a glass of each. I honestly couldn't decide which was better even as I ate the meal, but in the end, the Bordeaux was a little too tart for the sweet glaze, and the Lacryma Christi provided enough roundness of body to compliment the duck.

All in all, it was a successful meal, and now I have a fool-proof recipe to prepare on Friday night!

Yours in the love of good food and wine,
AL

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The blogger is not an experienced chef. She takes no responsibility for the quality of the meals prepared while following her advice. Use your own judgment regarding cooking times and proper food handling.

Third Post: Savory Steak

Ahh... Spring Break. I never was one for the whole Cancun party scene - honestly, I, as an academic, get my joy from having completely unoccupied days in which to study at my leisure, get ahead, and relax a little. And by relaxing, I mean cooking celebratory dinners. Tonight's dinner was purely experimental. From the wine choice to the seasoning, I just cooked with what the spirit moved me to cook with.

Tonight: Steak. I'm not a huge aficionado of red meat inasmuch as I seldom crave it like some people do. However, this afternoon as I walked past the Butcher Block at Wegmans (I swear, I am not affiliated with Wegmans, I'm just a really really big fan) I saw a petit sirloin that started jumping up and down and tapping on the glass as I passed by. When it finally held up a little sign saying "I'M DINNER!" I decided to buy it.

I love steak with mushrooms. To me, it's just blasphemous to not serve them together. Here's what you'll need if you want to make steak the way I just did:

One petit sirloin (mine was just under 1/3 lb.)
Baby bella mushrooms (I chose the pre-washed, pre-sliced variety, because I'd rather spend my free time getting one more article read)
Olive oil
Garlic
Terragon (or any other spices you're fond of)
Red wine
A veggie for your side (I grew up in a Meat-Starch-Veggie household, so I feel compelled to include this. I chose green beans with almonds)

Start toaster oven (or whatever steak-cooking apparatus you might have) preheating. I used a toaster oven set on 325 on broil 'cause, well, it's cheaper to heat then the actual broiler on my oven.
Start your olive oil heating up in a small sauce pan on the stove.
Crush two cloves of garlic in a small prep bowl.
Dump your mushrooms in the sauce pan and stir to evenly heat.
Pour some red wine over the mushrooms

PAUSE

As the saying goes, "I love to cook with wine - sometimes I even add it to the food." I really enjoy wine. I do not drink wine to get drunk. I do not drink wine because I'm posh (okay, well, maybe a little). I drink wine because honestly, I don't think there's any better companion for a good meal. Paired correctly, it can open up culinary doors that never existed with water, soda or juice. Any sommelier I've ever met has said the same thing: "After the second glass, you're no longer tasting or appreciating the wine - so why bother?" Being single and drinking wine by this philosophy, I sometimes have a bit of wine left in the bottle that is not suitable for drinking, but that still packs some flavor. Save this for cooking. While cooking wines are available, there's a certain depth that you can get by cooking with a good table wine.

For tonight's mushrooms and the steak marinade, I used the leftover wine that I talked about in last week's post - the Tempranillo from Berberana vineyards. It was starting to taste a little dry, and I didn't want to ruin my past memories by drinking it past its prime. For the actual meal accompaniment, I bought a bottle of Cab - more on that later.

UNPAUSE

So add a good amount of red wine to the mushrooms. Pepper them a bit.
Add about half of your crushed garlic to the mushrooms. Stir.
Reduce heat to very low.

Put a tiny bit of olive oil in with the crushed garlic in your prep bowl.
Pour in some red wine.
Add some terragon.
Mix around with a fork, and spoon it over the steak - for best results, make a little tin foil "boat" for your steak, which will allow the marinade to flow around the steak rather than away from it.
Place steak in heating apparatus.
I like my steak rare to medium rare, so I went five minutes on one side, and about eight on the other.
While the steak is cooking, add some terragon, salt, and additional pepper to taste to your mushrooms. I let them simmer with the heat turned down really low. I love the earthy smell of mushrooms cooking. I think the terragon compliments it, and the wine adds such a nice zip.
When you turn the steak half-way through, dump the rest of the marinade in your prep bowl over the steak.
Microwave or heat your veggie side dish: No wine or TV if you don't eat your veggies. Manda says.
Watch your steak so it doesn't get too done. Mind the mushrooms, too.
When it's all ready, serve it up.

I served tonight's dinner with a 2006 Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon from Haras Estate that I got as the last bottle in a reduced cart - I hope it's not because it's being discontinued from the store I go to, because I think it's a lovely Cab. It's rich and earthy, but with super bright berry overtones. It's tannic enough for the steak so that the whole meal is never too rich. It compliments the red wine that the food was cooked with. It becomes delightfully fruity in the face of the spices and garlic. In my opinion, a really terrific match.

Well, now it's time to clean up the dishes and settle in for the last half-hour of TV before bed! A great way to end the first day of Spring Break.

Yours in the love of good food and good wine and the beautiful friendship they share,
AL

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The blogger is not an experienced chef. She takes no responsibility for the quality of the meals prepared while following her advice. Use your own judgment regarding cooking times and proper food handling.