#95 - Sicilian Tuna and White Bean Bruschetta

When Borders went out of business, we not only got the Jonathan Waxman book, but we also bought this cookbook from frequent Iron Chef judge Donatella Arpaia.

Sicilian Tuna and White Bean Bruschetta

From Donatella Cooks This recipe has two ingredients we know go well together from our Ligabue salad - tuna fish and cannellini beans. This is a bruschetta, so you have to get some nice crusty bread, slice it and toast it or grill it up. After making a little mustard and red onion vinaigrette, you mix that with the cannellini beans and puree some of that to make the whole topping extra smooth. This was a really nice little appetizer. There was a lot of topping, so we kinda felt like it was something else (maybe an open faced Italian tuna salad sandwich?) rather than bruschetta, but it was tasty.

The vinaigrette added nice flavor, and the onions added a solid crunch to the semi-pureed topping. All in all, this was a great appetizer / side dish / whatever you want to call it. You should have the ingredients in your pantry from your Ligabue stock. So make this instead one time.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup olive oil plus extra for brushing
• 1 1/2 Tbs red wine vinegar
• 1/4 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1 small garlic clove, minced
• 1/2 cup thinly sliced red onion, soaked for 30 minutes in ice-cold water
• Kosher salt
• Black pepper
• 1 15-oz can cannellini beans, rinsed and drained well
• 1 250-gram jar imported olive oil-packed Italian tuna, drained
• 20 fresh mint leaves, cut in thin strips
• 4-6 slices rustic Italian bread

Preparation

1. Whisk together 1/4 cup of the olive oil, vinegar, mustard, and garlic in a small bowl.
2. Add half of the onions, toss, and let stand for 5 minutes.
3. Season with salt and pepper.
4. Combine the beans and onion vinaigrette in a large bowl.
5. Puree one-third of the mixture in a food processor until smooth.
6. Fold this mixture back into the beans, add the tuna and the remaining 1/4 cup of olive oil, and all but 1 Tbs of the mint.
7. Mix until the tuna is no longer chunky.
8. Brush the bread slices with olive oil, toast, and cut in half, if desired.
9. Arrange the bread slices on a platter.
10. Spoon some of the tuna-bean mixture onto each slice.
11. Garnish with the remaining onions and mint and serve.

#74 - Salmon with Coriander Rub and Lime Cream

Seems like we've been on a bit of a salmon kick, but our new fish recipe is once again ... salmon.

Salmon with Coriander Rub and Lime Cream

From Bon Appetit This recipe uses coriander and cumin, a spice combination we've used a couple times before on recipes, and apparently they go pretty well together. You're also gonna need some salmon, cilantro, and a lime. So you start out by grinding the coriander and cumin to make a spice rub - like the garam masala from Iron Chef Voltaggio. Then you use that, some lime zest, olive oil, and garlic to make a marinade, and you let the salmon sit in that for a few hours in the fridge. When that's ready, you bake the salmon, whip up a little sauce topping with the lime juice and sour cream, and enjoy. This was a nice new recipe to add to our salmon repertoire. It was simple and pretty much completely the opposite of the balsamic salmon we had last month. While that one's sauce was nice and rich, this was light and refreshing. And both were tasty and easy enough to prepare. Not bad. Looking for yet another salmon recipe? Look no further:

Ingredients

• 1/12 cup coriander seeds
• 1 1/3 tsp cumin seeds
• 2 Tbs olive oil, plus extra for brushing
• 1 1/3 large garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tsp finely grated lime peel, divided
• 2 6-oz skinless salmon fillets
• Salt
• Black pepper
• 3 Tbs sour cream
• 1 Tbs fresh lime juice
• Fresh cilantro, chopped

Preparation

1. In a medium skillet, toast coriander and cumin seeds over medium-high until slightly darker in color and very fragrant, stirring often, about 3 to 4 minutes.
2. Transfer seeds to a medium bowl and let cool.
3. Using a mortar and pestle, grind seeds to a medium consistency.
4. Pour seeds into a square glass baking dish.
5. Add 2 Tbs of olive oil, the garlic, and 2/3 tsp lime peel and whisk to blend.
6. Add salmon to oil-spice mixture in dish and turn to coat.
7. Cover and let chill for 1 to 3 hours, turning salmon occasionally.
8. Position rack in top third of oven and preheat to 450.
9. Brush heavy rimmed baking sheet with oil to coat.
10. Brush excess spices off each salmon fillet, leaving a thin coating.
11. Season fillets with salt and pepper and arrange on baking sheet at least 2 inches apart.
12. Cook in over until just opaque in center, about 7 minutes.
13. While salmon is cooking, whisk sour cream, lime juice, and remaining 1/3 tsp lime peel in a medium bowl.
14. Season cream with salt and pepper to taste.
15. Arrange fillets on a platter,sprinkle each with chopped cilantro, and top with lime cream.

#67 - Salmon with Red Wine-Balsamic Sauce

This hundred recipe challenge is all about cooking new things, and since we didn't cook too much fish before, that was one of our major focuses this year. Here's another:

Salmon with Red Wine-Balsamic Sauce

From Food & Wine This is actually a pretty straight-forward recipe. You make a sauce with red wine and balsamic vinegar, you cook your salmon, and you put it together. So, naturally, you're going to need salmon, red wine, and balsamic. And then you also need some olive oil, butter, cream, and a few other things. We didn't take too many pictures with this recipe, but you'll get the idea. You start out by chopping some shallots, and sauteing that in the olive oil. Then you add some other ingredients along with the red wine and the balsamic and you reduce it down to a thick sauce. You add some cream and salt and pepper, and then once that's all done, you cook the fish, and serve. For being very simple, this dish came out very elegant. You have feel like you're on a cooking competition show when you get to say that you made a balsamic reduction. And it comes out being a tasty way to get your salmon. If you want a different way to have a tasty fish dinner, try this one.

Ingredients

• 1 Tbs olive oil
• 1/2 small shallot, minced
• 1/2 thyme sprig
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• 1 cup dry red wine
• 1/8 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1 Tbs heavy cream
• 2 Tbs cold unsalted butter, cut into tablespoons
• Salt
• Black pepper
• 2 6-oz skinless salmon fillets

Preparation

1. In a medium saucepan, heat 1/2 Tbs of the olive oil over medium heat.
2. Add the shallot and cook until softened, about 4 minutes.
3. Add the thyme sprig, black pepper, red wine, and balsamic vinegar and boil over high heat until reduced to 1 Tbs, about 12 minutes.
4. Remove the pan from the heat and whisk in the cream and then the butter, one Tbs at a time.
5. Season the sauce with salt and pepper.
6. Strain into a bowl and keep warm.
7. In a large nonstick skillet, heat the remaining 1/2 Tbs of olive oil over medium heat until shimmering.
8. Season salmon fillets with salt and pepper and add them to the skillet, skinned side up.
9. Cook until browned, about 4 minutes.
10. Turn the salmon and cook until the fish is just opaque throughout, about 3 minutes longer.
11. Transfer fish to plates, spoon the sauce over the salmon, and garnish with ground black pepper.
12. Serve immediately.

#61 - Salmon and Spinach Cakes

It's been a while since we've made a new fish meal. Not anymore.

Salmon and Spinach Cakes

From Food & Wine This dish is salmon and spinach cakes with a jalapeno and dill mayonnaise. The first thing you do is cook up the potatoes and the spinach that are going to go in the cakes. Then while those are cooling, you chop the jalapeno and dill, mix them together with mayonnaise and some salt, and set that aside for when it's time to eat. After that, it's just puree-ing, forming the cakes, and pan frying. We've never had anything like these before, and they turned out pretty good. We probably didn't add enough salt to the potatoes because the cakes were a little bland on their own, but the jalapeno dill mayonnaise was very good, and it went really well with the cake.

The biggest problem we had was that this recipe made too many cakes for the two of us, so we put the rest in the freezer before cooking them, and hopefully they'll taste good in weeks to come. In need of a new fish recipe? Here you go:

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 lbs large Yukon gold potatoes
• 5 oz baby spinach
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1 jalapeno, seeded and minced
• 3 Tbs chopped dill
• Salt
• 1 1/2 lbs skinless salmon fillet, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
• 1/4 cup plus 2 Tbs heavy cream
• 1/4 cup onion, minced
• Vegetable oil

Preparation

1. Cover the potatoes with water in a medium saucepan.
2. Simmer potatoes over medium-high heat until tender, about 30 minutes.
3. Drain and let cool.
4. Peel potatoes and cut into 1/4-inch dice.  Transfer to a large bowl.
5. In a large skillet, heat 2 Tbs of water over medium-high heat.
6. Add spinach in batches, and cook until wilted.
7. Drain spinach, squeeze dry, and coarsely chop.
8. In a small bowl, mix the mayonnaise, jalapeno, and dill and season with salt.
9. Put the salmon in the food processor and pulse a few times, until chopped.
10. Pulse in the cream until incorporated.
11. Add the salmon to the potatoes.
12. Stir in the spinach and onion and season with salt.
13. Form mixture into 12 patties.
14. In a large nonstick skillet, heat 1/8 inch of vegetable oil over high heat.
15. Add half of the cakes and fry until lightly browned on the bottom, about 1 minute.
16. Reduce the heat to medium and cook until well browned, about 2 minutes.
17. Turn and cook for 3 minutes, until browned.
18. Repeat with the remaining cakes, adding more oil to the skillet as needed.
19. Top cakes with the sauce and serve.

#45 - Trout Meunière with Pecan Sauce

We haven't made a new fish in a while, so we opened up some of our cookbooks, found this trout recipe, and decided to give it a go.

Trout Meunière with Pecan Sauce

From Delicious Disney
So apparently, Meunière means "miller's wife", and if there are two things a miller's wife should have plenty of, it's flour and wine. And silly hats.
The other thing this recipe calls for is clarified butter. We didn't get any good pictures of making that, but basically, you cook unsalted butter over low heat until it separates. When you're done with that, you feel like you're ready to start cooking up something tasty at Wisey's.

So outside of clarifying that butter, the first thing you have to do is to dredge the trout in milk and a flour / spice mixture.
Once the dredging is done, it's time to saute the fish, and then make the pecan sauce.

One word of advice - make sure to check the temperature because we left the sauce on a little too high of heat, and we actually had to give it a 2nd try before we got it just right.
How did it come out? Well, we think it was pretty good, but more of a once-in-a-while kinda meal, instead of an oh-my-gosh-this-is-so-good-we-need-to-have-this-as-much-as-possible-and-use-as-many-hyphens-as-it-takes kind of a meal.
If you want a fish dinner suited for a miller, here's what you've got to do:

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup flour
• 3/8 Tbs salt
• 1/8 tsp white pepper
• Pinch of cayenne pepper
• 1/8 cup clarified butter, divided
• 2 8-ounce trout fillets
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 Tbs shallots, minced
• 3/8 cup pecans, chopped
• Pinch of flour
• 1/8 cup white wine
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 1 1/2 Tbs unsalted butter
• 1/2 Tbs parsley, chopped
• Salt
• Pepper

Preparation

1. Slowly melt butter in a small saucepan over low heat, never stirring.
2. When the milk solids sink to the bottom of the pan the golden liquid on top is the clarified butter.
3. Skim off any foam and put the clarified butter in a small bowl.
4. In a shallow dish, mix the flour, salt, white pepper, and a pinch of cayenne pepper.
5. Heat a large saute pan over medium-high heat, and add the clarified butter, reserving 1/2 Tbs.
6. Dredge trout in milk, then in the flour mixture, and add to the hot pan.
7. Cook each fillet for 2 minutes on each side, or until golden brown.
8. Remove to a serving platter, and keep warm.
9. Wipe out the pan and return to heat, adding the last 1/2 Tbs of clarified butter.
10. Add shallots and saute about 10 seconds.
11. Add pecans and saute for 1 minute.
12. Add a pinch of flour, then whisk in wine and lemon juice, whisking about 30 seconds until smooth and shiny.
13. Remove sauce from heat and add butter and parsley, then season to taste with salt and pepper.
14. Spoon sauce over fish and serve right away.

#15 - Salmon Baked in Foil

Remember how we said we've been trying to have more fish lately? Well, since the last few times we've made fish it's gone in some sort of pasta, we decided to try something else this time.

Salmon Baked in Foil

From Everyday Italian
This recipe is pretty straightforward and doesn't call for too many crazy ingredients. And you can replace the fresh herbs with dried ones if you don't want to spend too much time a) at the store and b) chopping oregano.
The first thing you do is chop up some tomatoes and shallots, and toss with fresh herbs and olive oil and lemon juice.
It smells really good, but don't taste it as is because of the lemon juice.
Then you put the salmon on a piece of foil, cover it with the tomatoes, wrap and pop in the oven. And that's it. Simple, huh?
And oh my goodness, for being so easy to make, this fish was delicious. We made some mashed potatoes and peas while the salmon was cooking, and we had a really nice complete meal done in less than an hour start to finish.

And with Lent coming up, we're going to have to try this out again soon on a Friday.
Here's the recipe:

Ingredients

• 3 tomatoes, chopped
  
• 2 shallots, chopped
• 2 Tbs + 2 tsp olive oil
• Juice of 1/2 a lemon
• 1 1/2 tsp fresh oregano, chopped (3/4 tsp if dried)
• 1 1/2 tsp fresh thyme, chopped (3/4 tsp if dried)
• 1 tsp salt
• 3/4 tsp black pepper
• 4 salmon fillets (6 oz each)
  

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2. In a medium bowl, stir the tomatoes, shallots, lemon juice, oregano, thyme, and 2 Tbs olive oil, 1/2 tsp salt, and 1/4 tsp pepper.
3. Lay out four sheets of aluminum foil, and spoon 1/2 tsp olive oil in the middle of each.
4. Place one salmon fillet on top of the oil and turn to coat.
5. Sprinkle the remaining 1/2 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp pepper over all of the salmon.
6. Spoon the tomato mixture over the fillets.
   
7. Fold the sides of the foil over the fish and tomato mixture, covering completely, and seal the packets closed.
8. Place packets on a large baking sheet.
9. Bake for 25 minutes.
10. Carefully transfer the foil packets to plates, open and serve the fish using a large metal spatula.
    

#8 - Farfalle al Salmone

One of the things we've being trying to do lately is have more fish in our diet. So we looked up a new pasta recipe that had salmon in it. We're not sure if covering fish with creamy tomato sauce is the healthiest thing, but it's better than nothing. Maybe.

Farfalle al Salmone

From The Classic Pasta Cookbook
We looked up a new fish pasta recipe in The Classic Pasta Cookbook, which already taught us how to make pasta from scratch. We weren't brave enough to do a crazy seafood one with frutti di mare, and this salmon recipe seemed pretty manageable.

All we needed to get from the store was the salmon and some basil because our plant has been dead for some months now. It is the winter.
One of the things we've learned from watching so many Food Network shows is that you don't have to get bogged down with chopping garlic all the time. Instead, we bought a second zester which we use only to shave garlic. The key to this technique is labeling the garlic grater so recipes that call for lemon zest don't end up smelling like meatballs.
Oddly enough, we used a second technique we learned from the Food Network for this recipe. The fanciest knife cut Emily knows is the chiffonade. You just stack and roll an herb and cut them into thin strips so when it unfurls it looks really pretty.
This was a pretty easy recipe to make; the hardest thing was removing the skin from the raw salmon. If you could get it de-skinned when you buy it, that would be a pretty good idea.

After that, everything cooked in one pan, so it was pretty straightforward to make and pretty easy to clean up. And on top of that it was delicious.

The red pepper flakes really gave it that extra kick so it wasn't overly rich. But it was pretty rich. And tasty. And one of the less healthy fish dishes we've had lately. We're trying though.
If you wanna give this one a try, here's the recipe:

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 tsp garlic, finely chopped
• 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
• 2 cups canned whole peeled tomatoes, coarsely chopped
• Salt
• 1/2 lb fresh boned salmon cut into 1/2 inch dice
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 2 Tbs fresh basil, shredded
• 1 lb farfalle pasta

Preparation

1. Heat the olive oil in a large pan over medium-high heat. Add the garlic and red pepper flakes, and cook until the garlic begins to lightly brown.
2. Add the tomatoes, and season with salt to taste.
3. After the tomatoes start bubbling, turn the heat down to medium-low. Cook until the tomatoes have reduced, about 20 minutes.
4. Bring the heat back up to medium-high and add the salmon, cream, and a pinch of salt.
5. Cook until the cream has reduced by half.
6. Stir in the basil, and take off the heat.
7. Cook the pasta to al dente and toss with the sauce.