38 Power Foods, Week 37 -- Wild Salmon -- Salmon with Kale on Pea Risotto

If you're looking for a fish meal for Good Friday --or a different salmon recipe-- this is your day.  While it takes a few more minutes than simply grilling some fish and putting together a salad, it's well worth it.  Think creamy-dreamy risotto to which you've added some spring peas.  Surround it with some quickly crisped healthy green kale and top with a tender filet of salmon.  Lemon, along with some minced fresh onion, adds the best touch over all at the end.  Here's how....

38 Power Foods, Week 36 -- Rainbow Trout -- Pan-Fried Trout Brunch with Red Pepper-Zucchini Potatoes and Fried Eggs

 

Skip the quiche this Easter and fry up a tasty rainbow trout to go with your eggs and a big platter of potatoes with peppers and zucchini. While this is a lovely and not too time-consuming brunch (no do-aheads), it necessitates planning and ... well ...and doing things in approximately the order (see below), as fish waits for no one.  

Servings:   One fish will serve two people generously.  There's plenty of Avocado-Basil Mayonnaise and potatoes for four. If you do have four, you'll need to buy two trout and cook one, putting it in the warming oven while you cook the second.   Alternately, each of the four of you could have a small serving of the single trout.  With the eggs, it's a filling meal.

       

College CHILI FRITO Updated

When Dave and I were in college, the cafeterias did their best to serve food that was wholesome and healthy (a salad bar appeared at student request), but that also made a teenager's heart sing rather than sink.  As I spent a couple of years there cracking eggs--this is true--I know better than some.  Saturday nights were "steak nights," and you seldom missed that meal, even if you had eaten all day long that day or were out at the lake at a kegger.   It was there I first heard the words London Broil or realized steaks could have sauces.  In the house where I grew up, good steak didn't need sauce; it simply wasn't done. (Groan.)  You wouldn't ruin a gorgeous piece of midwest beef like that.  Looking back, of course the cafeteria steaks probably needed sauce.  The rarely-seen (ha) summer ribeye at home was fine with only a bit of garlic salt with pepper and a nice big crunchy salad right out of my Dad's garden.  Mayonnaise was the dressing of choice.

38 Power Foods, Week 35 -- Yogurt -- Smoked Salmon Frittata with Horseradish Yogurt and Irish Scones

This is also A Week of St. Pat's Recipes, Friday...

There's nothing like a scone.  You can pronounce it skone or skahn, as does my friend, Marie, who's from South Africa:

"I asked the maid in dulcet tone

To order me a buttered scone

The silly girl has been and gone

And ordered me a buttered scone."

A Week of Recipes for St. Pat's, Thursday -- Guinness Beef Pot Pie with Cheddar-Dill Biscuits

Made in a deep, heavy 8 quart cast iron pot with a  lid  (Dutch oven)

Last year around this time, I made a pot roast with big pieces of butternut squash and halved onions in the oven.  A day later I took the leftovers, including the gravy, and made stew.  Stew from leftovers is definitely an improvement over freshly made stew.   There's a deeper, fuller, and more flavorful rich quality--without question.  It's just that there's usually less than when you make a fresh pot. That stew made very quickly with the addition of more onions, celery, and Guinness stout, etc., was divine.   I mean it, it was an incredible stew. When my boss tasted it (and she's a really good cook), she said, "Alyce cooks for God, you know."

At the top of Dublin's Guinness brewery, there's a 2DIE4 pub...here's one view.

A Week of Recipes for St. Pat's, Wednesday -- Breakfast Reuben in a Cup

Here is it out of the cup.

Here it is in the cup.  You can eat it either way.

  

HERE'S HOW:

A Week of Recipes for St. Pat's: Tuesday -- Potato Soup and Irish Soda Bread

                                                                              photo copyright Alyce Morgan, 2003

I had a farm in Ireland.......

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Not.  I did, however, visit once.

I wish I could go back.

I can't go today, but I can make Potato Soup and Irish Soda Bread on

St. Patrick's Day......

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I've been making this meal for a long time.  I love it, but I don't make it any other time of the year.  I don't know why.  Perhaps it wouldn't be special if I made it, say, in May or September.  You, however, have no holiday strings emotionally strumming over these recipes and could make them next week or next year.  Go you.  So, here's the soup...........and then the bread--

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

.

potato soup with leeks and bacon

2 slices of bacon, diced; 1/4# Canadian bacon, chopped*

2 onions (different kinds are nice), chopped

2 cloves of garlic, minced

2 leeks, chopped

3 large pototoes, peeled and cut into 1" pieces  

1 turnip, peeled and cut into 1" pieces

1 parsnip, peeled and cut into 1" pieces, optional

6-8 cups unsalted chicken broth

Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper

1/2 c Greek yogurt or sour cream

parsley or dill

In an 8-10qt soup kettle, saute bacon until about half-done; add Canadian bacon.  Cook until well browned.  Remove meats  from pot and drain on paper towel-lined plate.  Cool and  refrigerate until you're going to serve the soup.
.

Pour out all but enough bacon grease to coat the bottom of the pan well.  Add onions, garlic and leeks and saute until almost golden, stirring often.  Add potatoes, turnip and parsnip and cook 2-3 minutes until hot.  Add chicken broth.  Bring to a  boil and lower the heat.  Simmer until all vegetables are soft, about 25 minutes.  Salt and pepper to taste. 
.

Puree (you can choose not to, as well)  in food processor, with hand-held blender or by hand using potato masher.  Serve with a dollop of sour cream, a bit of the bacon and ham and a garnish of fresh parsley or dill.  Make sure there's fresh ground pepper at the table.

*You could choose to use all bacon.
.

.

A Week of Recipes for St. Pat's: Monday - Darina Allen's Soda Bread

(a repeat post from march 9 2012)

That's it. I'm leaving home.  I always wondered where I'd get my cooking credentials (other than living in my kitchen) and now I know.  I'm going to the Ballymaloe Cookery School in Shanagarry, County Cork, Ireland.  I'll see you later.  It's time I earned my toque... or at least an apron that says, " Ballymaloe."



Ireland:  Cliffs of Moher                                                                                                                         (copyright Alyce Morgan, 2003)


  Ok, I'm not.  But I'd like to.   Meantime,  just in time for St. Patty's Day, I'm baking some bread from the Cookery School's founder and Ireland's best chef-teacher, Darina Allen, number 38 in Gourmet Live's list of 50 Women Game-Changers in Food:

38 Power Foods, Week 34 -- Eggs -- Sriracha Eggs over Biscuits with Basil Salsa

 

RELAXING ON THE WEEKEND...

Brunch is a loved meal that doesn't get eaten nearly often enough. It spells S-L-O-W.  Relaxed.  No rush. Picking and choosing as in, "There's too much to choose from!"  Shades of a string quartet bowing off in a corner.  An attractive guy in a long apron at your elbow, murmuring, "More coffee?  Champagne?"   Unfortunately, we go out for brunch most of the time--and spend a bundle, too.  We sort of assume it's too much trouble to cook or maybe even to entertain midday on the weekends, but I enjoy it.  (Even for just two.)

Add to the pull toward the middle of the day menu that I am crazy about eggs.  One of my really good friends says, "I never met an egg I didn't like." That's about the size of it.   If you don't believe me, you'll have to see some of the things I do with eggs.

This is my Oven-Baked Vegetable Soup with Poached Egg

 or my Porridged Eggs, which are eggs cooked in oats stove top:

 You get the idea, right?

But take a look at today's pretty little egg dish and...

38 Power Foods, Week 33, Pumpkin Seeds -- Acorn Squash Salad with Pumpkin Seeds and Cumin Vinaigrette

My favorite place for pumpkin seeds is in my mouth.  Preferably with salt or salt with cumin and cayenne.  I also like them on top of pumpkin soup. Texture! I put them in my pumpkin bread, too.  If you're a jack-o-lantern carver, you probably have saved your seeds, cleaned and dried them, and roasted them in the oven for a treat in the days following Halloween when your teeth are still gritty from the sugar high night. (You can roast and eat the seeds from any kind of pumpkin at all.)