Alessa coming at you tonight. My plans for Sunday originally consisted of going bowling with some good geeky friends, but adult life reared it's cursed head. Instead, Karin and I needed to go grocery shopping and pick up a few other things for our kitchen, then I had laundry to do and the kitchen was a mess too. Sigh!
We had some salmon in the freezer that needed to be used and no clue what to do with it, so I started looking up some salmon recipes. Nothing really looked good so I was just going to do my fallback of Teriyaki salmon and rice. Karin then suggested we look up quinoa (keen-wa) recipes to replace the rice.
Oddly enough, once I started looking up quinoa on www.foodnetwork.com I found a salmon recipe! Potato crusted salmon? Sounds good to me. The following recipe is quite complex and had many elements we left out. We simplified and changed quite a bit, but it turned out pretty good and as a bonus we ended up with homemade potato chips!
Here is a link to the recipe I used as inspiration. Like I said, it's huge, so I didn't want to post the whole thing here. My version is much easier and uses less ingredients
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/saras-secrets/potato-crusted-alaskan-salmon-with-arugula-quinoa-salad-lemon-beurre-blanc-recipe/index.html
Here is what I did:
First I started the quinoa (an ancient Peruvian grain that is a complete protein, for all my vegetarian friends.) Quinoa can be used in place of most rices and grains in any recipe. We used the rice cooker to make it, but stove top method is good too.
1/2 pound (8 oz) Quinoa
about 2 cups (16 oz) of water
In a medium saucepan combine the water and Quinoa and bring to a boil. Boil for 15 minutes or until most of the liquid is absorbed. Turn off heat, cover pan with a lid and let sit for about 5 minutes. Fluff the quinoa and set aside until later. This will be turned into a salad.
Ingredients for Quinoa Salad
Prepared Quinoa
1/2 small red onion, diced
1/2 large cucumber, diced
1/2 large or one small bell pepper, any color (we used yellow), diced
about 2 Tbsp Flat Leaf Parsley, chopped
Toss all together in a bowl with a simple vinaigrette (ours was White Wine vinegar, Olive oil, fresh ground black pepper, sea salt, lemon juice and Herbs de Provence) Chill while the fish is baking.
Ingredients for the Salmon
2-6 ounce Salmon Fillets (wild caught if you can get it), preferably skin on
1 large Russet potato, sliced extremely thin (use a mandolin or v-slicer)
4 ounces Roasted Red Peppers in Olive oil
1 Tbsp. Fresh Italian Parsley, chopped
1 Tbsp. Vegetable oil
Combine the Parsley and red peppers and chop into a thick paste. A food processor would work well for this, but since we don't have one I used the mad knife skills I have now (thanks to Chef Bob and his Knife skills class!). Smear the paste over the flesh side of the salmon fillets. Shingle the potato slices onto the salmon, I only ended up using about a quarter of our one potato.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
In a skillet, heat vegetable oil over medium-high heat and lay the fish POTATO side down. This part is tricky so have fun trying to keep the potatoes in place. Cook for about 5 minutes or until the potatoes start to crisp a little on the edges. Transfer the Salmon to a greased cookie sheet, potato side UP. Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes, depending on thickness and how done you like your fish.
We had plenty of potato slices left so I fried them up real quick in the same pan I had cooked the fish in until they were crispy. Once fried I put them on rack over a towel to drain and salted and peppered them.
Jazz Hands! Homemade potato chips. Jazz Hands!
Serve all together on a plate and enjoy :D
The roasted red peppers were a nice twist, but did burn slightly in the oven. I think a white fish would compliment the red pepper better, like a halibut or cod. Also I would use less onion in the salad next time, our onion was VERY pungent and overpowered the other flavors. I would definitely try this recipe again, while still not exactly following the Food Network version.
No comments:
Post a Comment