Michelle Bridges' Salmon with Char-Grilled Asparagus and Tomato Salad

I thought I'd share a savoury recipe for once. Normally it's all about cupcakes here, but since I have had increasing difficulty buttoning my pants I thought it might be wise to limit my cupcake intake for a time. Don't panic, it's not forever, just until I can fit back into a pair of pants (in the Australian sense, not the British sense!) other than the only two things left in my wardrobe that fit me!

 

So a while ago (hah probably nearly a year ago. Well done, Past Vanessa, for using your new cookbook so much) I bought myself a copy of the Michelle Bridges Crunch Time Cookbook. For the Americans out there, Michelle Bridges is Australia's answer to Jillian Michaels, although probably not quite as hardcore and mean.

 

But she still says some vastly unpopular things that make some women very angry, and there seems to be quite a polarised opinion on her methods, but she's right about a lot of things, and she definitely doesn't sugar coat it (because sugar is the devil. Duh.) - we're not going to lose weight by cuddling puppies or making daisy chains or through positive affirmations about ourselves, and we're certainly not going to do it by eating cheese (mmm, cheese... *undoes jeans button*). But as anyone who read her book knows, she actually does give a damn about the psychology behind weight gain, and does try to address it. So she's mean AND sensible ;) I don't agree with her brand of rapid weight loss because to me it's unsustainable, but it obviously works well for some people.

 

Anyway, to her recipes - last year I wrote a less-than-complimentary review about her Lentil Shepherd's Pie, probably because it was kind of watery, unfilling and a little bit low on taste. That could easily be fixed with some spices, and, as I said, you could probably add a little sweet potato to it in order to thicken it up and bulk it out. Last night's recipe was a bit higher on flavour thanks to the addition of basil and balsamic vinegar, although I suspect it may not have filled me up had I not added the zucchini and snow peas. That's not saying much, though, given what a bottomless pit I have been lately!

 

I'm sorry there are no photos - I was too hungry! - but I think we all know what a piece of grilled salmon sitting on top of a salad looks like.

 

The link to the original recipe is here, but I had to wing it a little because the supermarket was out of asparagus, and we were out of spray oil at home. And also because I feel superior in knowing that you get more flavour out of tearing herbs than chopping them!

 

The original calorie content is 269cal per serve (recipe serves two), but I'm guessing my version was probably closer to 300-325cal thanks to the oil and the fact I used beans (and a larger number of them) plus snow peas and zucchini rather than just a few spears of asparagus.

 

INGREDIENTS:

 

Two handfuls mixed salad greens, washed and drained

Handful of green beans, topped, tailed, halved across, washed

Smaller handful of snow peas, topped, tailed, halved across, washed

1 small zucchini, washed, topped, tailed, sliced down the middle then in diagonal, 1.5-2cm chunks

1 250g punnet of cherry tomatoes, washed

Handful of basil leaves, torn

2tsp balsamic vinegar

2tsp olive oil

2 150g salmon steaks

 

Put salad greens and torn basil in two large bowls.

 

Heat half the oil in a grill pan (I used our old family cast iron frypan instead. It's an amaaaazing piece of kitchenware to have, it's not even the schmancy enamelled type, and it probably cost about $20 from a camping shop). Put the beans in and cook for a couple of minutes, stirring occasionally so that they get a little bit of charring but don't burn.

 

Next, add snow peas and cook for about 30 seconds to a minute before adding the zucchini and tomatoes. Stir occasionally for another minute or two until everything is a little bit brown and heated through. I recommend tasting the zucchini at this point as uncooked zucchini is quite bitter.

 

Remove from heat and divide evenly between two bowls. Drizzle evenly with balsamic vinegar.

 

Return pan to heat with remaining oil. When pan is hot, grill salmon on both sides until lightly browned but still pink in the middle. Serve atop salad. Enjoy! (and I can say it wholeheartedly this time!)

 

Broccoli Salad

One of my 101 Things challenges that I've been surprisingly lax on is having a dinner party with a theme every six months. So just before Christmas I decided to hold a "red and green" themed dinner party in honour of the traditional Christmas colours.

 

Okay, so it was more "shades of red and green", which meant that pink and burgandy and purple and very pale green were all acceptable colours.

 

I'll eventually post a couple of other recipes, including a beetroot and goat cheese salad, a roasted vegetable salad, and an orange polenta cake covered in pink rose-flavoured buttercream and sprinkled with pistachios. Such pretty colours!

 

In the meantime, here is a salad that sounds utterly revolting, but which I promise is not. It really, really isn't. In fact, I could eat rather a lot of this and not get sick of it. I think. But it's red and green (sort of) and I made it for this red-and-green dinner party as well as for another Christmas potluck lunch.

 

It's adapted from a recipe on Simply Recipes and I have basically played around with the quantities, including eliminating half the dressing (because it was absolutely drowning in it the first time I made it for a pre-Christmas BBQ the weekend before the dinner party). I can't really claim it as my own, but I have added a couple of steps that I think were quite important for the success of the salad.

 

2 medium-large heads of broccoli

1/2c toasted slivered almonds

3 middle rashers of bacon (i.e. the full length, not the short cuts), rind & outer fat removed

A little oil

1/3 red onion, diced

1c frozen peas, thawed

1/2c mayonnaise (I used whole egg mayo - much nicer than that 97% fat free garbage)

1tbsp apple cider vinegar

1 tbsp honey

 

Thaw peas on paper towel and pat dry. You will want to use fairly new peas and not the ones from the back of your freezer, otherwise they'll be all wrinkly and manky.

 

Chop onion and set aside.

 

Dice bacon into 1-1.5cm pieces and fry in a little oil (you won't need much as the bacon releases fat) until lightly browned. Remove from heat and drain on paper towel. Set aside.

 

In the same pan, toast the slivered almonds and keep them moving until lightly browned. Remove them from the pan immediately that this happens, otherwise they will keep cooking and burn. Set aside.

 

Remove florets from broccoli heads. If you wish, you can also chop some of the stalk up and use that (I didn't). Bring a large pot of water to the boil, and prepare a large bowl with iced water. Place broccoli florets in water that is at a rolling boil and leave them only until they turn green (no more than 1-1.5 minutes) then lift out with a slotted spoon and plunge them into the iced water to arrest cooking. They should be bright green and still crunchy, but not repulsively so. You just don't want them to be soggy. You may need to do this in two batches. Drain broccoli thoroughly then pop in the refrigerator until you're ready to dress and serve it.

 

Mix the mayonnaise, apple cider vinegar and honey until thoroughly and evenly combined. Keep refrigerated until ready to use it.

 

Shortly before serving, combine broccoli, almonds, onions and bacon in a large bowl. Pour dressing evenly over salad and toss to combine.

This is a shot without my favourite ingredient - bacon - because I am an awesome friend and didn't put it in until after the vegetarians had taken a serving. And bacon is why I will never be a vegetarian!

The Daring Kitchen: Cornmeal (Polenta with Blue Cheese, Sweet Potatoand Basil)

I can't believe another month has rolled around, and I'm also quite glad that Rachael from Pizzarossa chose a challenge that had a bit of flexibility about it and got me excited. Part of the excitement was because Joy the Baker advised me that grits and polenta were basically different grades of the same product, and so recipes for a product that is largely unavailable in Australia suddenly opened up to me! Sure, the texture of polenta is smoother, but they're roughly interchangable and so a whole world of cooking has opened up for me. YAAAAAAYYYY!!! *does happy dance*

Rachael of pizzarossa was our August 2012 Daring Cook hostess and she challenged us to broaden our knowledge of cornmeal! Rachael provided us with some amazing recipes and encouraged us to hunt down other cornmeal recipes that we’d never tried before – opening our eyes to literally 100s of cuisines and 1000s of new-to-us recipes!

I can't remember where I read about it, but I wanted to cook something like grits with blue cheese. I have never been a big fan of blue cheese, although since living in Adelaide and doing a few of those cheese-and-wine trails I have been exposed to fairly tolerable variations on the theme, like a nice, mild Roqueforte (I don't know if I spelled that correctly) rather than that manky, powdery blue stuff. Ugh.

So when my friend Mary introduced me to the most excellent combination of gnocchi with roasted pumpkin and basil leaves wilted in browning butter, with chunks of blue cheese stirred about until all nice and melty and creamy, well, I was pretty darned happy. And relieved. Because blue cheese isn't so bad after all. I can't ever see myself gobbling down that stinky stuff like my mum does, but that bite is quite passable in cooking.

Fast forward a couple of months, and I'm making the polenta equivalent of Mary's dish within a day of reading about the challenge, using what we already had in the fridge. I was just so excited!!!

I should have written down what I put in, shouldn't I... oh well, I'll give it a go!

1 small sweet potato, in 1/2-1" cubes

1tbsp dijon mustard

2tbsp olive oil

Salt and pepper

1/2c polenta

1c cold water

1c hot water + extra

1 rounded tsp chicken stock powder

1/2c milk

20g butter + extra

40g blue cheese + extra

Squeezy basil stuff (or I'm sure torn fresh basil would be nice, too)

Mix mustard and olive oil together until homogenous. Toss sweet potato in it and roast at 190oC for about 25 minutes then flip the sweet potato around and turn it up to about 210oC until a little browner and soft enough to eat (about another 10 minutes but your oven may differ). Ideally I would have used pumpkin as it's sweeter, but this had to do. I wanted to make this dish NOW!!!

Put polenta in medium-ish saucepan (maybe on the large side of medium. I don't know what the official ruling on saucepan size is!) and add 1c water. Stir around then turn on the heat. Boil the kettle, measure out another cup of water and add the stock powder. Stir around and bring to boil. You'll have to really watch it when it comes to the boil because it pops like lava bubbles!

I think at this stage I added the milk and was taste testing it fairly often so I could tell when it was cooked (it will become smoother). It took less than ten minutes from the boil, probably less than eight but I wasn't timing it as I placed priority on not being splattered by hot polenta.

Once it reached the cooked stage I turned off the heat, stirred through some squeeze basil and some butter and cheese. I kept adding those two until I got the desired consistency and flavour.

Mine turned out quite soft and quite wet, but that's how I like it. If you don't want it as wet then maybe reduce the amount of water you add. You could eat it alone or as a side dish - I served it with some left over casserole, which was nice.

Thank you Rachael for a great challenge!

The Daring Kitchen: Flipping Fried Patties! (Zucchini, Carrot, Chick Pea and Sweet Potato Fritters)

I was ever so pleased when I discovered that this month's Daring Cooks challenge was to make fritters. The last few have been quite, well, challenging. I know that's the whole point - to extend yourself and add to your culinary skills - but once in a while it's nice to have something quick and simple that you can do some serious improv on with what is on hand rather than having to dedicate four hours of your already-busy weekend to locating ingredients and preparing and cooking something quite complex.

Don't get me wrong - I do like to learn new things and make impressive dishes, but this month's challenge is more my style of cooking, and I generally leave the fancy stuff to the realms of baked goods. Like the time I made Sweetapolita's Ruffle Cake. I think I also enjoyed the fact that I didn't feel like I needed to read every single word on the information sheet in order to successfully complete the recipe, or freak the heck out about doing somethign wrong. Which I think means I will always be placed squarely in the "cook" corner, and not the "chef" one!

The Daring Cooks’ February 2012 challenge was hosted by Audax & Lis and they chose to present Patties for their ease of construction, ingredients and deliciousness! We were given several recipes, and learned the different types of binders and cooking methods to produce our own tasty patties!

I'm on a bit of a health kick at present so I wanted to make something full of vegies but also not light on flavour. Audax and Lisa provided a list of common binders for patties, and I decided to go with sweet potato as well as some blended-up chick peas.

I spent a week or so thinking about what to put in these. Not non-stop, obviously (although, given how often I think about food it wouldn't be entirely surprising if that had been the case!), but there was a certain flavour I was going for - there's this Indian stall at the St Andrews Market (a hippie craft/farmer's/trash n treasure market near where I live in Melbourne) that makes these wraps that have this sort of roasted vegetable fritter type thing, wrapped up in Roti and served with chutney and salad. I thought I'd give the Roti a miss (only cos I was cooking for myself and mum, and mum wouldn't be able to eat them because of the gluten, which would leave me to eat an entire packet of Roti... which, let's face it, would be delicious, but not really in line with my current health kick!).

The ingredients are probably fairly flexible - as I'm sure all the other Daring COoks discovered, making patties/fritters is definitely one of those add stuff "until it looks right" propositions!

1 small-medium sweet potato, peeled and steamed/boiled until soft

1 can (400g-ish) chick peas, drained

2 medium zucchinis, grated, liquid squeezed out to within an inch of its life

1 medium carrot, grated, liquid squeezed out

1/2 medium brown onion, grated, liquid squeezed out (that'll test ya! Or, see below note on blending)

2 cloves garlic, you guessed it, grated!

1 egg

Sweet paprika (I added about a tablespoon but add to taste)

Moroccan seasoning (I never do spell that correctly... I used about a teaspooon, but again, to taste)

Blend steamed sweet potato, chickpeas and egg (and if you were too scared to grate the onion and okay with your patties being sloppy, blend that too) in a food processor until it forms a smooth paste.

Add it to the grated vegetables and smoosh about with your hand until combined and the different vegetables are evenly distributed. Add spices and continue to smoosh mixture until well mixed.

Divide into six to eight balls.

Heat olive oil in frypan (I used a cast iron one) and place half the patties in the pan. Squash them so they are about 2cm thick. Fry until browned then flip. Continue cooking until the second side is cooked. Repeat with the other half of the raw patties.

Serve with a garden salad and mango chutney such as my BFF Kirsti made me for Christmas.

Tastes good cold, too! Which is just as well, because now that I can't drive for six months (no, I didn't lose my licence! It's a medical exclusion) and therefore have to catch the bus to Barham on Sunday nights, I have to eat dinner on the bus (without the driver noticing - no food allowed on the bus!). The good thing about catching the bus is that I have plenty of time to blog on my way up. Which makes me feel a little queasy after a while, but I'm beginning to think that's more to do with needing glasses... and now I'm rambling... so, ENJOY!