Curse-Free Salmon

This past week was my mother-in-law's 80th birthday, and we wanted to make a special meal for her.  She mentioned a few weeks ago that salmon was her favorite.  Great!  We planned to have salmon, fettuccine Alfredo, and a lovely Caesar salad.

Now for the tough part - we were going to have fourteen people for dinner.  A few filets or steaks are easy to cook in a pan, but we needed a lot of fish.  Grilling - that's never worked out for us.  Usually a few curses are spoken...or yelled.  I need a way to cook a lot of fish with a minimum of crankiness.  According to several sources, you should plan on about six ounces per person.  That's about five and a half pounds.  I bought two big sides of salmon, and then started to stress about how to cook them.

After searching through my cookbooks and several internet recipe sites, I came up with what I hoped would work.  There was no time to practice (and who wants to practice with $40 of fish?!?).  So I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.

Last night was the dinner.  It was delicious!  And SOOOOO easy!!!!  I hope you enjoy the salmon!

This recipe will be easier with a thermometer, but you can do it without.
Lemons, sliced
Parsley
Shallots, sliced
Side of salmon (mine were about 3 lbs each)
Butter
Salt and pepper
Foil

Heat the oven to 425F.  Lay out two really big pieces of foil long enough to wrap around the fish and crimp tightly.  Butter the bottom of the foil and lay out the salmon.  You can tuck under the end of the filet (you know - that skinny part that will probably overcook otherwise).  Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and lay out some slices of lemon and shallots, along with a few sprigs of parsley.  Crimp the foil closed, and then wrap it up with the other piece of foil - just to be sure nothing leaks out.  Carefully slide the packets into the oven (you do NOT want to rip the bottoms!!).

Cook for about 20-30 minutes, depending on the size of the fish and your oven.  Poke through the foil into the fish with your thermometer.  You're looking for about 135F.  If you don't have a thermometer, you can check to see if it's done by seeing if it flakes with a fork.  Don't unwrap it yet!!  Keep it closed up for about five minutes just to let the fish come up to its proper temp (which ends up being around 140F-145F) and to let the juices redistribute (like you would a steak or a turkey).

Open and serve to many "oohs" and "aahs".

Green Beans

We are so sick of green beans.  I am picking two pounds every two days.  My kids are tired of steamed green beans with butter.  It's simple, but we've eaten it too many times for any of us to care anymore.  I decided to look around for something new - and I found it, but it's not new, it's sort of a combination of two different vegetable cooking methods I use.

Green Beans with Crouton Crunch

1-2 cups of croutons (depends on how much crunch you want!)
Onion, chopped
Beans (about a pound, ends snapped off, or cut into pieces - your call)
Butter
Chicken stock or water (about a cup - maybe more)

Crunch up the croutons in a big zip-top bag until they're bread crumb size.  You could use bread crumbs, but they're not as crunchy.  Melt a tablespoon or two of butter in a big skillet.  When it's melted, add the crunched-up croutons and stir constantly until the butter is soaked in and the crumbs are slightly browned.  Put the crumbs in a bowl and wipe out the skillet.  Melt another tablespoon or two of butter in the pan over medium heat, and when it's melted, add the onion and sweat the onion until it starts to turn a little brown.  Add the beans, saute a little bit, until they start to brown.  Add a cup of stock or water, bring to a simmer, then cover and cook until the beans are just about done.  Took me about 5 minutes.  Remove the lid, and let the liquid cook off.  When the pan is just about dry, sprinkle the buttery crumbs over the top and serve.

Simple and yummy!  Although, I think I'll still have to can some beans to keep up with the overflow!!

Pickles

Yowza, I haven't blogged in a while.  So very sorry about that.  Not like I haven't been cooking or anything.  My family would have a fit if I wasn't!

This summer, my garden overfloweth with cucumbers.  Of course, I now am having a cucumber beetle infestation, but that's okay.  We have been picking 10-15 cukes a DAY.  What do I do with them?  Glad you asked!!

I found a "Claussen Kosher Pickle" copycat recipe online and tweaked it just a bit.  These are very garlicky and pretty salty, but we love them.  If you're more a Vlasic fan, you probably won't like these as much.

These are the seven jars I made
a few days ago...and a couple
jars of leftover brine ready to go!

Cucumbers (of course!)
Sliced onions (1/2 an onion or so??)
One head of garlic, separated into cloves and peeled
1 Tbsp mustard seeds (not powdered mustard or mustard you find in the condiment aisle!)
1 bunch of fresh dill (very flexible - just split what you have between your jars)
1 1/2 quarts ice water (that's six cups)
2 cups cider vinegar
1/2 cup salt (I usually use kosher, but this year I used canning salt and used a little more than 1/3 cup)
jars (I like wide-mouth quart size, but you can use whatever you want)

Bring cider vinegar and salt to a boil.  This stinks.  Put on a fan and do not put your nose over it.  Whew!!  While it's coming to a boil, clean your jars (I just wash them) and prepare your cucumbers.  I clean them, slice off the ends, then cut them in half length-wise, then in half again, then half again (so...eighths, right?? I hate public math!).

Stuff the jars very tightly with cucumbers, a few slices onions, and a handful of dill, up to the top, leaving some room for the brine to flow around the cukes.

When the vinegar boils and the salt has dissolved, remove from heat, add the garlic and mustard seeds, stir, then add the ice water.  The original recipe had you boil the water with the vinegar, and pour the resulting brine over the cucumbers, but I found that made the pickles soft.  I like crispy pickles, so I changed it up.

Pour the brine into the jars over the cukes.  Make sure you get a few cloves of garlic and some mustard seeds (usually around a teaspoon) in each jar.  Fill right up to the top, put a lid on it and let it sit on the counter for three days.  Label the top with a permanent marker so you don't forget!  THEN REFRIGERATE!!  They are still edible if you happen to forget, but I think they're much better after only three days.

Enjoy - and we eat the onions and garlic when we finish a jar.  They've become so deliciously pickle-y, even the kids eat 'em!

St. Patrick's Day

My great-grandparents came over from Ireland in the 1920s.  I remember very little about them:  their brogue (of which I was TERRIFIED because I couldn't understand them well!), the plastic cover on the sofa, a little bowl of candy, eating lunch there once, and oddly, I remember a little container they had full of half-dollars.  My great-grandfather died of a heart attack when I was six, but my great-grandmother died around Halloween the year I was sixteen.  She was 93!  By that point, I had learned to listen and understand her brogue.  She told me many stories, the most memorable being one night that she had TWO dates back-to-back!

Anyway, I figure I'm about half Irish.  When I lived in New England, it was easy to "remember" that....we'd go to St. Patrick's Day parades, to the local Irish club, and many people had Irish surnames and were proud of their heritage.  I find that harder to maintain outside Hungry Hill and New England.

We are sure to celebrate St. Patrick's Day here in Virginia, and one of the new things I've discovered is something called Irish Car Bomb cupcakes.  Completely inappropriate name, by the way, especially considering I'm Protestant and most of my Irish family is Catholic, but that's neither here nor there.

There are many recipes for these cupcakes online, all basically the same.  It's a chocolate stout cupcake, filled with an Irish whiskey ganache, frosted with an Irish creme buttercream.  Delicious, but very boozy.  I highly suggest a black cup of coffee.  Irish coffee would be just too much!

Here's the recipe, courtesy of Brown-Eyed Baker.

Makes 24 cupcakes

Cupcakes
1 cup stout (it doesn't matter what kind)
1 cup unsalted butter (I almost always use salted, and just reduce the salt a bit)
3/4 cup cocoa powder
2 1/2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
2/3 cup sour cream

Ganache filling
8 oz bittersweet chocolate (I've done it with chocolate chips, too)
2/3 cup heavy cream
2 Tbsp butter, room temperature
2 tsp Irish whiskey (just get a little nippy bottle...you'll be able to make a few batches with it)

Frosting
2 1/2 cups butter, room temperature
5 cups powdered sugar
6 Tbsp Irish cream (Baileys, of course, is the first choice)

Cupcake directions:

Heat oven to 350F.  Line 24 muffin cups with liners.  Melt butter in saucepan over medium heat.  Remove from heat and add stout and cocoa powder; whisk until smooth.  Cool slightly.

Whisk flour, sugar, baking soda and salt together in a large bowl.  Beat eggs and sour cream in mixer bowl until just combined.  Add stout mixture and beat to combine.  Reduce speed to low and add flour mixture, being sure to mix completely.  Gently stir with rubber spatula to be sure it's completely mixed.  Be gentle!  Divide evenly among the 24 cupcake liners.  Bake until a tester comes out clean - about 17 minutes.  Cool cupcakes completely on a rack.

Ganache directions:

Chop chocolate and transfer to heat-proof bowl.  Heat cream to just simmering and pour over chocolate.  Let sit for one minute, then stir with rubber spatula until smooth.  It'll take a few minutes, but it will come together.  Add butter and whiskey and stir until combined.  Set aside until cooled, but still soft enough to be piped.

To fill cupcakes, use a 1-inch round cookie cutter to cut the center out of the cupcakes, going about two-thirds of the way down.  If you don't have a little cookie cutter, use the big end of a decorating tip, or just a little paring knife.  Transfer ganache to a piping bag with large tip (or a zip-top bag with a bit cut off one corner).  Fill the holes up to the top.

Frosting directions:

Using the whisk attachment of a stand mixer, whip butter on medium-high for about five minutes, scraping the sides of the bowl as needed.  Reduce to medium-low and gradually add powdered sugar until fully incorporated.  Add Irish creme, beating until light and fluffy, about 2-3 minutes.

Frost cupcakes with your favorite decorating tip or an offset spatula.  I usually store mine in the fridge because of all the butter, but they don't last long, and the alcohol probably keeps everything fairly fresh.  Enjoy!