Floor Salmon and Mom's Ratatouille

Having a great story behind a recipe makes a difference for me. When I cook it reminds me of my family and great times we've shared. These recipes remind me of my grandparents, which always makes me smile.

Floor Salmon

This recipe comes from my amazing grandparents! My grandparents are the real reason that my family loves food as much as we do. They are two of the most amazing Cajun chefs around today. Their passion in the kitchen is what inspired my mother and her sisters. Who in turned shared their passion with my generation.

To set the scene for this story, my grandparents have a beautiful home on the bayou in Southern Louisiana. Much like my husband and myself, my grandfather mans the grill and my grandmother rules the kitchen. The first time my grandparents made this recipe, my grandfather accidently dropped the salmon on the floor on his way to the grill, rather than call it a day it was rinsed off, re-seasoned and cooked. It turned out to be one of the best salmon recipes he ever made! It is so yummy that it has been made many times since, excluding the trip to the floor of course, but the name has stuck with it!

To make floor salmon, start with a nice raw salmon filet, whatever size you need for the number you are cooking for. Mine was just over three quarters of a pound and I planned it to be lunch for two days. For a dinner portion, you might want a half pound serving per person. The first step is to soak the salmon in milk for at least a couple hours. On a scientific level, I have no idea what this does to the salmon, but it is worth trying! I rinsed the salmon off and seasoned with salt and pepper. That's it!

Now, my grandfather put this on the grill, skin side down. I chose to roast this in the oven at 375F. Keep an eye on it not to overcook it, you don't want it dry. It felt a little undercooked to the touch when I pulled it out, but as it cooled it was perfect, so don't be afraid.

This is the yummiest salmon I've ever made. It tastes so buttery and rich and not at all fishy. I don't know how soaking it in the milk makes it so decadent, but it works!  This salmon is also really yummy leftover on a salad!

Mom’s Ratatouille

Solomon named this recipe for me.  I love Disney movies, and have raised my boys with them.  When Ratatouille came out, it became an instant hit in our house.  My boys began experimenting with different flavors and really got excited about the kitchen.  The best part about ratatouille, the dish, is that it is all veggies, it is fresh, and tastes AMAZING.  Until this movie, my boys were very hesitant to give this dish a try, thanks to Disney it has become a favorite of theirs.

For this recipe, I decided to shake things up a bit.  Traditionally Ratatouille is a veggie stew.  I was in an oven roasting mood yesterday, so I decided to give it a go.  I love the flavor that roasting veggies in the oven have.  They become more intense and a little caramelized.  I used an eggplant, zucchini, summer squash, peppers, tomatoes and red onions.  Using my mandolin (cooking utensil, not the musical instrument), I evenly sliced my veggies.  If you don’t’ have one, a knife works as well, just be careful about the evenness of your slices.  The more uniform the cut, the more evenly they cook.  If you use a mandolin, be very careful with your fingers.  At this point mine is off limits to the kids.

I seasoned the veggies with salt and pepper and lightly drizzled them with grape seed oil.  Then I roasted them at 375, until they looked good.  If you like them crunchy, leave them in for less time, if you want them softer leave them in longer.  I tried them a few times, until they were the consistency I was going for.  When I pulled them out I sprinkled a little red wine vinegar on them.  I highly advise not skipping the vinegar, maybe a tablespoon for the entire dish!

The first time I made Ratatouille for the boys, we watched the movie as we ate it, and they had no idea what veggies they were eating because they were caught up in the excitement of eating the food the movie was named after.  Now they love these veggies regardless!  Best part of all is a cup of Ratatouille is only 40 calories!  I serve it with pasta or rice to help my boys with hallow legs fill up, but I find I don’t need it!  A bowl of this and I am good to go!

PB&J Thumbprint Cookies

I found this recipe for gluten free peanut butter cookies and I had to give it a try.  With all the jam I have on hand, I thought how much fun it would be to make a PB&J cookie.  The boys loved it!  I can’t wait to make these at Christmas when Fallon is back with us!

The ingredients are:

1 cup Creamy Peanut Butter
1 teaspoon baking soda
¾ cup sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
¼ cup jam

Mix the sugar, vanilla, baking soda and egg with an electric until light and creamy.  Then mix the peanut butter.  The original recipe said to scoop teaspoon sized ball for each cookie.  I made a double recipe and made my cookies with a small scoop, closer to a tablespoon so I could make thumbprint cookies.  I pressed down the middle and filled with half a teaspoon of jam.  I baked the cookies for about 18 minutes at 350 and they turned out AMAZING.  I would love to make the smaller peanut butter cookies in the future to see if they have more of a cookie texture.  Mine tasted very PB&J with a fudge like texture.  I can't wait to make these again, as traditional peanut butter cookies and sprinkle them with a little sugar! Yummy!!

 

Divide and Conquer

Last night was all about divide and conquer when it came to cooking dinner.  Ric was itching to put meat to fire, so I naturally had to come up with some yummy side dishes.  I love these meals when we work together like this!  My only disappointment was that he didn’t make any ribs.  There is always next time!

Ric specifically asked for potato salad, and I know that Solly loves macaroni salad, so I decided on these two.  Last night was also one of those nights that I was not in the mood to be in the kitchen all night both cooking and cleaning, so I opted for a few short cuts.  Please feel free to take them or leave them at your discretion when trying these ideas out.

For the pasta salad, I used the elbow pasta again.  As I was making this for Solly, I went with his favorite.  This recipe couldn’t be much easier.  While the pasta was boiling I chopped all the veggies, for both salads.  For the pasta salad I had sugar snap peas and carrots.  I like to keep the veggies about the same size as the pasta or a little smaller.  (I normally also cut up hard-boiled eggs for this salad, but last night I forgot to add them!).  For the potato salad I used pre-cooked bacon (huge time saver!!!) and green onions.  After I chopped the bacon I microwaved it on a paper towel for thirty seconds to crisp it up.

After the pasta was cooked, I tossed it with ice cubes to cool it down quickly.  If you have time to wait, that works too.  If you wait, make sure and add a little oil so it doesn’t stick together.  The ice melting was all I needed to keep my pasta from sticking.  I then stirred in the veggies and mayo (or spread/dressing of choice).  Check if for salt and pepper and this salad is ready to serve.

For the potato salad, I opted for the cute little assorted potatoes.  One, I think they make a beautiful and colorful salad.  Two, they are so small they cook in a fraction of the time!!!  Once they were cooked through I cut them in half.  I made a quick vinaigrette with red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, and grape seed oil.  I added my bacon and green onions to the vinaigrette then poured it over the potatoes.  Make sure and taste this, mine needed a LOT more salt.  Under-salted potatoes can kill this dish.

About the time I was salting my potato salad; my amazing husband came in with the meat from the grill.  When it comes to meat on fire, he has a serious gift!  I had wanted to stick to my shake I had planned, but just couldn’t with as amazing as his BBQ smelled.  And it was worth every bite!  I am one lucky woman!

Hidden Veggie Mac and Cheese

Last night the hubs and I had our smoothie again.  It was even better than the night before!  However, there was no way my boys were going to let me get away with a smoothie for dinner, so we had to do something for them.  

They were both eager to hang out and help, and I was thrilled to get to spend time with them.  Ordinarily they would have preferred to be up watching TV or video games, enjoying the last few days of summer freedom, before school starts and weekday electronics come to a screeching halt.  I didn’t have the heart to ask if they had done something to get kicked off the electronics, I just enjoyed it!

Pasta is always a safe bet when it comes to my two, I try to reserve the boxes and jars for when we are pressed for time.  As I was trying to stretch out the time my boys were spending with me, I opted for a slightly more time consuming option.  There are a couple points where little changes could have saved time and I will make sure to point them out.

We decided on elbow pasta, as the boys wanted to make mac and cheese.  Solly is pretty particular when it comes to his food, and this is the only shape pasta I can get him to each homemade mac and cheese.  Jonah doesn’t care, as long as it is at least half-way edible, so it all worked out.  You could also use whole wheat or gluten-free pasta options.  I happened to have run of the mill elbows on hand, so that’s what I used.  I also had some leftover tomatoes and asparagus from Sunday’s salad, so we decided to throw them in as well.  For the veggies we tried to make them a similar size to the pasta.  I love the color and freshness they added.

While the pasta cooked, I had the boys help me with shredding cheese, removing the seeds from the tomatoes and making the béchamel sauce for our cheese sauce.  To save time here, you could easily buy the shredded cheese and it works perfect.  My boys love helping out, wand grating cheese is one of those tasks that I can let them do without too much supervision.  I do have to share a Solly quote though, “Mom, I’m going so fast that cheese is flying!”.  Not quite the result I was looking for, but he had a blast! 

For the béchamel sauce, this is one of my all-time favorite base sauces.  It is so easy to make and can be used for almost anything!  I also made this sauce in my leftovers reinvented casserole.   The ingredients are butter, flour and milk.  It’s that simple.  Traditionally you make it on the stove and have to stir pretty constantly so it doesn’t burn.  I’ve learned that making in the microwave is so much easier and lower maintenance.  It is very rare that I suggest using a microwave, but this is one that I am hooked on.  I combine the butter and flour, equal parts, and microwave, stirring every 30 seconds.  After it has had time to get very bubbly, the flour will be cooked enough.  Now it’s time to add the milk.  Stir in your milk until there are no lumps.  Now back in the microwave.  Last night it took two one minute turns, stirring between, for the sauce to be perfect.  If your sauce is too thick, add a little milk and stir until there are no lumps.  Again, to make this gluten-free all you have to do is replace the butter and flour with cornstarch.  Just make sure to add the cornstarch to cold milk.  If you add it to hot liquid you will get a clumpy mess.

We added the grated cheese to the sauce.  For this I left the sauce in the container I used to microwave it, and didn’t need any additional heat to melt the cheese.  I find that when I melt the cheese in the sauce over a burner my cheese burns really quickly or my sauce separates.  So far, this approach to my cheese sauce has never failed me.  After adding the cheese, I check for salt and pepper.  If you salt before the cheese, there is a risk that your dish will end up too salty.  I also added a little cumin to the cheese sauce.  I’ve also used ground nutmeg and ground mustard in the past.

I combined the cheese sauce, hot drained pasta and asparagus together.  I added the asparagus first to have them heat through.  I added the tomatoes just before I served it.  We love crunch veggies, so I didn’t want to give them time to cook and change texture.  This was a HUGE hit last night.  After I made it Jonah had polished off a bowl and was on seconds before I had finished making Ric and my shakes for dinner.  Dinner success!

Orange Smoothie

Today's post is short and sweet!  Last night my husband and I were in the mood for very light and refreshing.  So I decided on a very simple smoothie.  It was a little thin for a smoothie, but that was exactly what we were craving.  The best part is that this is the easiest thing to make and I dirtied very few dishes in the process!

For this recipe I used one cup of plain greek yogurt, one cup of orange juice, one tablespoon of honey and one cup of ice.  And that makes two servings!  I blended the ingredients together and my blender showed that it was exactly 32 ounces.  For me a 16 ounce shake had only 245 calories.  Which is a large snack, but pretty small dinner.  My husband on the other hand wanted the full 32 ounces, so I added another half recipe and finished blending.  This is not too sweet, but very crisp.  If it isn't sweet enough for you, you can always add a little more honey.  It is also naturally gluten free!

This recipe is also very easy to play with and make your own!  You could use any combination of juices.  For example, tonight I'm planning to try orange pineapple.  You could also use any yogurt, and make this vegan if that floats your boat. 

Series Idea

One of my lovely coworkers just discovered I cook and gave me some amazing ideas. I've been very flattered with the number of views that I've received in such a short period of time. For this idea, I would really need some feedback though.

She was telling me different areas of cooking that can easily be overwhelming:

· Knowing the different ingredients and how to treat them

· Different cooking techniques

· Understanding recipes

These are a few that I think could potentially be really fun to start tackling. Would anyone be interested in me taking an ingredient each week or cooking technique and posting different ideas and recipes. I could use pictures and videos to demonstrate new ways of utilizing different ingredients.

I am not claiming to have all the answers here and it could well be that I have a post or two of mistakes I've made that should be avoided. But hopefully we can all become more adventurous in the kitchen through this exercise. I promise to be very honest with all results!

I was thinking I would start with having a once a week post showcasing the selected ingredient or technique. If you would be interested, please comment on this post and let me know something you would like to learn more about. If there is enough interest, I will use your ideas for this project. That way it will be as relevant as possible.

All About Salads!

Today I had two goals, to make my lunch for the week and to be able to calculate the nutrition on my meal.  Now that Fallon has gone back to New York, I don’t have to worry about cooking with gluten accidentally contaminating her food, I finally gave into a craving and the results are as follows.  I decided to go with two different salads for this week, and I picked up some greens to serve them over.  I have to admit, both of these recipes have been inspired by food I have seen or tasted recently.

Whole Grain Salad

This is partially inspired by a quinoa dish I had at a favorite Asian restaurant of mine and the aforementioned salad.  I cooked Bulgur, Quinoa, and Barley.  The barley by far took the longest to cook.  In cooking these, I just followed the directions on the packaging.

I then diced the rest of the ingredients into bite size pieces: mango, tomatoes (removed the seeds), sugar snap peas, zucchini, summer squash, asparagus, and lime juice.  For a salad, I like having everything bite size.  A trick to the asparagus is to remove the fiberous ends as they really are too tough to eat.  I bend one asparagus until it breaks, and I use it as a guide to know where to cut the ends off the remaining asparagus.

As I cooked each grain, I tossed the zucchini, squash, and asparagus with the grains while they were warm.  Ric and I love our veggies to have a crunch, but I didn’t want these to be completely raw.  I found the residual heat from the grains gave us the perfect result.  I also sprinkled a little lime juice on the hot grains so they would absorb it.

Once I had finished cooking all of the grains and my mixture had cooled, I stirred in the rest of my fruit and veggies.  The most time consuming part of this dish was waiting for the different grains to cook.  Then it was simply combine and stir!  I love easy dishes!  This recipe was HUGE.  When I made it, it made 13 cups.  I’m counting a cup as a serving which has 136 calories and 1g of fat!

 Green Chicken Salad

 

A friend of mine at work made this salad and I couldn’t help myself.  I of course made a few tweaks to this, but the foundation is the same: making a mayo free, yet incredibly creamy, chicken salad.  The key to this recipe’s success is the avocado.  But we will get to that in a minute.

Today the chicken thighs were on sale again, so I went with chicken thighs.  If you prefer white meat, then the nutrition information will be a little lower than mine, but even with the dark meat, I’m pretty happy with the result.  I made a quick spice rub and roasted my chicken thighs in the oven at 350 until they were cooked through.  At the very least I would salt and pepper both sides of your chicken.  It really makes a difference in the flavor of the chicken. 

My husband is all about no waste.  So I have a few tricks with the chicken that never fail to impress him.  After the chicken was fully cooked, I pulled it out and let it rest until it was cool enough to handle.  Then I pulled off the skins and deboned the chicken.  I froze the skin and bones and will use them when I’ve collected enough to make a yummy chicken broth.  I will use raw, rotisserie, or roasted skin and bones.  I don’t like the result from chicken that has been smoked or on a grill.  I also reserved the rendered chicken fat.  I don’t use this in my everyday cooking, but I do have a few recipes I’ll share in the future, for special occasions, that using the chicken fat really makes a huge difference.  I also save the ends of the asparagus in the freezer.  These are too fiborous to include in the salad, but they are really yummy in a future broth or soup. 

While waiting on the chicken I chopped the red onions.  I like them pretty fine for this dish, I then let them sit in ¼ cup Champaign vinegar while I chopped the other veggies.  I love what the vinegar does to the onions, but I didn’t want it to be in my salad, so I strained the onions after about 20 minutes and before I added anything else to it. 

To the pickled red onions I added the cilantro, green onions, lime juice and avocado.  I used a potato masher to combine.  I wanted most of the avocado to make a creamy sauce, but I tried to leave a few little avocado chunks.  What is really awesome about this mixture is how creamy yet refreshing it is.  The lime juice really played off the fatty avocado and the cilantro just brightened it up.

As if this all wasn’t enough, I decided I wanted a crunch in my salad and had my heart set on jicama.  I have been pretty intimidated by the jicama in the past, but I tried it at work in a salad and decided that it was worth conquering my fear.  I cut the jicama and chicken to about the same size pieces and combined everything together. 

Now this recipe made 7 ½ cups of salad.  Each cup only has 228 calories!  This is one of those recipes that has helped my dear husband to eat his words on an ingredient that he told me he didn’t like.  When we met, he said that he hated avocado because vegetables and fruit need to have texture.  In this salad, the crunch from the jicama gave him the crunch he was looking for, and he LOVED it!

 My plan for this week is to serve a cup of each salad on a bed of baby greens.  I hadn’t seen these before, so I figured I’d give them a try.  The total calories for this entire meal is 370.4 with 14g of fat (only 1.9 of which are saturated) and 11g of fiber!  

I was so proud of myself for keeping up with exactly what I was putting into each of these dishes, that I decided to take it one step further.  The total food cost of this meal is $3.27!  Not too shabby for a healthy power lunch that I have no doubt will keep me satisfied!

Enjoying Summer Fruit!

My family really enjoyed all the beautiful fresh fruit this summer.  I was amazed each time I went to the supermarket and saw the beautiful fruit on sale.  I finally couldn’t take it any longer and had to do something about it.  The following escapades are the result.  Please be warned, the follow fruit recipes were made over the course of a couple weeks.

The first thing I decided I had to make was plum jam.  When I was growing up, my Mom, sister and I went to visit one of my Mom’s friends in Northern France.  The day we arrived, they had set up a snack and had different jams out.  They offered us prune jam, and after we all cringed, we didn’t have the guts to try it.  The next morning, my mom pulled out her French-English dictionary and we realized that prune was French for plum, and it turned out to be some of the most amazing jam we had ever tasted!  To this day, I cannot see plum jam without the memory coming to mind.  As the plums were beautiful and very much on sale, so I couldn’t help myself. 

My favorite way to cook is to google and see what other people are doing, to give me ideas, then I combine different ideas to make my own; I very rarely follow a recipe exactly.  I found a recipe for a plum jam that didn’t require pectin and looked pretty easy.  Two days later I had what I called plum butter, but no preserves or jam.  So rather than give up at this point, I decided to come up with a way to use this new plum butter, and as the plums were still on sale I decided to try again at making preserves.

Plum Tart!

Fallon and I decided to make a gluten free plum tart.  This was very easy and absolutely amazing!  We started by making a gluten free crust.  We used half gluten free all purpose and half almond flour.  I LOVE almond flour.  It is by far the most amazing ingredient on the planet when making deserts.  It adds an incredible nuttiness and texture.  I used half butter and half shortening to make this pastry and a couple tablespoons of sugar and pinch of salt, we then added enough water that it was still a little crumbly.  This could be substituted with any pie crust recipe you like.  The nice part about using the gluten free flours here is that it always turns out flaky and light, because there is no gluten to develop and make it tough!

 We baked the crust at 350, I don’t remember how long, but we didn’t let it start to brown.  Since we were going to bake it again, we just wanted the crust to have a head start.  After pulling it out of the oven, we topped it with the plum butter.  Then we put on fresh plum slices in a pretty design.  We topped it off with a light dusting of sugar and it went back in the oven.  We let it bake until it was beautiful and a little caramelized.

 This is one of those treats that you have no idea has no gluten.  It is the perfect summer treat.  It was delicious warm out of the oven and cool leftover the next day.

 

Jam Obsession!

Now when I say obsession, I mean obsessive in the most serious sense possible.  I used to love canning with my Mom when I was younger, so this started out as a trip down memory lane.  It then moved into bliss watching my children work together as my sister and I had.  Finally I moved into the stage of what have I gotten myself into???  I’m still blaming that day in Northern France and the plum preserves.

I really couldn’t say exactly how each batch was made.  I know that I used fresh fruit, pectin, sugar, pear juice, water, and my personal time and love.  Preserves work best when made in small batches, so each batch made at the most 15-18 cups of preserves. 

Each batch began with cooking the fruit, sugar, and juice/water.  Once the fruit had cooked down to the consistency I wanted, I added the pectin.  I read that if you cook the pectin too long, it will break down and you will end up with runny preserves.  So I tried to minimize the cook time with the pectin.  To make sure I had the consistency I wanted, I used a cold spoon to bring a little drop of the preserves to room temp to see how thick it was.  If I needed it thicker, I could then add more pectin before canning.  I never ran into the issue of it being too thick, but if I had, I would have added a little more juice. 

 I personally love having the fruit flesh and skin in homemade preserves, so I left them in.  You can absolutely strain them out if you prefer.  During my preserve making I learned the difference between preserves, jam and jelly!  Jelly has no flesh, skins or seeds, and is made from juice and pectin.  Jam has some flesh and skin, but still has a jelly texture.  Preserves are primarily fruit and can be a little runnier when at room temp.  I love the fruit chunks, so I chose to make preserves.

The most important thing to keep in mind when you plan to actually can your preserves is sanitation!  If you don’t get your jars clean and then sterilize after you have added the jam, your beautiful creation will go bad on your shelf.  I also found out that homemade preserves/jam last up to 12 months on the shelf, but are their best in the first six months.  So make sure and put the date you canned them on the jars so you don’t have to remember in a few months what you had done.

We washed the jars and lids prior to filling them with the jams.  We then kept the jars and lids in boiling water before we filled them, just to be safe.  After we filled the jars we wiped off the top of the jars with a wet paper towel to make sure no jam would prevent the lids from sealing.  Based on where I live, I found recipes that said to boil the filled jars for 5-10 minutes to seal them.  I decided to err on the side of caution and go for 10.  Better safe than sorry when cooking for my family!  This time really does depend on a lot of variables and I am pretty close to sea level.  So I can’t stress enough how important it is to check.

 

After we boiled the jars we set them upside-down over night to seal.  The next day we turned them right side up and check to see if the lids had sealed.  You know your lid sealed if when you push the center it doesn’t pop back up.  We lucked out and didn’t have to reseal any of our jars.  If any of your jars didn’t seal, all you have to do is make sure there isn’t any food at the seal, preventing it from properly sealing and boil the jar again.  You could also opt to just put the jar in your fridge and enjoy right away!

As you can see from some of my pictures I went a little crazy with my jam making.  As a result I have forbid myself from any more canning.  That is until apples are in season and I can make my apple butter again!  I had such a good time there is no way I could swear off canning for too long!  I had such a good time with my kiddos during our canning and I hope they continue to make beautiful memories together.  Good food and a strong family!  For me, it doesn’t get any better than this!