A Month-of-Mediterranean: Salmon on Asparagus

What could be heart-healthier, on this day of the heart, than another salmon recipe? There are so many preparation options, thank goodness, since this is the fish we eat most often. The sheet pan dinner makes clean-up easier for you and your sweetie, too.

Top the meal off with a dessert with a kick, Chocolate Chia Pudding.

Salmon on Asparagus (serves 2)

2 salmon steaks

2 small potatoes, cut in chunks

¼ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon garlic powder

1 pound of asparagus, woody ends trimmed off

4 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided

Sea salt

½ lemon

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Spray the pan with non-stick cooking spray.

Toss the potatoes with 2 teaspoons olive oil. Toss again with salt and garlic powder. Place on one end of baking sheet. Put in oven and bake for 20 minutes. Remove from oven.

Massage remaining olive oil onto asparagus spears and place on other end of baking sheet. Sprinkle with sea salt.

 

Place salmon steaks on top of asparagus and drizzle on lemon juice.

Put back in the oven and bake for another 10 minutes or until salmon flakes.

Salt and pepper to taste at table.

Yep, dessert is another one of those recipes that isn’t from the Mediterranean region but is consistent with Mediterranean Diet principles. Honey or maple syrup as sweeteners are acceptable in the Mediterranean Diet and are preferable to white sugar. 

Chia seeds are tiny black seeds from the plant Salvia hispanica, which is related to mint. Chia seeds were an important food for the Aztecs and Mayans back in the day. They prized them for their ability to provide sustainable energy. In fact, "chia" is the ancient Mayan word for "strength."

 

Chocolate Chia Seed Pudding (serves 2)

1 cup milk

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

2 tablespoons honey

1/3 cup chia seeds

2 strawberries

In medium bowl, mix milk with cocoa powder, and honey.

Blend thoroughly. Add chia seeds and blend well.

Refrigerate overnight (or at least 8 hours) in bowl or in individual serving dishes. If you want a smoother pudding, process in your blender until you get the texture you like.

Cut strawberries into fan shape and top the pudding before serving.

DH’s Rating: Fish—4 Tongues Up; Chocolate Chia Pudding—3 Tongues Up

“This was good, but kinda bland. I like your other salmon recipes more.” The pudding got a different response. “This was too bland, too. You know I don’t like chia pudding. Why do you keep serving it to me?” Uh, because you like chocolate, and because this is good for you. Next time I’ll put in cayenne pepper and cinnamon. I’ll bet he’ll like it then.

A Month-of-Mediterranean: Citrus Grilled Salmon with Spinach

We have not always been big fish eaters. DH grew up with fish on Fridays, and as his parents often went out on Fridays, he remembers, quite un-fondly, eating fish sticks. It took a while to convince him that we could go beyond fish sticks. So I make fish tacos with sea bass or halibut, cod fish casserole, the lovely sea bass dish in this series of posts, baked salmon on asparagus, and our all-time favorite Grilled Citrus Salmon on Spinach.

DH grills it perfectly, and it looks so pretty on the plate atop its bright green bed of spinach. The citrus flavor is subtle but distinctive. I often serve it with an herbed quinoa or rice pilaf. A simple but rather elegant meal.

Grilled Citrus Salmon on Spinach (serves 4-6)

4-6 salmon steaks, skin on

½ cup orange juice

1 tablespoon olive oil

4 tablespoons soy sauce

4 teaspoons minced ginger (fresh or Gourmet Garden)

1 tablespoon minced lemon grass (fresh or Gourmet Garden)

1 package baby spinach

Put orange juice, olive oil, soy sauce, ginger and lemon grass in a large zipper bag. Mush  around to mix it well.

Add salmon. Let marinate for 1-2 hours in the refrigerator, turning every half hour to coat all sides.

Remove salmon from the refrigerator. Discard marinade. Cook on a medium high grill, flesh side down, for 7 minutes.

Turn and finish cooking, skin-side down. Total cooking time is 10-20 minutes (depending on thickness). Check flakiness. It’s done when salmon easily flakes.

Steam the spinach to make a bed for the salmon and plate it up!

DH’S Rating: Five Tongues Up

This is the method of salmon cooking I use most often. It is one of our two favorite fish recipes. If I didn’t get so bored eating the same recipe so often, he’d ask for it once a week.

Month-of-One-Pan Meals: Recipe Starters

Welcome to my annual Month-of Recipes on this blog. Go rummaging in the attic here and you’ll find past recipe months for appetizers, chicken, soup, mini-desserts, and more. The way it works is, for each day in February I post a recipe that fits the category. This month is one-pan meals, excluding pizza, most casseroles, and slow cooker recipes.

One thing I love about one-pan/one-pot meals—beyond the clean-up, because, since DH does the cleaning, I don’t really care—is the time saved. We have played Crossword Scrabble Cubes before dinner for decades. With this meal prep method, I can pop dinner in the oven (or on the stove) and enjoy the game. Oh, yeah, once in a while I need to get up and add something to the pan, but mostly, one and done is the way it goes. We finish Cubes and get out the plates. I live a great life!

Sheet pan dinners follow some basic general principles. You select your protein and compatible vegetables and cook it all on one pan for the time it takes to cook the protein and the veggies. Usually, but not always, oil is involved. And sometimes, due to different cooking times, you need to add the veggies or protein separately.

Usually, you would also put down parchment paper or foil on the baking sheet. Helps clean up and also removal from pan to plate.

I added the first recipe (for baked tofu) but the remaining five dinners come from this site.

Baked Tofu (serves 4)

1 pound of extra-firm, silken tofu

¼ cup soy sauce

1 tablespoon brown sugar

2 teaspoons minced garlic

2 tablespoons sesame oil

2 teaspoons minced ginger

16 asparagus stalks

1 pound butternut squash, cubed

 

Put tofu between paper towels weighted with a dinner plate for 30 minutes to get out excess moisture before preparing the meal. Slice into 8 pieces.

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare baking sheet.

 

Mix marinade and put into zipper bag with vegetables. Toss to coat and remove from bag and set aside in a bowl. Put marinade in a bowl to brush on tofu.

 

Put tofu chunks on baking sheet, coating top and sides with marinade. Leave room to add vegetables later.

 

Bake for 30 minutes. Remove from oven. Turn over tofu chunks and brush with marinade. Arrange vegetables on the pan and return to oven for an additional 30 minutes. Serve immediately.

 

Now for some more easy pan dinners!

 

Salmon (serves 2)

Salmon “slab” for two drizzled with olive oil

4 Tomato slices sprinkled with parmesan, parsley, and panko

4 zucchini slices drizzled with olive oil

salt/pepper on all

Bake 12-15 minutes at 425 degrees

 

Pork Chops (serves 2)

2 pork chops brushed with Dijon mustard and herbs de provence (med cut)

parsnip slices drizzled with olive oil, with thyme, salt/pepper

apple slices with thyme and cinnamon

Bake 15-18 minutes at 425 degrees

 

Chicken Drumsticks (serves 2)

4 chicken legs brushed with Teriyaki glaze

broccoli drizzled with olive oil, salt/pepper

fingerling potatoes cut in half, olive oil?, salt/pepper

Bake 15 minutes at 425 degrees

 

Kielbasa with Sauerkraut (serves 2)

Kielbasa sliced on diagonal, big chunks

Sauerkraut on foil in middle

Fingerling potatoes drizzled with olive oil, salt/pepper

Bake 15-18 minutes at 425 degrees

 

Chicken Thighs (serves 4)

4 thighs brushed with BBQ sauce (or Asian orange sauce)

sweet potato slices, long ways, drizzled with olive oil, salt/pepper

Brussel sprouts, drizzled with olive oil, salt/pepper

Bake 20 minutes at 425 degrees

 DH's Tongue hanging out in anticipation!

Fishy Friday: Salmon Tacos

Welcome to my annual recipe crush. Each February I choose a theme, and provide one or two recipes each day for the whole month. This year the theme is Weekly Menu Planning. What are the categories, you ask? We have Sunday Special, Meatless Monday, Taco Tuesday, Worldly Wednesday, Thrifty Thursday, Fishy Friday, and Celebrate Saturday.

Fish Fry on Friday has been a restaurant thing for decades. We won’t be doing any fish fry recipes this month, but if you have a favorite beer-battered fish recipe, add it into your menu rotation. The point of the weekly planning is to make your life easier and to make meals your family looks forward to.

You can use any fish in tacos, of course, but leftover salmon does make for a tasty and elegant—almost—taco dinner. Salmon tacos are one of our monthly standard meals to use up the leftover salmon from a “Special Sunday” or “Celebrate Saturday” meal. We always grill more than needed for the meal so I can use the salmon in tacos or in quiche. There is always a zipper bag of grilled salmon in my freezer ready to thaw and use in a recipe.

Salmon Tacos (makes 6-8 tacos)

3 cups grilled salmon, chunked

1 cup picante sauce (or more if you want juicier fish)

1 lime

3 cups cole slaw salad veggies (we like carrots and red cabbage in ours)

3 tablespoons cole slaw dressing

6-8 corn tortillas

Warm salmon in skillet with picante sauce. Squeeze juice of one small lime over salmon and stir.

Mix cole slaw salad mix with dressing. Toss to coat.

Put one or two tortillas on each plate. Top with salmon and cole slaw. Roll up to eat soft taco.

For dinner serve with Mexicorn and black beans. Salmon tacos make a good lunch with fruit.

DH’s Rating: 5 Tongues Up

We got two things going here. He loves any southwest-y dish I make. It’s just in this desert rat’s psyche, right? But add in the great salmon I marinate and he grills, and, well, yummers. He always says, too, that he feel so healthy after eating salmon. And he’s right. Salmon is good for the physical and the emotional heart!

A Month-of-Few Ingredients: Salmon Tacos

At my house, the thinking is “cook once, eat it again and again in new ways”. That means fixing larger amounts than needed for one meal. You do it, too, I know. It’s smart. It’s economical for time. And it gives you a chance to flex that “creative cook gene” a bit.

One of our favorite ways to re-purpose (so much better than calling it leftovers, right?) is with grilled salmon. Sometimes it becomes part of my world-famous (okay, only locally-famous) quiche.

Another way to use the extra salmon DH grilled using my citrus marinade is in fish tacos. We sometimes use hard shells I make by baking them at 400 degrees for a few minutes nestled between the upside down cups of a muffin tin until they get hard. They’re not the even shape of store bought, but they’re fresher.

But most of the time, we eat the salmon tacos on soft flour or corn tortillas. Delicious either way. Here’s how I make my five-minute salmon tacos:

Salmon Tacos (serves 3-4)

2 large salmon filets, already grilled

¾ cup salsa

1 ½ cups coleslaw mix

2 tablespoons cole slaw dressing (sometimes I use poppyseed dressing)

Put coleslaw mix in a small bowl and toss with dressing. Set aside.

Put salsa into small skillet and heat. Break up salmon into small chunks and toss into the skillet.

Stir around until all pieces are coated and bubbly. Remove from heat.

Spoon salmon onto tortillas and top with coleslaw. Eat and enjoy!

As with most of our Southwest meals, I serve this with black beans and Mexicorn.

NOTE:

You can add cheese, tomatoes, or any other ingredient you put on tacos, but we like them like this. In this recipe, you could use salmon cooked another way, but we like the flavor that grilling adds to the salmon.

DH’s Rating: 5 Tongues Up  “I feel so virtuous when I have salmon tacos. My heart is so healthy.”  He talks like that sometimes.

If you liked this recipe, I’d really appreciate you spreading the word on your social media outlets. Here are some pre-made Twitter and Facebook posts you can use or modify.

Tweet: Salmon tacos are good for you, low-cal, and a healthful-fat way to eat dinner. See #recipes from @Good2Tweat at http://bit.ly/2lVd7WD

Facebook:  See Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time for a salmon taco recipe you can make in less than five minutes using cooked salmon. Check out Sharon Arthur Moore’s take on this healthful taco at http://bit.ly/2lVd7WD

Month-of-Few Ingredients: Have a Heart (Healthy) Dinner

Ah, that time of year again! Time for love and flowers and chocolate and sappy cards. Sigh. Do visions of cupid’s arrows dance in your head?

Okay, I did my bit to support America’s insane marketing of a holiday of which most of know little to nothing. If you’re curious for the real story, here’s a link to Saint Valentine on America’s encyclopedia, Wikileaks. Oops, sorry, Wikipedia.

I wish, instead of a focus on the ephemeral flowers and candy, we could celebrate instead the Martin Luther King, Jr. quote that is making the Internet rounds.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. 
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

If only Valentine’s Day were about love, and not just the trappings. But you didn’t come here for a treatise. You want food. And I got food!

And what did I pick for you? In honor of the color-of-the-month, red, we’re fixing salmon. Now it might look like Christmas because I almost always serve this salmon recipe on a bed of steamed spinach, but trust me. This is for a heart-healthy Valentine’s Day.

First, buy a couple of nice fresh salmon pieces for you and your sweetie. Then marinate the salmon for a couple of hours, turning several times to coat all sides. The juice is a citric acid, so there is some chemical cooking going on during marination. Don’t marinate too long or your fish will start to fall apart.

After grilling the salmon, I nestle it into a bed of steamed spinach. A side dish of quinoa and brown rice makes for a lovely meal.

Citrus Marinade for Salmon for Two

½ cup orange juice

1 minced garlic clove

1 tablespoon grated ginger (I like the ginger paste from Gourmet Garden)

1 tablespoon lemon grass (I like the lemon grass paste from the same folks)

3 tablespoons soy sauce

Discard sauce after marination and grill.

A healthful and light dinner like this one deserves an elegant dessert, right? And to keep with the red and healthful theme, let’s do Chocolate Covered Strawberries, the grown-up way. Boozy Chocolate Strawberries can be left as is, or they can be decorated to make them fancier. These strawberries are NOT to share with children. Here’s my version of the recipe. On the site, they suggest various alcohols to soak the berries in.

Sherried Chocolate Strawberries

6-8 strawberries, biggest you can find

2 cups cream sherry (I like Harvey’s Bristol Cream)

3 ½ ounces of the darkest chocolate you can find (at least 72%)

Rinse the strawberries and pat dry. Place in large bowl. Cover the berries with the cream sherry. Keep berries submerged.

Cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least 12 hours.

Drain the berries in a sieve. You can use the liquid as a part of a cocktail or toss.

Put the berries on a paper towel and blot dry so the chocolate will adhere. Let berries sit on a clean towel for at least five minutes.

While the berries are drying out, finely chop the chocolate and place in the top of a double boiler with hot water on a medium heat burner. Stir continually as the chocolate melts.

Line a baking tray with parchment paper. Holding the strawberry by the stem, dip each into the chocolate, about ¾ of the way. Swirl the berry to coat with chocolate. Hold over the chocolate pan to allow the excess to drip off. Place berry on the parchment paper and repeat the process.

You can drizzle melted white chocolate if you wish. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

DH’S Rating: 5 Tongues Up! Way Up! Him: “This salmon is always good.” Me: “You grill it so well.” Him: “We’re a good team.” Me: “What about dessert?” Him: “Just right.”

If you enjoyed these recipes, please share my blog site with others through your social media outlets. You can copy and use these blurbs or create your own. Thank you.

Twitter: Citrus Marinated Salmon #recipe from @Good2Tweat on Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time at http://bit.ly/2lEJGnr

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Facebook: There’s still time to make this salmon dinner for your sweetheart tonight. Check out the Citrus Marinade and Sherried Berries on Sharon Arthur Moore’s Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time blog at http://bit.ly/2lEJGnr

A reminder:

House rules for what counts as an ingredient:

Salt and pepper are not ingredients.

Oil is not an ingredient when it’s for the cooking pan, not the recipe.

Water is not an ingredient.