Baked Salmon with Horseradish Mayonnaise

I first shared this in 2005 and it is well worth sharing again. It's one of my all time favorite recipes and really the only way that I make salmon. I've tweaked it a bit. It came from a diabetic cookbook, which is hard to believe considering how delicious it is.

Step 1:
1 salmon fillet (1 pound total), room temperature, cut into 4 pieces
Salt and pepper
Olive Oil
Brush salmon with oil and season. Bake at 475° on a lightly oiled, foil-lined cookie sheet. Bake exactly 5 minutes, then turn salmon over and bake another 5 minutes.

Step 2:
1/4 cup mayonnaise
2 teaspoons lemon juice
2-3 teaspoons horseradish
2 teaspoons drained capers
Whisk together. Top each serving of salmon with a heaping tablespoon of sauce.

Mom's Creamed Tuna

First published here in 2005, it's time for a reprint! Especially during Lent!

I don't know where my mother got this recipe but it is the touch of nutmeg and the walnuts that make it shine. I often leave the nuts out so don't let those stop you in making this. It was one of our favorites growing up and my kids love it too.

Step 1:
2 tablespoons shortening
2 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon Worcestershire
2 dashes Tabasco
2 cups milk
Make a white sauce. Stir over low heat until thickened. (For instructions on making a white sauce, take a look at the recipe for Pasta Baked with Bechamel and Parmigiano ... bechamel is Italian for white sauce.)

Step 2:
1/4 cup grated Parmesan
12 ounces tuna
Sautéed sliced mushrooms (optional)
1/3 cup broken walnuts (optional)
Add cheese, stir until melted. Add remaining and heat to serving temperature. Serve over rice or noodles.

Tuna Risotto

Believe it or not this is from an Italian cookbook. Be sure to use good canned tuna in this. That means Albacore Tuna. I also could see using chunks of sauteed fresh tuna. My family would like either. However, the canned tuna makes it a midweek meal because I don't have to get fresh fish.

TUNA RISOTTO

Step 1:
1 onion, minced
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups Arborio rice

 
Sauté onion until softened. Add rice and cook until well coated with oil.

Step 2:
1 teaspoon salt
1/2  cup dry white wine
6 cups chicken stock

 
Add salt and wine and cook, stirring, until wine is absorbed. Add stock and cook risotto-style (adding 1/2 cup stock at a time and stirring until absorbed). I tend to add 4 cups of stock, let it get absorbed by simmering, and then add the rest of the stock the "right" way. Its not "proper" but gets the same creamy effect and I can use that initial simmering time to make salad and dressing, etc.

Step 3:
12 ounces canned tuna, drained, broken into large pieces

 
Stir in during the last 5-10 minutes of cooking.

Step 4:
1 ounce grated Parmesan

 
Remove from heat and stir in immediately.

(First published here in 2004.)

New School Tuna Casserole

This is from Cooking Light. It's a tangy alternative to the regular tuna casserole and I like them both.

We adapted it slightly, using more salt (as always with CL recipes), regular egg noodles instead of whole-wheat, and tarragon instead of dill (it's what we had on hand).

We also forgot to pick up chicken stock so used all milk for the sauce, embellishing with a judicial splash of Worcestershire.

New School Tuna Casserole
Serves 6 generously.

Step 1

12 ounces uncooked egg noodles

Preheat oven to 375°F. Cook noodles until very al dente.

Step 2

1 tablespoon oil
8 ounces mushrooms, chopped
1 cup chopped onion
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme leaves

Heat oil in a large high-sided skillet over medium. Add mushrooms; cook until softened, about 4 minutes. Add onion and garlic; cook until tender, about 4 more minutes. Add thyme; cook until fragrant, about 1 minute, stirring constantly.

Step 3

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups chicken stock
2-1/2 cups milk
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons lemon zest
1-1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1-1/4 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 5-ounce cans albacore tuna in water, drained
2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill

Add butter; stir to melt. Whisk in flour; cook until roux is golden, about 1 minute. Whisking constantly, add stock; bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer; whisk in milk, tomato paste, mustard, lemon zest and juice, salt, and pepper. Return to a simmer; simmer 2 to 3 minutes. Pour mixture into bowl with noodles. Stir in tuna and dill.

Step 4

2 ounces sharp cheddar cheese, shredded (about ½ cup)

Coat a 13- x 9-inch baking dish with cooking spray. Transfer tuna mixture to baking dish; top with cheese. Bake at 375°F until bubbly and cheese is melted, about 15 minutes. Let stand at room temperature 5 to 10 minutes.

Spicy Tuna Fish Cakes

These are from Gordon Ramsay's Home Cooking and they will completely revolutionize the image that springs into your head when someone says "fish cake." They are fresh, lively, and absolutely delicious.

Notes: we made this with tuna canned in water and they seemed rather dry. Later I realized that tuna packed in oil is much more common and would be a better choice both for moisture and (possibly) to help hold them together better.

We couldn't find the kaffir lime leaves and, behold, the dish was delicious without them!

Spicy Tuna Fish Cakes

1 pound good-quality tinned tuna (we used four 6-ounce cans)
6 tinned water chestnuts, drained and finely sliced
3 green onions, trimmed and sliced
1" piece of ginger, peeled and grated
3 tablespoons chopped coriander
1 red chili, seeded and finely chopped
3 kaffir lime leaves, finely chopped (rehydrated for 5 minutes in boiling water if dried)
2 teaspoons Thai fish sauce
2 eggs, beaten
Vegetable oil, for frying
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the Dipping Sauce:
Good pinch of sugar
2 tablespoons Thai fish sauce
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
Juice of 1/2 lime
2 tablespoons chopped coriander


First make the dipping sauce. Mix together all the sauce ingredients, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Taste and adjust the flavours as necessary. Set aside.

Drain the tuna and place in a bowl; use a fork to separate the chunks. Add the water chestnuts, spring onions, ginger, coriander, chilli and lime leaves and season with salt and pepper.

Add the fish sauce and beaten eggs. Mix well.

Squeezing the mixture to tightly compress it and get rid of any excess liquid, shape it into balls the size of golf balls. Flatten them lightly into patties.

Heat a frying pan over a medium heat, add a little oil and shallow-fry the fishcakes on each side for 1–2 minutes until golden on all sides and heated through. Serve with the dipping sauce.

Crab Mac and Cheese

One of the most consistently good cookbooks I've ever gotten was from Julie when I got married. It's Nigel Slater's Eat. All of the recipes are simple, not too many ingredients, and written in paragraph form, which I found off-putting at first but quickly learned to love. So here is one of the first things I ever made out of it: crab mac and cheese.

Crab Mac and Cheese

8 oz medium-sized pasta (penne, serpentelli, macaroni)
10 oz lump crab meat
1+2/3 cup milk
1 cup heavy cream
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
2 tbsp whole-grain mustard
1/2 cup fresh white bread crumbs
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Boil pasta in a large pot of well-salted boiling water for about 9 minutes, til tender. Drain and return to the saucepan, then add milk, heavy cream, Dijon mustard, and whole-grain mustard and bring to a boil. Lower the heat, stir in crab meat, and simmer gently, stirring often, for about 5 minutes.

Check the seasoning, then transfer to a deep baking dish. Mix the bread crumbs with the Parmesan, scatter on top, and bake for 20 minutes, til bubbling around edges.

And I recommend everyone get Eat, because it really is great for fast, easy meals!

Grilled Salmon with Chili-Lime Sauce

This is from Quick & Easy Vietnamese by Nancie McDermott. McDermott has become a real favorite of mine for simplified but authentic Asian meals.

This could not have been easier or more delicious. 'Nuff said. Get out there and cook it!

Grilled Salmon with Chili-Lime Sauce

STEP 1

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped ginger
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
1 tablespoon chopped shallots or onion
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
1-1/4 pounds thick salmon, tuna, halibut, or other meaty fish filets

Combine all the marinade ingredients, dissolving sugar. Marinate fish for 20-30 minutes at room temperature or refrigerate for up to 1 day.

STEP 2 — Chili-Lime Sauce

1/4 cup fish sauce
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice or white vinegar
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon chili-garlic sauce
1 tablespoon thinly sliced green onions

Combine sauce ingredients, dissolving sugar. Place on platter on which fish will be served.

STEP 3

Grill fish for about 5 minutes each side or bake at 375° for 15 minutes. Transfer to serving platter alongside Chili-Lime Sauce and serve hot or warm.

Spicy Cajun Shrimp

Tom got me Cooking Up a Storm: Recipes Lost and Found from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans for Christmas last year.  Although I enjoyed reading through it, I hadn't picked it up to make anything from it. Not sure why. That sort of thing happens when you've got stacks of cookbooks everywhere.

I finally cracked it open for actual use when I picked up some shrimp a couple of weeks ago and wanted to make something besides the same old thing. (Although I see that the shrimp scampi I usually favor isn't here ... I must share that soon!)

Who cooks shrimp better than someone from Louisiana? Probably no one.

This was a huge hit. I'm a wimp so I used less than the minimum amounts of cayenne and red pepper. In retrospect the minimums probably would have been fine. There is a wide latitude for spicy food, of course, so take your best guess!

Spicy Cajun Shrimp

Makes 2-3 servings
(It served 4 of us with leftovers)

2 dozen large shrimp, or 1 pound medium shrimp, fresh or frozen, thawed if frozen, peeled, and deveined
1/4 teaspoon - 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt (optional)
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme, crushed
1 teaspoon dried basil, crushed
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano, crushed (optional)
1/3 cup butter
1-1/2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 cup diced tomatoes
1/4 cup beer, at room temperature (this didn't seem to do much except dilute the recipe some ... I'm going to skip it next time)
Hot cooked rice for serving (optional)

Rinse the cleaned shrimp under cold running water. Drain well, then set aside. In a small bowl combine the cayenne, black pepper, salt, red pepper flakes, and herbs.

Combine the butter, garlic, Worcestershire, and the pepper-herb mixture in a large skillet over high heat. When the butter is melted, add the tomatoes, and then the shrimp. Cook for 2 minutes, stirring well. Add the beer, cover, and cook for 1 minute longer. Remove from the heat. Serve over rice, if desired. (Which we did!)

New Orleans Barbecued Shrimp

I suddenly realized how long it's been since I posted a recipe. Well, there's a good reason for that. I haven't been cooking anything new much. In fact, I haven't even been looking through my listed recipes for old favorites. Too many things like blogging, podcasting and such have pushed aside the time that I used to devote to recipes and menus.

However, as with many other things I am making a mid-year resolution (to nicely balance out those forgotten New Year's resolutions don't cha know?) to begin rediscovering ... my kitchen!

I believe I got this from a Jane and Michael Stern cookbook. Sadly, it is so long ago that I can't be more specific than that. What I can tell you is that it is simply delicious ... as well as being simple!

Step 1:
1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon minced onion
3 minced cloves garlic
1-1/2 teaspoons black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon basil
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
2 pounds large shrimp

Combine all and marinate in the refrigerator 30 minutes to 1 hour. Select a skillet large enough to hold shrimp in one layer (not nonstick). Warm the skillet over high heat. When very hot, pour shrimp and marinade into skillet, watching out for splatters. Liquid should bubble and hiss.

Step 2:
1/4 cup water

Quickly rinse out bowl that held shrimp with water and pour it into skillet. Scrape shrimp and sauce up from bottom several times while liquid reduces.

Step 3:
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 cup butter cut into chunks (1 stick)

When sauce thickens and just begins to stick stubbornly, pour in lemon juice and add butter. Keep scraping until butter melts and both it and lemon juice are incorporated. Serve immediately.

Halibut or Other Steaks Simmered in Soy Sauce

I rarely buy halibut as it is so expensive but luckily The Central Market was discounting $10 which basically cut my cost in half.

Once I got this rare treasure home I didn't know what to do with it. Certainly I didn't want to take a chance on ruining it. Mark Bittman had the answer in How to Cook Everything with this simple but delicious recipe which pleased everyone in our house ... no easy feat!

This recipe is best with mild-flavored steaks: cod, grouper, halibut, monkfish, and tilefish.

1 tablespoon peanut or vegetable oil
1 or 2 halibut steaks, a total of about 1-1/2 pounds
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon peeled and minced or grated fresh ginger
1 teaspoon dark sesame oil
1 tablespoons soy sauce
1/2 cup chicken, beef, or vegetable stock, or water (I used chicken stock)
1/4 cup minced scallions

Heat a large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat for 2 or 3 minutes. Add the oil and raise the heat to high; cook the fish for 60 to 90 seconds on each side, just until it begins to brown.

Turn the heat to medium-low. Sprinkle garlic and ginger around the fish, then drizzle the sesame oil over it. Add soy sauce and stock or water to skillet, raise heat to medium, and bring to a boil. Turn heat to low and cover.

Cook for 5 minutes. Remove cover and, with the fish still in the liquid, raise heat to high and reduce liquid by about half (this should only take one minute or two).

Serve the fish over rice, with some of the sauce spooned over and garnished with scallions.

Stir-Fried Noodles with Shrimp, Chiles & Lime

This recipe is from Fine Cooking, which in my opinion, can give Cook's Illustrated a run for their money in having recipes that always work. I made this for Tom and me one evening when the girls were gone. The recipe says it serves two. I thought it could serve three or even four with additional dishes. Tom thought it was just right for two (so you can see he liked it!).

The only thing I changed was that I didn't have the chiles and they didn't seem to fit in my mind's palate, so I left them out.

3 ounces drive wide (pad thai) rice noodles

SAUCE:
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon hoisin sauce
1 teaspoon chile-sauce (such as Lee Kum Kee brand)

1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 teaspoon minced garlic
6 ounces medium shrimp, peeled and deveined (to yield 1 cup)
1 4-ounce can fire-roasted whole green chiles (such as Ortega brand), drained and sliced into long, very think slivers (to yield 1/2 cup)
1-1/2 cups bean sprouts

ACCOMPANIMENTS:
2 tablespoons crushed, unsalted, roasted peanuts
1/3 cup coarsely chopped fresh cilantro
10 mint leaves, torn into small pieces.
1 lime, cut into wedges for serving

Soak dried rice noodles by submerging in a bowl of very warm water (I boil water and pour it over them) and soak until pliable but still rather firm, about 30 minutes. They will still have a fairly firm core but that is ok as they will cook more later in the recipe.

Meanwhile, in a small bowl, combine the sauce ingredients.

Once noodles are drained, heat oil in a large (12-inch) skillet or stir-fry pan over high heat until very hot. Add the garlic, stir, and immediately add the shrimp. Stir-fry until the shrimp turn pink and firm, 2 to 3 minutes.

Add the sauce mixture. Stir to mix for about 20 seconds, then add the chile slivers and noodles. Stir-fry until the noodles are tender and the liquid is absorbed, 1 to 2 minutes. If the noodles are too firm, add 1 tablespoon of water and cook another minute.

Add the bean sprouts and stir-fry until they're slightly limp, 1 to 2 minutes. Transfer to a serving platter and garnish with the peanuts, cilantro and mint. Serve immediately, with lime wedges on the side.

Sweet and Spicy Garlic Shrimp

I wish I could remember where I picked up this recipe. I copied it from a library book (maybe one of Ken Hom's cookbooks?). It was a huge hit with everyone the other night and Tom paid it perhaps the highest praise by saying it "was just like something from Tong's House" (our favorite authentic Chinese restaurant). This looks as if it would be really hot but it just built a gentle burn that lingered pleasantly on the tongue by the end of the meal.

3/4 pound large shrimp, shelled (I used a full pound)

For the marinade:
1-1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon salt
Marinate the shrimp: Place the shrimp in a medium bowl and sprinkle with the cornstarch and salt. Toss the shrimp gently in the marinade until coated. Let stand for 10 minutes.

For the sauce:
1-1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon ketchup
1 tablespoon honey
2 teaspoons chili garlic sauce
Prepare the sauce: mix all together in a small bowl

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/4 cup finely diced yellow onion
1 tablespoon minced garlic
6 dried red chiles
Heat a wok over high heat until hot (or I also use a large, high-sided skillet sometimes). Add oil and swirl to coat the sides. Add shrimp and stir-fry until pink, about 2 minutes. Add onion, garlic, and chiles and stir-fry until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add sauce and cook, stirring, until heated through, about 30 seconds. Scoop onto a platter and serve.

Serves 4 as part of a multicourse meal. (This served the four of us just fine with some jasmine rice and steamed broccoli.)

Supper Again? Tuna Noodles!

Its that age old problem for every mom. At a certain point any enthusiasm you have for cooking turns to a feeling of dread as the dinner hour approaches and you realize that you don't know what's for dinner ... and everyone is asking you.

When I answer Tuna Noodles, I actually get hugs, believe it or not. I'm not sure if Tuna Noodles is actually the name as this is an authentic Italian recipe but I don't have this cookbook any more and that's what we call them. My only tip on this is to be sure to use albacore (the only kind of tuna you'll find at our house), Crown Prince brand if possible. Yes, its a little more expensive but you can tell that the tuna was once a fish so its worth it.

Tuna Noodles
From Italy Al Dente by Biba Caggiano

Step 1:
¼ cup olive oil
3 tablespoons chopped onion or shallot
3 anchovy fillets, chopped, or 1 teaspoon of anchovy paste
2 garlic cloves, minced
sauteé onion until lightly golden. Add anchovies and garlic, and stir for about 1 minute.

Step 2:
1 12-ounce can albacore
½ cup dry white wine
Salt and red pepper flakes to taste
Add tuna and stir well. Add wine and cook until wine is almost all reduced. Season with salt and chili pepper. Remove from heat.

Step 3:
1 pound spaghetti
Cook pasta until al dente. Save ½ cup of cooking water, add to sauce and turn heat on to medium. Mix pasta and sauce in large serving bowl.