Shrimp & Salmon Salad

What do shrimp, salmon, avocado, and Boston lettuce have in common?  They’re all smooth — in the case of avocado, downright creamy — and full-flavored, and when you put them together, you get a very tasty, quick, well-balanced meal.  (And since the salad is served cold, it’s also a great way to use leftover cooked salmon and shrimp.)  All these elements need is a bit of sharpness to highlight their smooth nature, and for that you can turn to lemon juice, lime juice, or a soft vinegar like white balsamic or cider.  You  might also wish to add a briny/salty element — here, I’ve included artichoke hearts, but olives or a few sliced/minced dill pickles would also work.

Shrimp & Salmon Salad

On a plate, arrange rinsed-and-dried Boston lettuce (or Bibb, which is another soft, buttery lettuce), sliced avocado, chunked cooked wild salmon (you could also use canned), cooked cold shrimp, and quartered artichoke hearts.  Drizzle with extra-virgin olive oil and lime or lemon juice, then sprinkle on a few shakes of sea salt and a few grinds of freshly-cracked pepper.  It’s that easy!

Note:  if your salmon and/or shrimp is pre-seasoned — perhaps you made an Asian-themed meal the night before and used a soy glaze, or maybe you made garlicky Shrimp Scampi — then choose your salad accents accordingly.  An Asian salad would do well with sesame or peanut oil and rice wine vinegar (you could even make a more formal dressing by mixing them in a small bowl with a bit of fish sauce, curry sauce, or fermented bean paste if you have any); likewise, an Italian salad would be delicious served with balsamic vinegar and a nutty oil like walnut or pinenut.  You could also extend pesto into dressing by whisking in enough extra-virgin olive oil to make it pourable.

Enjoy!

Refreshed Asian Stir-Fry with Salmon

Just before I slipped off to sleep last night — a surprisingly sound one considering that I’d just watched another two episodes of my new favorite show, True Blood — I had a culinary ephiphany:  the term “leftover” needs to be revamped.  (Pun intended.)

“Leftover”  sounds distinctly unappealing, doesn’t it?  I mean, who wants what’s left over?  Even dedicated garage-sale shoppers like to get there at the crack of dawn to get first dibs on what’s laid out in the garage or scattered across the lawn.  Calling something a “leftover”  doesn’t do it justice at all, especially when that leftover can be re-purposed and used to create something totally new and innovative.  Leftovers aren’t leftovers at all — they’re founts of inspiration.  They’re tasty ways to save money.  They can be the ultimate convenience food, particularly if we go with the well-nigh-forgotten definition of “convenient”:  affording accommodation or advantage.  (Which commercial “convenience”  foods most certainly do not — they afford poor health, strained economies, and overburdened health-care systems.)  It’s time to re-create the concept of leftovers!

Henceforth, leftovers won’t be leftovers in this e-kitchen:  they’ll be “refreshed” foods.  And to usher in the new era, here’s how I made Monday”s dinner into Wednesday’s lunch by pairing it with Tuesday’s dinner!

Refreshed Asian Stir-Fry with Salmon & Noodles

As the name implies, I simply added salmon and noodles to Monday’s stir-fry (two posts down).  I’d baked the salmon the night before for dinner and had saved half of it, so all I had to do was use a fork to break it into chunks while I boiled water for the brown rice noodles.  As soon as the noodles had finished cooking, I drained them, added the already-cooked stir-fry to the noodle pot, slid the drained noodles back into it, added the chunked salmon, stirred it, and put the whole thing back on the stove for a minute or two to heat it all through.  Right before serving, I drizzled on a bit of extra sesame oil and soy sauce.

There you have it!  A fantastic lunch in 7 minutes.  (Or however many minutes it takes to cook whatever kind of pasta you choose to use.)  How’s that for refreshing?

Enjoy!

Arctic Char

“Arctic Char,” the sign said.  I was standing in the fish market and looking a bit sideways at a fish that was shaped like a trout but was nearly the color of wild salmon.  “Is that the char?” I asked the fishmonger.  “It looks like a cross between trout and salmon!”

“That’s exactly what it is,” she answered.  “It’s related to both and tastes somewhere in between.  Would you like to try one?”

A foregone conclusion!  My two favorite fish are trout and salmon…and now I have three favorites, because just as the fishmonger said, char tastes like trout (except richer and more buttery) and like salmon (except not quite as gamey).  Char filets are slim like trout and therefore cook a bit more quickly than salmon…and like its cousins, char is wonderful eaten cold the next day, or served alongside eggs or avocado, or tossed into a salad.  The only seasoning I added was a bit of fleur de sel sea salt — that’s all it needed.  Being a fairly fatty fish and coming from cold climates (“Arctic” char), char is also a good source of omega-3s.  Its skin is even pretty:  a somewhat-whimsical palette of silvery grey flecked with pink spots.

To prepare this 3/4 pound of char, I simply rinsed the filet in cold water, then placed it on an aluminum-foil-lined pan and stuck the whole thing into my toaster oven.  (I’ve found that 3/4 of a pound of fish exactly fits into the oven tray.)  Whether you’re using a regular-sized oven or a toaster-sized one, bake it at 350 degrees for 15 minutes and then flake the flesh with a fork to see if it’s done; when it is, the flesh will turn opaque and will easily flake apart.

I heartily recommend trying char if you can find it.  It’s all the rage in Canada, Scotland, Iceland, and many other northern-lying countries, and for good reason!  Any well-stocked fishmonger should have some char nestled in amongst the trout and salmon counters.

Enjoy!

Wild Salmon & Baby Spinach

When I give my health talks/presentations, people often ask me about supplements:   Do I take them?  Can I recommend any in particular?  My answer is that I’d rather have a lush meal than take a pill.  (“Lush,” by the way, refers to the quality of the ingredients, not the mode of preparation.  “Lush” is perfectly compatible with “simple” in my book.)  Not only will I enjoy a wonderful dinner more than a pill, nutrition is too complex to be able to pull out bits here and there and still reap their full benefits.  Vitamins, minerals, fats, proteins, carbohydrates, micronutrients…they all work together when you consume fresh, whole foods.  They don’t fare nearly as well when they’re taken out of context.

I was feeling the need for “brain food” last week, so I decided to bulk up on omega-3s:  wild salmon (baked with pats of grass-fed butter on top) and a simple salad of spinach greens tossed with sea salt, pepper and flaxseed oil.  Dessert was fruit dipped in yogurt from grass-fed cows.  Total cost?  Under $10.  Much, much tastier than an omega-3 capsule–plus I also got the beta-carotene from the spinach, and the calcium and iron and potassium and selenium and zinc and vitamin E and…you get the picture.  Then there’s the vitamin D and healthy fats from the salmon, the countless minerals from the sea salt, the lignans and omega-9s from the flaxseed, the magnesium and phosphorous from the pepper, vitamins A and D from the butter and yogurt…the list goes on and on.

Hence, my general recommendation when it comes to supplements:  make a nice fresh meal instead.  As Hippocrates said, “Let food be your medicine!”

Salmon, Peas & Sprouts in a Spring Roll

You may have encountered spring roll wrappers at a Vietnamese restaurant–they’re usually listed under “Appetizers” and are served with a filling of rice and raw veggies.  (The pliable, somewhat-sticky wrappers contrast nicely with the crunchy interior.)  Though we don’t generally encounter them outside of this setting, there’s no reason why you can’t use them for a variety of applications; Asia’s answer to the tortilla provides the home cook with plenty of opportunities for wraps and rolls.

In this version, I stacked leftover salmon, snap peas, and bean sprouts along the center of the wrappers and then folded over the edges.  (The snap peas were steamed in lightly-boiling water for 5 minutes and then drained.)  My dipping sauce was a quick mix of soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil and a pinch of crushed red pepper.  Talk about a fast and exotic lunch!

If you’ve never used rice wrappers before, though, a warning:  timing is everything.  Initially, they’re dry and stiff–you have to soak them in a shallow pan/plate of cold water to soften the fibers.  If you leave them in the water for too long, they’ll begin to disentegrate; if you don’t give them enough time to soak, you won’t be able to fold them.  (Also, never heat them!  Egg roll wrappers are the ones that are filled and then deep-fried–their rice cousins are much more delicate.)  I would advise soaking the wrapper for about 30 seconds and then testing by dint of lifting it out of the water.  If it’s still too stiff, let it soak for another 30 seconds and then test again.  Repeat as needed.

Enjoy your creations!