I have been wanting to make this recipe for the longest time — Ina Garten’s Asian Marinated Salmon. I made it as written, except I added 1 tablespoon of honey to the marinade. And okay, I used a grill pan.

Fine, I also only used 1 pound of salmon instead of a whole side of salmon. But c’mon, that would have been super-duper expensive and a lot of fish for two people.

You might notice that there aren’t any prep pictures here. Well…jwa brought the camera to work and I didn’t have it to take pictures while making dinner. So sad.

Asian Marinated Salmon
1 lb wild salmon (the marinade below will accommodate up to 3 pounds)
For the marinade:
2 tbsp Dijon mustard
3 tbsp soy sauce
6 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp honey
1/2 tsp minced garlic
Garnishes: chopped green onions and lemon or lime wedges

Whisk together the mustard, soy sauce, olive oil, honey and garlic in a small bowl. Drizzle half of the marinade onto the salmon and allow it to sit for 10 minutes.

Heat up a grill pan and brush lightly with oil. Alternately, you can light charcoal briquettes in a grill and brush the grilling rack with oil to keep the salmon from sticking.

Place the salmon skin side down on the hot grill surface; discard the marinade the fish was sitting in. Grill for 4 to 5 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fish. Turn carefully with a wide spatula and grill for another 4 to 5 minutes. The salmon will be slightly raw in the center, but don’t worry; it will keep cooking as it sits.

Transfer the fish to a flat plate, skin side down, and spoon the reserved marinade on top. Allow the fish to rest for 10 minutes. Remove the skin and serve with the extra unused marinade.

So, I was watching TV a couple of weekends ago and saw some of this show on the Food Network that I don’t like that much — Simply Delicioso. Simply Annnoying-o, imho. But she made these potato balls with cheese in the middle which sort of intrigued me. So I built on that concept and created — wasabi potato balls! Woo! What? Cream cheese isn’t uh, Asianesque?

Yeah, I know. I know. But I will not let authenticity stand in the way of my love of all things cheese. Besides, Dijon mustard isn’t an authentic pan-Asian ingredient either. See, the meal all fits together perfectly!

Wasabi Potato Balls
2 medium russet potatoes, peeled
1 tbsp salt
2 cloves garlic (or 1 huge clove)
1 tbsp prepared wasabi
1 oz cream cheese
1/2 cup panko bread crumbs
Optional: 1/2 tsp Asian seasoning (I have this Oxo grind it Asian blend with lemongrass and ginger and other stuff that I couldn’t resist adding to the breadcrumbs)
Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Put potatoes in a large pot and fill with water until potatoes are just covered. Add the 1 tablespoon salt. Bring to a boil and cook until potatoes are very soft, about 30 minutes. Test with a fork after 20.

Press potatoes through a potato ricer and blend until mashed. Add the garlic, wasabi and salt and pepper to taste. Get the potatoes to where you like them seasoning-wise. Then, let them sit for a few minutes until just cool enough to handle.

Slice up 8 small little cubes of your cream cheese. Add the extra seasoning to the bread crumbs if you are using it and set aside in a small bowl. Prepare a baking sheet with foil wrap and coat with vegetable spray or rub with oil.

Okay. While mashed potatoes are still warm, form them into 2-inch balls. You should have eight. Make an indentation with you finger and insert 1 cheese cube in the center of a ball, then roll it into bread crumbs and place on cookie sheet. Repeat with the 7 remaining balls, rinsing your hands as needed so the potatoes form evenly and don’t stick to the bread crumbs in your hand.

Give the tops a spray with canola or olive oil and bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Halfway through the baking time, flip them over. Serve immediately. They are mighty tasty.

Kinda lazy tonight. Will just post pictures of today’s walk around Mt. Tabor.

Okay.

Colorful foliage!

Park bench, trees, and me!

Reservoir and downtown in the background

jwa walking…

Upper reservoir and Fallness

Nice!

Leaves and sky. Duh

Goodnight.

::snore::

This was a really good, quick weeknight dinner. It’s from Gourmet magazine and I really just tweaked it a little by adding some lemon zest. We had this with some herbed polenta and uh, I think some broccoli. It was a week or so ago. It’s kind of a blur.

I think the thing I liked best about it was the stuffing kind of vibe. But it was on the outside. It was topping! Crispy topping rocks.

Chicken Breasts with Horseradish-Scallion Crust
This will serve two
1 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
1/4 cup mayonnaise
2 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp chopped scallion
1/2 tsp minced garlic
1/2 cup fine fresh bread crumbs
Zest of 1/2 lemon
2 tbsp drained bottled horseradish
1/2 tsp chopped fresh tarragon or a pinch dried, crumbled
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. In a small bowl whisk together mustard and mayonnaise until combined well. Now, I found it easy to make my own bread crumbs in the food processor and when I did, I just tossed in the lemon zest, tarragon, green onion and horseradish and pulsed it all together.

Pat chicken dry and season with salt and pepper. Heat oil in a 10-inch non-stick skillet over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking and brown chicken, about 2-3 minutes on each side.

Transfer chicken to a shallow baking dish and pour off all but about 2 teaspoons oil from skillet. Add the garlic and cook for about 30 seconds. Remove skillet from heat and add the breadcrumb mixture.

Remove skillet from heat and stir in bread crumbs, horseradish, tarragon, and salt and pepper to taste. Spread mayonnaise mixture on skin side of each chicken breast and top evenly with bread crumb mixture. Now, this is funny — I made the mayo/mustard mixture and put it in the fridge while I made the breadcrumbs and browned the chicken. Then, I totally forgot about it.

::slaps self on forehead::

I just kind of pushed the horseradish moistened breadcrumbs into the chicken and it seemed to work fine. So, you could probably skip the mayonnaise and mustard — your call.

Bake chicken in middle of oven 8-10 minutes, or until cooked through, and then let stand 5 minutes. If you want extra browning, give the top of the chicken a quick spray with olive oil before putting it in the oven.

Delicious! Okay, seriously, next week there will be talk of shoes.

First of all, thanks so much to Sara of Weekend Cookbook Challenge for letting me guest-host this month! I had a great time picking a theme and I hope everyone had fun participating. And here are some nifty new seasonal recipes to try this month.

So, what kind of food does Halloween evoke? Soups, root vegetables, apples, huge fancy meals, snacks and sweets. Plus scary meat products! There’s a little bit of everything — something for everyone!

Okay, first up is the above mentioned Sara of WCC and I Like to Cook fame with this wonderful looking Pam’s Ham and Apple Breakfast Pie adapted from Bruce Aidells’s Complete Book of Pork: A Guide to Buying, Storing, and Cooking the World’s Favorite Meat. I bet her house smelled amazing while this was baking in the oven.

Gretchen, over at Canela y Comino in Peru turned to Cooking Light for inspiration and came up with a batch of Chocolate Gingersnap Cookies. Mmmmmm…ginger. Now these would sure be a great post snack after a Halloween meal!

My friend Vanessa sent me an awesome sounding recipe from one of her favorite cookbooks, Zuppa! by Annie Bianchi. Here’s a recipe for Ceci, Mele, Salisoccia E Patate Alla Garfagnana (Chickpeas, Apples, Sausage and Potatoes Garfangnana Style). Although she forgot to take a picture, I think we can imagine how tasty it looked!

Next up is Colleen, from Naperville, IL. Hey — that’s kind of by where I grew up! Neat. Colleen also picked a soup, Gelbe Erbsen Suppe, auf Berliner Art (Berlin Style Split Pea Soup. Like all good Fall meals, she says it’s “a wonderful tummy-warming dinner when you add warm bread and a nice side salad of baby greens & sauteed pears.”

My friend Christy at Beehive, who besides being like seven months pregnant, made an amazing Fall Feast for her Denver friends including Martha Stewart’s Pumpkin Cake with Brown Butter Icing. Damn! That all looks so good!

Okay. Who’s next? It’s LizG from Bits ‘n Bites who made a highly snackable Toasted Pepita Dip from the Whole Foods Market Cookbook. I’m not sure it gets any more Halloween-y than pumpkin seeds.

Molly at Batter-Splattered (great blog name!) created some delicious looking Quick and Easy Pumpkin Pie Bars from Heartland Baking from the Midwest’s Best Cooks. She says, “The crust and the topping gets plump and crispy and chewy while still maintaining its crustyness on the bottom layer.” Mmmmm!

Deborah of What’s in my Kitchen? asks, “Polenta = Halloween?” Uh, yes, I say! Yes! The answer to every question is polenta! Here she decides on Crispy Polenta with Mushrooms, from Cooking for Two by Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough. This was her first time joining in WCC and I’m really glad she did. Oh and I love the Halloween bowl.

Cady at $40 a Week went all out and prepared Poulet a la Normande from Chez Panisse Fruit, while taking advantage of a yard full of apples ready to be harvested. Also, what’s more festive than lighting your Fall foods on fire? Exactly. A meal that’s both entertaining and delicious!

Into the homestretch here, people! Now Mike at Mel’s Diner took one for the whole WCC21 team and made the scariest recipe of the bunch — Zungenwurst. Not sure what that is? Well, it’s tongue pieces with pork fat in blood. Boo! Of his special WCC Halloween experiment he says, “I didn’t like it. I didn’t hate it, but it left a odd, disgusting aftertaste in my mouth.” Aw, poor Mike will need lots of Halloween candy to make the taste go away.

Finally, I made Honey Roasted Parsnip Bisque from Talk with Your Mouth Full. Both jwa and I liked it quite a bit and it was suitably Halloween-ish as we typically use parsnips for the noses on our jack o’lanterns!

Okay, whew! We made it through. If I missed your entry please send me an email and let me know. I’ll get it up asap.

Thanks again to Sara for letting me guest-host. I certainly have gained a newfound appreciation for how much work she must put into WCC each month!

Monday night, the WCC round-up* will be up but for now…it’s cookies. I altered a recipe I found at the Whole Foods web site to include matcha (powdered green tea). Where can you get matcha? Try here!

I rolled them out and used my new, cool Halloween cookie cutters for some great shapes — a bat, a ghost, cat, jack o’lantern and a witch boot. But, you could also just roll the dough into two logs, chill and slice into rounds. That would work just fine too.

I really liked the fact that this recipe calls for brown sugar. I think that it held up to the green tea taste really well.

Green Tea Halloween Sugar Cookies
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 large egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp matcha
1/2 tsp non-aluminum baking powder
1/4 tsp sea salt
2-3 tbsp milk
3 tbsp granulated sugar

In large bowl with electric mixer at medium speed, beat butter, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy. Beat in egg until well blended.

In a separate bowl combine flour, matcha, baking powder and salt; then, with mixer at low speed, beat into butter mixture to blend well. If mixture is a little dry, add 2-3 tablespoons milk until it comes together. Form dough into two balls. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate until firm, at least an hour or overnight.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Roll dough out on a lightly floured surface and cut into shapes using cookie cutters. Sprinkle unbaked cookies with a little granulated sugar.

Place about 1–1/2 inches apart on ungreased, parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Bake 10–12 minutes. Cool on wire rack and store in an airtight container. Or use shot glasses and stand the up on your dining room table for a photo…

* If there are any stragglers, you have until 4PM PST, to get me your entry.