Here is a recipe that certainly will work outdoors on a grill but also worked quite well in the oven. I found these little 6 X 6 inch or so cedar grilling planks at Sur la Table for $10 and impulse-bought them. Then I on-purpose bought some salmon.

I soaked my plank for about an hour and a half. If it was going on a charcoal grill the fish *, I would have soaked it for at least two hours. I let the plank heat up in the oven for about 5 minutes, before placing the salmon on it. I don’t actually know how much flavor the cedar imparted on the salmon, but wow, did it smell good while in the oven. These planks were officially, single serving size but I found I could easily fit the two pieces of salmon on it.

Also, since my plank was not too charred, I rinsed it off with hot water (no soap) and plan on using it again.

Oh and I can not stress enough how good the maple-mustard-rosemary crust on the salmon was…really, I can’t. I just can’t at all. Nope, not even going to try. And, if you didn’t have a cedar plank, I would still recommended making this recipe just on a baking sheet.

Cedar-Plank Salmon
Adapted from Gourmet Magazine, via Deerholme Farm, Vancouver Island, British Columbia
1 tbsp grainy mustard
1 tbsp pure maple syrup
1 tsp minced rosemary
1/2 tbsp grated lemon zest
3/4 lb salmon fillet, cut into two pieces
Special Equipment: a cedar grilling plank

Soak cedar grilling plank in water to cover 1-2 hours, keeping it immersed.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Stir together mustard, honey, rosemary, zest.

Salt and pepper fish first and then spread mixture on flesh side of salmon and let stand at room temperature 15 minutes.

Set plank in the oven for about 5 minutes. Remove and put salmon on plank, skin side down (if salmon is too wide for plank, fold in thinner side to fit). I put my plank on a baking sheet to avoid any oven messes.

Cook until salmon is just almost cooked through, 12 - 14 minutes. Turn on the broiler and let the top get a little golden and form a crust, about 1-2 minutes. Let salmon stand on plank 5 minutes before serving.

We had the salmon with some oven roasted sweet potatoes and green beans.

Awesome quick green beans - trim, rinse and saute for a couple of minutes in some olive oil. Salt and pepper lightly and add about a couple of tablespoons chicken broth. Lower heat, cover and cook about 15 minutes. Remove lid, turn up heat and let broth evaporate. So good!

* To cook the salmon on a grill: Prepare grill for direct-heat cooking over medium-hot charcoal (medium-high heat for gas). Open vents on bottom and lid of charcoal grill.
Grill, covered with lid, 13-15 minutes.

Recently, I found myself with a bag of lentils and a dream. Or something like that. Maybe it was just a bag of lentils, a craving for soup and memories of the awesome chicken tagine of last month. So I kind of combined the two for something I like to call Lentil Soup #22 (or Moroccan-Style Lentil Soup). I’ve posted lentil soups before, but this is way different.

I used Spanish lentils for this (they hold their shape really well) but any brown lentil will work fine. So would red or green, probably.

Lentil Soup #22 (or Moroccan-Style Lentil Soup)
Adapted from a recipe by ME!
2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp cumin
2 tbsp sun dried tomato paste
1 cinnamon stick
8 cups chicken or vegetable broth
1 15-ounce can diced tomatoes, drained
1 1/4 cups brown lentils
1 handful cilantro, chopped
Optional: 1/2 tsp Rogan Josh seasoning
Garnishes: more cilantro and yogurt

Heat the olive oil in a big soup pot. Add the onion and garlic and saute over medium, until a little golden and soft, 8-10 minutes.

Next comes the paprika, cumin, tomato paste and Rogan Josh seasoning, if using. Stir and cook about another two minutes.

Add the cinnamon stick, broth, diced tomatoes and bring to a boil.

Combine the lentils into the pot and cook, stirring occasionally, about an hour. Taste and adjust seasonings and salt and pepper to taste. Add the chopped cilantro and serve.

Garnish with more cilantro and yogurt.

***

In bread news, I made the Pecan, Raisin & Anise Baguettes which turned out well and then last weekend I made another French Round. I let the starter go for 16 hours, I used Morton Kosher Salt (saltier!) and spritzed with water. It made all the difference! So good! nom nom nom nom

Ah, a new year. What better time to learn a new skill? And the new skill I have my heart set on is bread making…with yeast and everything. I have flirted a bit before with Parmesan Flatbread and Pizza Dough, but now I am talking full-on loaves of crusty, wonderful bread. I know, so scary!

Here is experiment number one. I’ll give myself about a C+.

I’ve started my bread learnin’ at the King Arthur Flour site because I happen have that brand of flour at home and they also have tons of free recipes online. I’m going to try and bake myself through some of their recipes, starting with French-Style Country Bread. I’ll intersperse the original recipe with my photos. Any notes that are mine will be in italics.

Full disclosure: I am kneading with the dough hook on my Kitchen Aid mixer.

Okay, let’s go!

French-Style Country Bread
From King Arthur Flour Online Recipes

Sponge Starter (Begin 2 to 16 hours ahead)
1 cup (8 ounces) cool to lukewarm water, preferably spring water (90 to 100°F)
1/2 teaspoon active dry or instant yeast
1 1/4 cups (5 1/4 ounces) King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour
1/4 cup (1 ounce) King Arthur White Whole Wheat or Traditional Whole Wheat Flour

Dough
All of the sponge starter (above)
1 cup (8 ounces) lukewarm water, preferably spring water (l00 to 115°F)
3/4 teaspoon active dry or 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
3 3/4 to 4 cups (1 pound to 1 pound 1 ounce) King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour
1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons salt

To Make The Sponge: Stir all of the sponge ingredients together to make a thick, pudding-like mixture. I think mine was a little dry. Cover with plastic wrap and leave on a counter overnight or for at least 2 to 4 hours.

My sponge…she is not like pudding.

If you’re making this in a bread machine, place the sponge ingredients inside, and turn the machine on for just a few seconds to mix the ingredients together. Turn the machine off and close the cover.

Let the sponge rest for 4 hours or overnight (anywhere between 2 and 16 hours is fine, the longer the better). I let my sponge rest about 3.5 hours.

To Make The Dough: Stir down the sponge with a spoon and add the water, yeast, sugar, most of the flour (hold back about 1/2 cup to use if required) — I used 3 cups of flour here, but I think I also had extra dough in my sponge starter, and salt. Knead the dough, adding more flour as necessary, to make a soft dough, 10 to 12 minutes.

Ready to start rising!

Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl or plastic container, cover with lightly greased plastic wrap and a damp towel, and let it rise until almost doubled (depending on the weather, this could be l to 2 hours). If you’re going out, or if you prefer, let the dough rise slowly in the fridge. If your dough has been refrigerated, allow it to come to room temperature; it’ll warm up and rise at the same time.

It has risen!

After its first rise, deflate the dough gently, but don’t knock out all the air; this will create those “holes” so important to French bread. Form the dough into a round ball. Place two cookie sheets atop one another, and place a semolina- or cornmeal-dusted piece of parchment paper on top. I just used one cookie sheet and I was out of parchment, I had to use foil.

After 2nd rise on the cookie sheet.

Gently place the ball of dough on the cookie sheet, seam-side down. Cover it lightly with a tea towel, and let it rise the second time until it’s puffy and about 40% to 50% larger, anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes (depending on the weather, luck, and magic). Slash or cross-hatch the bread with a sharp knife or lame.

My slashing deflated mine a bit.

Dust it with a little flour. I forgot to dust with flour. Also, mine got a lot bigger in the 45 minutes it rested. It kind of got blob-like. Next time, I may take more care in shaping the original round.

Out of the oven.

For Oven Baking: Preheat the oven to 475 degrees F. After slashing the bread, spritz water into the oven with a clean plant mister, and place the bread in the oven. Reduce the heat to 425 degrees F and spritz with water every few minutes for the first 15 minutes of baking. Bake the bread for about 25 to 30 minutes, or until it tests done. Yield: 1 large round bread or two medium breads.

Notes/Results:

1. I baked my bread on a pizza stone, I just slid the foil onto the stone. I will use parchment next time. I think I’ll continue to use the stone.
2. I had no spritzer, so I had a small baking dish of water in the oven while I baked the bread. Not sure if that helped but I did buy a spritzer. I will use that next time.
3. I measured my flour, next time I will weigh it as my starter was more dough-like than pudding-like. I probably had about 1/2 cup too much flour.
4. I used sea salt, next time I will use regular salt.
5. I will let the starter go as long as possible on the next batch, to try to develop more flavor.
6. Hmmmm, glad I am not doing this too seriously — it’s much more enjoyable when I am not putting that much pressure on myself. If the bread turns out — great! If not, hopefully the next loaf will work.

That said, this loaf (round?) was not bad at all. I didn’t think it had a lot of flavor (that might have been a salt issue, plus not letting the starter sponge go that long) and I wanted bigger holes. That said, I was super, super happy with my rising, though. It rose most excellently! I used Alton brown’s trick of filling a baking dish with boiling water, setting that in the oven (turned off) and putting the dough in there to rise in a nice, humid space.

We’ve eaten about 3/4 of the loaf so far, most recently, using the bread for grilled cheese sandwiches (sharp white cheddar, onion, dijon mustard, cherry tomatoes and some balsamic vinegar). Those were really tasty!

Oh and I used some to make croutons for a Caesar Salad. So good! I think this weekend, I’ll attempt another loaf of this French-Style Country Bread.

But next up: Hazelnut Pecan Golden Raisin Baguettes — the starter is going even as I type this!

This is a weekday lunch staple. Since jwa and I both bring lunch to work pretty much everyday, if I do any cooking at night during the week, it’s most likely something to bring to lunch the next day. The original recipe was for beef, but I usually make it with chicken. The other night I tried some shrimp (about 3/4 of a pound) and that works really well too! In theory, you should really be able to use any one pound of protein that you want to here, but I can just vouch for chicken and shrimp so far.

Do all your chopping and dicing at once — mise en place! — before you start cooking anything (or while you are marinating).

You can make it have as much spice or as little spice as you like. I usually use 3 dried chilies and it comes out medium spicy. And a good substitute for Szechwan pepper is some hot chili oil, which can be drizzled in at the end to adjust the heat.

Kung Pao Shrimp or Chicken (or Beef!)
Adapted from a recipe by Tyler Florence
1 pound shrimp (shelled & cleaned & detailed) or boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1 inch pieces
1 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp rice wine or sherry
1 egg white, lightly beaten
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp peanut oil
3-5 dried red chiles, split (I used Thai red chiles)
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tbsp grated ginger
1 tsp Szechwan pepper, toasted and crushed (or 1/4 - 1 tsp hot chili oil — mine was hot peppercorn chili oil — this kind)
2 green onions, cut in 1/2-inch pieces
1 red or orange bell pepper, cut in pieces
2 tbsp soy sauce
3 tbsp rice wine or sherry
2 tbsp Chinese black vinegar or balsamic
1 tsp sugar
1 cup chicken broth
1 tbsp cornstarch, dissolved in 2 tablespoons water
1/3 cup roasted peanuts

Combine the soy sauce, sesame oil, rice wine/sherry, egg white and salt in a glass bowl. Add the shrimp or chicken and stir to coat. Marinate for 30 minutes, covered in the refrigerator.

Place peanut oil in a wok, swirling to coat the sides, and place over high heat. Add the chilies and cook until they begin to darken.

Add the garlic, ginger and Szechwan pepper (if using chili oil, add that at the end) and continue to cook to infuse the oil.

Add the green onions and bell pepper. Remove the shrimp or chicken from the marinade and add it to the wok, (discard leftover marinade). Stir-fry the shrimp for 2 minutes until almost cooked through. If using chicken, cook for 4-5 minutes.

Blend in soy sauce, rice wine, Chinese vinegar, sugar and chicken broth.

Dissolve the cornstarch slurry and add it to the sauce, stirring, to thicken.

Sprinkle in the peanuts and stir to coat. Add the chili oil to taste.

Serve over rice and enjoy. Or pack up for lunch the next day.

We had this meal over New Year’s Weekend because I believe lentils are lucky to have around that time. Of course, I opted to not use lentils because I had some Christmas Lima Beans that I needed to use. I hope Christmas Lima Beans are still lucky. I soaked my beans for about 8 hours before I used them in the recipe, so make sure you do that if you are using larger dried beans. You could also just use lentils, like the original recipe calls for and skip the soaking all together. I think that’s what I’ll do next time.

That said, this meal was fantastic! The tomato salsa is really fragrant and good and I have discovered Sweet Italian Chicken Sausage at Trader Joe’s. Wow — it was so tasty in this. Feel free to use the sausage of your choice — chicken, turkey or traditional pork sausage. Note: If your sausage is not raw, I would just cook briefly in the pan, not bake in the oven too.

This will feed a lot, so invite people over or have lunches and dinners for the week to look forward too.

Sausages and Legumes with Tomato Salsa
Adapted from a recipe in Jamie’s Italy
8 medium-sized good-quality Italian sausages (my package of chicken Italian sausage only had 5, so that’s how many I used)
Olive oil
1 pound broccoli florets
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
Extra virgin olive oil
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
A small handful of chopped thyme

For the tomato salsa
1 tbsp Olive oil
1 small red onion, peeled and finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely sliced
1 small stick of cinnamon
1-2 small dried red chilies, crumbled
2 tbsp red wine vinegar, plus extra for dressing
2 (14 ounce) cans of good-quality plum tomatoes (I used Italian stewed tomatoes)

For the lentils (or beans)
14 ounces lenticchie di Castelluccio or Puy lentils (or the equivalent in pre-soaked beans)
2 cloves of garlic, peeled
1 bay leaf
A handful of fresh flat–leaf parsley, leaves chopped, stems reserved
Red wine vinegar or sherry vinegar

Start the salsa: Heat the olive oil in a pan, then add the onion and sliced garlic, cinnamon stick and a the chili, saute on a gentle heat for 10 minutes, until the onions are soft. Turn the heat up and add your red wine vinegar — stand back.

Then turn the heat down to low and add the canned tomatoes. Break them up with a wooden spoon and simmer while you work on the rest of the meal.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Put the beans into a pot, cover them with water, and add the 2 whole cloves of garlic, the bay leaf, and some tied-up stems from the parsley. Simmer for around 20 minutes for lentils, up to an hour for larger beans. Make sure that you’ve got enough liquid covering the lentils or beans.

Toss the sausages in a little olive oil and sear them in a pan, then put them in the preheated oven for 25 minutes or until golden and crisp. It helps if the pan you seared them in is oven safe.

Toss your broccoli in a little olive oil, salt and pepper and add it to the oven too, roasting for about 15-20 minutes. When done, toss in a bowl with a squeeze of lemon juice and some extra virgin olive oil.

Once the lentils or beans are cooked, remove the parsley stems and bay leaf and pour away most of the water from the pot. Mash the garlic cloves up with a spoon, mix in with the lentils or lentils, and dress them using 4 tablespoons of good extra virgin olive oil and 1 or 2 tablespoons of good vinegar. Throw in all your finely chopped parsley leaves, mix, and season.

Remove the sausages from the pan and pour away any fat. Transfer lentils or beans into your serving bowl. Remove the cinnamon stick from the salsa and discard it, then season well to taste and spoon it over your lentils or beans. Place the sausages, either sliced or whole, on top. Sprinkle with the thyme or parsley and serve with a big bowl of the roasted broccoli.

Starting this meal off? A killer antipasto platter I put together with — roasted red pepper, marinated artichoke hearts, roasted garlic, olives, prosciutto, mole salami, marinated mushrooms and aged provolone.