Sweet & Sour Scallops

Frequent readers of this space may recall that we were introduced to the world of infused olive oils and vinegars in essentially the same way we were introduced to each other. That is, our UMBC alumni magazine introduced us to Lebherz Oil & Vinegar Emporium in Frederick, Maryland shortly after it was opened by a fellow graduate, and shortly after we launched this blog. A quick keyword search reveals that we frequently turn to L.O.V.E. for inspiration.

While we still visit that original shop whenever we are in the area, we were pleased to see a similar purveyor open much closer to home Ripe from the Vine in Marion, Massachusetts. When visiting this weekend, Pam bought two large bottles of chipotle olive oil, leading the proprietor to ask if we had tried this in combination with pineapple -- on scallops!

An unexpected combination that we will
be trying in other dishes.

We were on the way to Kyler's Catch at the time, with the intention of making Vincent Price's scallops Sauté Meunière to share with Pam's visiting sister. During the car ride, we figured out that I could cook the dish in exactly the same manner, but using chipotle-infused oil and butter for the sauté stage and the pineapple-infused vinegar with white wine in the deglazing stage (instead of lemon juice). We picked up that white wine on the way to the fish monger -- Löss & Lehm Grüner Veltliner from our friends at Stevie's in Fairhaven.

The result: scrumptious, even decadent, and pairing well with the wine I used in the deglazing.

I confess to taking a big shortcut on sides, in part because I am trying to baby an injured left knee. So those are just what they look like: canned cranberries from our local growers cooperative (aka Ocean Spray) and slightly enhanced Annie's mac & cheese. 

Lagniappe

Lebherz introduced us to the idea of flavored vinegars as a topping for ice cream. I fully intend to try this one on a coconut dessert this summer!

Fish Poached in Wine Sauce

 As James mentioned in his recent post on Herb-Crusted Salmon we each selected a seafood recipe from our cooking-with-wine cookbooks. I used the index-card-sized Cooking Seafood and Poultry with Wine by Bruce Carlson to prepare white fish poached in white wine (in this case Chablis). One of the earliest recipes I posted on this blog was for Fish in a Packet: this recipe is not unlike that one, except that it used wine, and it also included a cream sauce. 

The fish fillet was placed in a foil packet along with 2/3 c. of wine, a bit of minced onion, some fresh parsley, and a tablespoon of butter, and some salt and pepper. I put the packet onto a baking sheet and baked at 375 for 20 minutes. Meanwhile I prepared the sauce in my indispensable cast-iron skillet. I melted 3 T. butter and blended with 3 T flour and stirred until smooth. I added 1/2 of heavy cream and when the fish was done in the oven poured some of the liquid from the packet into the sauce, and stirred. I moved the fish to a platter and poured the sauce over it, then sprinkled with fresh parmesan cheese and placed under the broiler for about a minute to brown.

This was quite delicious. Of course we paired it with the same wine we used in cooking.

Herb-Crusted Salmon

Sometimes I know a dish is going to taste better than it looks, and I take a photo of some of the ingredients at a photogenic moment in the preparations. I failed to do that in the case of this salmon dish -- and I'm not quite certain there was such a moment -- but I a leading with this record shot in hopes that some will find it inspiring.

The full title of this recipe if Herb-Crusted Salmon with Sun-Dried Tomato Sauce, which I made with fairly close to the directions found under that title in Bonnie Jesseph's W.I.N.O.S.: Cook with Wine, a 2006 spiral-bound volume whose acronymic name refers to Women In Need Of Sanity. The book has a bit of a silly presentation, but at heart is rather a comprehensive collection of ways to use wine in the preparation of many kinds of dishes.

In this case, we had decided to do something new with seafood for the weekend, so before I headed to our favorite fishmonger (Kyler's Catch in New Bedford), Pam and I each thumbed through a different wine-themed cookbook. (She poached cod in chablis a couple days later.) I had been thinking recently about sun-dried tomatoes, so this title caught my eye immediately. It took me as long to find those (not packed in oil) hidden in our local grocer's produce aisle as it did for me ultimately to cook the fish!

This is a fairly simple dish with just a few components. Because I knew each part of it would be needed quickly, I took the instructions somewhat out of order. 

I turned the oven on to 400F, convection. Then I started on the crustiness: I blended panko and cornmeal with dried basil, oregano, and rosemary -- just a small amount on a plate. Then I removed the skin from a perfect salmon fillet -- this was fairly easy, though I know the folks at Kyler's have the skills and knives to do this almost effortlessly. I usually just cook salmon with skin-side down, but breading this would make that weird, I supposed.

I then minced both a shallot and the equivalent of five sun-dried tomatoes (actually dried, not in oil). In a. small, indispensable cast-iron skillet, I sautéed the shallot for just a minute or two and then added the tomato, some lemon juice, and just 1/4 cup dry white wine all at once. I stirred this until reduced, and then left it warming on the lowest possible heat. (The recipe suggests reducing, allowing to cool, and then reheating; this made no sense to me.) 

Meanwhile, I sprayed Pam (the spray, not my spouse) in a casserole dish; I probably should have just used a little oil. I then dredged the salmon in the crumb/herb mix and simply placed it in the pan. This recipe would easily work for up to 4 smaller fillets; I had a single one-pounder. The crumb adhered better than I expected after pressing it a bit on both sides.

Side note: I had boiled a pan of water previously and now returned it to heat so that I could make some simple Aunt Annie's mac & cheese. Sometimes even a foodie wants a simple side of comfort food. I prepared it in my usual way, which is to add a generous shredding of cheddar to the mix-made cheddar it comes with. 

Back to the fish -- at 10 minutes, I noticed it was a bit dry, so I decided to spoon the sauce (which was rather thickened at this point) onto the fish for the final minutes of baking. Cutting the fillet in half a couple minutes later, I noticed it was not quite flaky in the middle, so I did give it another 1 minute.

The result: savory, sweet, delicious. As is our wont, I cooked it with good wine, which we paired with the meal, rather than using purpose-bought "cooking" wine. In this case, it is was Löss & Lehm, an Austrian Grüner Veltliner that I first bought because the name is perfect for a soils nerd who has also studied German. But it turned out to be such good wine that we do pick it up frequently at our local purveyor.

Pineapple Salmon

A Tale of Double Leftovers

After enjoying a bounteous Easter dinner with friends last week, we left them with some lemony cake and they sent us off with a lot of delicious, spiral-cut ham. Neither of these are included in this recipe, but they are what got us here. 

That is to say, the availability of ham led us to make a wonderful, deep-dish ham-and-pineapple pizza in our indispensable cast-iron skillet. For that, I purchased a whole pineapple for the first time in a hound's age, but we only used half of it.

So off I went to Kyler's Catch for a wonderful fillet of salmon -- in this case, organically farmed Canadian. I have had some misgivings about farmed fish, but this is one I have started to embrace. 

I prepared it according to the simple Baked Pineapple Salmon recipe from Chef Jar, a site that was new to me -- with one important digression. I made rings (actually half-rings) from the half-pineapple (I always cut them lengthwise first) and thereby had almost no pineapple juice for the sauce.

The editing and formatting over at Chef Jar is pretty terrible; I realized after the fact that its "Jump to Recipe" link would have been preferable to navigating the three different ingredient lists and the random advice that is scattered throughout the main body of the article. 

The result was delicious and beautiful, paired nicely with rice and Löss & Lehm organic Grüner Veltliner from Stevie's.

Lagniappe: The Next Days

For those still wondering about our leftovers, we can report that Pamela found the perfect way to use the rest of the ham; Sunday was National Eggs Benedict Day

And because I can only make rice with one cup of rice and two+ cups of water, there is always leftover rice. Hence Monday's rice and beans -- and a caught-up kitchen! 

A very lemon-y meal

We recently bought some lemon-infused olive oil, as well as some white balsamic vinegar, so we've been on the look out for lemony recipes. (This post describes a meal by Pamela and a dessert by James; Pam writes first.)

I chose Lemon Chicken with Garlic-Chile Oil from the New York Times Cooking Page for last night's dinner. The recipe is clear that the garlic oil be cooked slow so as not to burn, and then removed from heat, but I admit to simply adding my chicken breasts to the cooked oil, and then keeping the heat low. This did mean that the chicken took longer to cook, but the garlic never burned and the chicken was tender and flavorful in the end. As a side dish I prepared Greek Lemon Potatoes (made with the lemon olive oil) and topped it off with some of the Lemon Bundt Cake James made for Easter dinner.

James continues (writing a few days later) ...

I did indeed prepare the lemon Bundt cake, based on the New York Times recipe Pam mentions above. But I took the lemon-ness to a higher level -- incorporating all of Yossy Arefi's excellent ideas and adding some of my own. In fact, my intentions for this cake were what had gotten us to the oil-and-vinegar store the week prior. (It does not take a lot to convince us to go to these stores, and in fact we have two, in Marion and in Fredrick.)

Photo: Yossy Arefi

I must first recognize Arefi's most important contribution. Step 4 of her recipe looks complicated at first, but it is an elegant way to make sure that every lemony part of the lemons ends up in the cake, with the pithy white part between the rind and the fruit removed. Standing the lemons on end as she suggests makes this easy.

The recipe calls for 3/4 of a stick of butter, plus 1/4 cup of neutral oil, by which I assume she intends canola or the like. I substituted the lemon-infused olive oil that Pam mentions above, raising the lemon quotient just a bit.

The real difference is in the glaze. I remembered the glaze that helped us win an award from Marley Coffee for my mocha cake, and simply lemonized that concept. I substituted lemon-infused white balsamic vinegar for some of the juice in the glaze. I might never make a glaze without balsamic again!

A pasta recipe I won't be making again

Ricotta cheese and penne pasta were the reasons for choosing this recipe from the 365 Ways to Cook Pasta Cookbook - not because we are particularly enamored of these two ingredients, but because we already had some open ricotta that we did not want to go to waste and, likewise, we had some penne pasta in the cupboard. The other ingredients include fresh basil and fresh tomato (both hard to come by in New England at this time of year) as well as garlic, lemon zest, salt and pepper, and "fruity olive oil" - I used lemon olive oil. I will admit that I would have preferred basil and tomato in season, and I didn't use lemon zest, but rather a lemon pepper seasoning to substitute, but I don't think these reasons were why we decided that it was a once-in-a-lifetime meal. James' assessment that it was too "ricotta forward" is more in line with our thoughts. The recipe is similar to Pasta Fresca which is made with mozzarella and is one of our favorites - eat this; not that.