Are you looking for a super-easy dinner with salmon? You’ve come to the right recipe – this one’s so simple – as long as you’re willing to do the cedar-plank thing on the grill.

Not taking a lot of time to hunt for a recipe this time, I just googled “cedar plank salmon.” The #1 recipe came from the Food Network. It’s a Steven Raichlen recipe, but from what I read, Bobbie Flay must have had him on his BBQ show and prepared this dish. What convinced me was the 5-star rating. I read through some of them – a few people didn’t like the quantity of mustard or thought it was bitter. My thought is that they used cheap Dijon. If you use the real stuff, particularly the Maille brand, there won’t be any bitterness. I did reduce the quantity of both mustard and brown sugar, and we were ooohing and aaahing as we ate it.

First we soaked a cedar plank (one worked for the portion we were grilling, but you might need 2) for about 2 hours in cold water. Then the plank itself went onto a medium-hot grill for about 4 minutes. That gave it time to steam-out most of the water, but got the plank super-hot. Then my DH turned the plank over and carefully placed the lightly slathered and brown sugared salmon fillet (pictured at left with the slather and sugar ready for grilling) on top of the plank. The lid was closed, the heat reduced just slightly, and 10 minutes later the salmon had reached 135°F and it came off. When Dave lifted the lid the last time (he checked the temp of the fish twice) a big plume of smoke engulfed him and burned his sinuses a little. He had a honkin’ headache for the rest of the evening, poor guy. Beware of that, my friends! He said the plank was slightly in flames too, but it didn’t reach the fish. Obviously, you toss the plank once it’s used. You could also do this in the oven, I suppose, but not with the cedar plank – unless you do it at a lower temp. You don’t want that kind of smoke swirling around in your oven.

The salmon needed nothing else – perhaps I could have served it with a little wedge of lemon – but it truly didn’t need it. It was a tiny bit crispy along the edges (from the brown sugar) and the mustard added just a lovely character to the fish. It was perfectly done, juicy, flaky. Delicious.

What’s GOOD: rip-roaring easy and tasty. That’s about all I can say, it should be enough for you to try this super-simple recipe. Good enough for guests too. I haven’t tried oven roasting this, but it should be easy to do that if you don’t want to cedar plank it.
What’s NOT: nada, nothing!
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After I got this recipe at a Phillis Carey cooking class a month or more ago, I came home and made it the very next night. I keep salmon, vacuum sealed, in my freezer all the time since it will defrost in a matter of an hour or so plunged into a bowl of water, weighted down (so you keep the frozen food under water) with a bowl on top and a big heavy item inside (like a big can of tomatoes, or something weighing about 2-3 lbs.).

First off, make the tartar sauce so it has a bit of time to marry the flavors (from the artichoke hearts [not the marinated kind], red onion, capers, green onions and pickles). Refrigerate it for a few hours if you can spare the time. I think mine only got to sit for about an hour and the last 30 minutes I took it out of the refrigerator to reach closer to room temp. Meanwhile I got out all the ingredients to make the salmon itself.

Pecans are called for in this recipe, but you can use almonds as well, if you prefer them. You season the salmon with a bit of salt and pepper, dredge the pieces in flour, then dip into an egg and milk mixture and then dip them into the pecans and bread crumbs. That you can do an hour or so ahead of time. The salmon is browned in a sauté pan, then popped in the oven for 6-8 minutes (depending on how thick the salmon is). That’s it. Serve with the tartar sauce. If you sauté the salmon in a pan that can also go into the oven, that will help with the cleanup. Dinner was done in a jiffy. During the baking time I quick-like made a vegetable and did a quick salad too.

What’s GOOD: the flavor, first and foremost. But also, this dish is so easy to make. Loved the artichoke hearts in the tartar sauce. That part was just “different.” Would make a very lovely company meal, too.

What’s NOT: really nothing.

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It’s fun being a teacher in the kitchen. All of our 3 children know how to cook, and during their growing-up years they helped in the kitchen. For a year or so during the teens, each kid had to cook a meal for everyone once a week. Skip forward 25 years, and now our various grandchildren are visiting from time and time. I’ve spent patient hours in the kitchen with each of them, helping them to master a recipe or two. Mostly it’s seemed to be cookies, because that’s what they wanted to make. Fine with me. This time, it was our oldest grandson’s [girl] friend Mary’s turn. She’s never cooked, so with coaching from me, she made dinner!

Logan had asked for salmon. I chose a recipe I’ve been wanting to make anyway, and with a couple of exceptions, I had all the ingredients. I had lemons, not limes, and I didn’t have any fresh dill. But this recipe was delicious enough as is – but yes, next time I try it I’ll buy limes and dill.

There’s Mary listening to me explain about something. I talked to her about Sichuan pepper, what a “pinch” was, and how to drizzle. Also how to use a mortar and pestle, grate fresh ginger, chop and sauté mushrooms in butter, make rice (she’d done that before). She was a very good student – I demonstrated some of the things and she quickly tried it and did it all very well.

We used a rice cooker, did the mushrooms separately, and combined them at the end. The salmon was prepped with some fresh ginger spread on each piece, salt, the Sichuan pepper, red peppercorns, a bit of oil, then they were baked in foil packets – about 10+ minutes. Mary made a green salad – I already had some of my Molasses Honey Vinaigrette in the refrigerator, so Mary just had to chop up the salad.

It was a lovely dinner. Mary did a superb job of getting everything done and the dinner came together well. And the salmon? It was really, really good. I think we all liked the crunch of the red peppercorns, and the amount of heat from the Sichuan pepper was just right.  The little crunch from fleur de sel on top was an added, nice crunch. As I mentioned, with Mary’s help, we made a rice cooker batch of basmati rice with mushrooms that was fabulous. I’ve included it in the recipe below. It was so good I made the rice again some days later for an Indian chicken dinner, which I’ll write up in a few days.

What’s GOOD: the salmon was cooked perfectly (almost under-done, but it was cooked through) and we all liked the seasonings a lot. The foil packet made it so simple with an easy clean-up. I’d definitely make this again, and it’s nice enough to make for guests too. The little drizzle of cream on the salmon at the end (just before serving) gave it a little lusciousness, although almost once poured you couldn’t see it – it was only a teaspoon per serving. I’d definitely make this again. I don’t guarantee the flavors if you use anything but the red peppercorns. Black ones would be oh-too strong, for sure.

What’s NOT: nothing at all.

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If it were possible I’d be poising my fork or spoon right there in that sauce and poking a little piece of salmon to eat with it. So easy to make. So decadent. If you’re watching calories, read no further – just forget this one!

It must have been about 20 years ago that I first had “burr-blahnk.” (Please – do laugh at and with me here . . . ) Having never heard of it, I knew nothing of its spelling, let alone its origins (French) and it’s meaning (beurre means butter and blanc means white, and in this case it means white wine). Thus, a white wine and butter sauce. We were in a fish restaurant, with white tablecloths, and I know the waiter looked down his very long nose at me, that I didn’t know about it. I went right home and looked it up, only to discover that it’s just a butter sauce, but made very exactingly so it doesn’t separate.

Phillis Carey served this salmon dish at a recent cooking class I went to, and gosh, was that saffron sauce delicious. You can see a tiny strand of saffron down in the right front of the sauce in the photo above. She was very generous with the saffron when she demonstrated, so it came out a really gorgeous golden color, and you could taste the saffron.

First you need to prepare the achiote paste and flour mixture. What is it, you ask? The spice mixture (sold in a chunk as in the picture at left) usually includes annatto (they’re seeds, from an annatto tree), Mexican oregano, cumin, clove, cinnamon, black pepper, allspice, garlic, and salt. The annatto seeds dye the mixture red, and this gives the meat or vegetables it seasons a distinctive red hue. Some regular grocery stores carry it – if not, seek out a Mexican or South American market. The mixture is believed to be Mayan in origin. Anyway, you mix the achiote with flour and dip the salmon into it. Achiote gives a lovely red color to things, and it gives off a bit of heat as well. In my book, this version is a very mild amount. If you’re sensitive, you can leave it out.

The salmon fillets are seasoned with salt and pepper, then dipped into the achiote flour mixture, then briefly browned in a skillet, just 1-2 minutes per side. Onto a parchment-lined baking sheet they go and roast for about 7-9 minutes. In that time you make the butter sauce. White wine, shallots, rice vinegar and saffron go into a sauce pan and cook briefly. Then you begin adding the butter in small amounts, watching very carefully that the mixture doesn’t boil (if it does, the sauce will separate and you might as well throw it out and start over). Kept just below a boil, you can add the butter in several batches, and whisk it around to melt. Once you add enough butter (and yes, you add a LOT) the sauce thickens some. At the end you add some orange zest, chives and salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, everything else about your dinner needs to be ready (hot plates, salads plated, vegetables made, rice put onto hot plates) so when it all comes together you’ll put those salmon fillets right onto the plate and drizzle the slightly thickened butter sauce over the top. This would make a lovely company meal, but you might enlist help from someone else to help get everything plated and ready when the sauce is done. You can reheat the sauce, but it’s very, very difficult to re-heat a sauce without it boiling, and that sauce will separate if you do. Trust me – I’ve done it – so I know!

What’s GOOD: Well, the sauce is just lovely. Really tasty. And yes, very decadent. Serve some rice alongside so if you can’t scoop up all the sauce with the salmon, you’ll get all of it with the rice. Serve a green veg with it to give nice color to the plate.
What’s NOT: if you watch fat grams and calories, forget this one. But really, each person only gets a couple of tablespoons of sauce, so it may not be so bad after all! You also need to pace your meal carefully and have everything all ready when the sauce is done.

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Having defrosted a nice chunk of salmon, I thought I would grill it and serve it with some kind of salsa or something, but when I asked my DH if that sounded good, he said no, it didn’t (we ate a lot of plain grilled salmon on our recent trip to the Pacific Northwest). So I had to figure out something else to do with it. This is what I concocted.

As a blog writer, I always think it’s important to tell you where a recipe comes from. I’m a reluctant innovator when it comes to cooking. Yes, I do veer off a recipe’s design sometimes, especially if I don’t have an ingredient or two. But more often than not, the first time I make something I make it according to the recipe. I don’t just open the refrigerator (or freezer) door and grab this and that and make it up as I go along.

So I went to that website I’ve told you about before, Eat Your Books, and did a search (amongst my own cookbook titles I’ve input there) for salmon. About the 3rd or 4th entry was a salmon soup. It sounded interesting. From an English cookbook, The New Covent Garden Book of Soups. (The last time we were in London – 10 years ago probably – I bought it at Harrod’s.) Then I went hunting for the cookbook on my cookbook shelves. And couldn’t find it. I dashed upstairs where I have another stack of cookbooks that I don’t use very often, and the most recent additions that came from our 2nd home we sold last spring. Most of the cookbooks that lived there had to find a home here. Nope, wasn’t there, either. Maybe I left that cookbook out there – I did leave a few for the new owners – wasn’t that generous of me  :-\. I thought I left just a few that I didn’t like particularly.

What I did have was the exact title for the recipe – so I did a web search for the recipe. Nope, not there either. What to do? The only thing I had to go on was the list of ingredients. I jotted them down and began to work on my own version of this soup since I had no quantities at all. I improvised a lot – I had onion, and I also added a shallot. I added celery because I think fish type soups always benefit from the flavor in celery. I added thyme as a flavoring as well, since I often like thyme in fish soups and chowders. I think canned tomatoes were listed, but I didn’t want a big 14 oz. can, so I added a can of salsa verde instead. I have some of Penzey’s seafood concentrate, so I used that too. The recipe called for milk, but somehow milk didn’t fit into my idea of a fish and tomato based salmon soup, so I eliminated that. A relish wasn’t even part of it, but I knew the soup contained “tomatoes” and “basil.” It could have been just a couple of small chunked-up tomatoes added into the soup liquid. The basil could have been dried. My mind conjured up a little tiny pile of fresh heirloom cherry tomatoes and some slivered basil carefully placed on top of the salmon cubes. There! A soup was created.

It wasn’t fancy. It didn’t take but about 20-30 minutes to make. The salmon was cut into big 1” cubes and I ever-so gently simmered them the last 5 minutes. I didn’t want the salmon to fall apart – I still wanted to see those big chunks. Everything worked just fine, and the flavor was really good. Not a normal kind of soup, for sure. If you think salmon and soup, likely you’d think chowder first. We did see salmon chowder on more than one menu when we were on our trip. Having used the canned salsa as part of the soup, it actually gave it a lot of zip. If you don’t like chile heat, use canned tomatoes instead.

What’s GOOD: how easy it was to make. Very tasty, filling, satisfying and simple. Just right for a weeknight dinner with some bread and butter. Using canned salsa made the soup pretty spicy, so use your discretion if you don’t like heat. If you like, toast a thick piece of white bread (a country loaf type or sourdough) and put it in the bottom of the bowl, then ladle the soup on top and garnish. I actually added some quartered brussels sprouts to this recipe just to give some added veggies. Most folks don’t like them, so I left those out of what I printed below. Zucchini would be a good substitute.
What’s NOT: nothing, really.  I’d make it again.

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Perfectly cooked salmon that’s pre-marinated in a lemon herb mixture, then served with a lemony beurre blanc (i.e. lots of butter) sauce with capers. Each serving gets just a little bit of sauce, so it’s not so awfully wicked.

Surely I have no shortage of salmon recipes here on my blog, but I’m always open for another new preparation, especially when it’s served with this delicious, butter and lemon caper pan sauce. The recipe came from a recent cooking class with my favorite instructor, Phillis Carey. It’s not difficult – in fact it’s quite easy – although the sauce can be a bit tricky.

The SALMON: First you’ll marinate the salmon for no more than an hour. 15 minutes is better than no time in the marinade, but 1 hour is ideal if you can make the time. Then you either grill the salmon (you could do it on a stovetop grill also), or you can do long, slow baking, or you can do a slow broil. Read the recipe for instructions on doing any of those methods. My favorite method is the slow broil. Even the phrase sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? Broil means high-high heat. And yes, it does, but to do a slow broil you put the fish on a broiler pan and place it 8-10 inches below the broil element. That way you don’t have to turn the fish over – it cooks completely this way. It’s a Phillis technique, and I’ve used it numerous times since she first taught it at a cooking class I went to about a year ago.

The SAUCE:  Well, the sauce is really a buerre blanc and Phillis just makes it a little different with the addition of capers. You could also use dill or basil if you don’t like capers. I do, so I knew I’d love the sauce. The only thing to remember about making the sauce is to NOT allow the mixture bubble or boil or the sauce will separate and it’s ruined. Well, you could serve it, but it would just look like hot butter. When you add the butter gradually and keep the temp below a simmer, the sauce is slightly thickened. You need to serve it immediately, however.

The other trick to the sauce is to have EXACTLY 1/4 cup of liquid in the pan when you start to make it. If you have more, then you’ll have to add more butter. Less and the sauce will be too buttery. Once you remove all the shallots, pour out the liquid and measure it. If it’s a smidge over, put it back on the flame and reduce it to that perfect 1/4 cup. Beurre blanc isn’t a sauce that can easily be increased for a larger quantity – make it in 2 pans and ask someone else to help with the last-minute butter additions. If you’ve never made a beurre blanc, I might suggest you make it once – do it for a weeknight dinner so you understand how the chemistry works. Serve it over relatively plain chicken breasts or another kind of fish.

What’s GOOD: the fish, if cooked properly, is meltingly tender and tasty, and the sauce! Oh yes, the sauce is so darned good. Buttery. Rich. Understand, though, that you only eat a little tiny bit of it – it’s all you need!
What’s NOT: only the careful work needed to make the sauce – that’s why I suggest you make it once before you try it for guests. It’s not difficult.

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Three separate things to make for this meal – marinate the fish (easy) – chop up the tomato salsa stuff (also easy) – and whisk the balsamic vinaigrette (nothing to it, really). It’s worthy of a company meal. Plus, except for cooking the fish, everything can be done ahead.

First thing, I grabbed the package of fish out of the freezer. It was vacuum sealed, so I put it in a large bowl, filled it with cold tap water and weighted it down for a couple of hours. That method doesn’t work quite as well with big roasts and things, but it sure is a simple defrosting method for anything flat. I’ve learned now that it’s very safe leaving that kind of defrosting package, in the bowl, in the kitchen sink, weighted, for several hours. Not all day – that wouldn’t work, I’m afraid – if you’re at work all day.

Then I made the vinaigrette. I have a bunch of different balsamic vinegars – the one I used this time was tangerine, but you can also use just plain, ordinary types too. Even the cheap grocery store stuff will work on this recipe because the astringency of the balsamic is muted significantly by all the other stuff going on on top of this fish! Then I made the salsa – now, this isn’t an ordinary Mexican style salsa at all – it’s an Italian style. Except for the fresh chiles, it could be a Latin type. This one uses cayenne – I used the Mercken spice I have in my pantry – it’s a Chilean chile powder mixture that’s a regular condiment on the tables of most people in that country. But just use cayenne, since most people won’t have the Mercken. The salsa has parsley instead of cilantro and fresh oregano instead of any other seasoning. Taste it as you make it – to make sure it has balance (of sweet, sour, salt, etc.).

Meanwhile, the fish is marinated, sort of, in a little bit of olive oil, fresh chopped thyme, salt and pepper. You could do that several hours ahead, cover and keep in the refrigerator. I just let it sit for 30 minutes or so, out on my kitchen counter. I cut the fish into serving portions just to make it easier to cook it in a frying pan.

The original recipe for this came from an Italian cook and chef, Nadia Frigeri. Many years ago I took several cooking classes from her – and learned how to make her polenta, and a variety of other Italian dishes. And this was one of them, and I forget about making it!

The recipe indicates to grill the fish – which you can – but it was blisteringly hot the night I made this, and I didn’t want to make my hubby stand outside at all. I’d cranked our A/C down to 73° so I could stand to cook in the kitchen at all. First I browned the fish on both sides in olive oil, then added some water and a lid and let it steam/simmer for a few minutes. Nothing fancy about that. Just don’t over cook it!

To serve, you drizzle a bit of the vinaigrette on the plate or platter, place the hot-from-the-grill fish, then spoon the salsa on top, drizzle with the remaining vinaigrette and top with toasted pine nuts.

What’s GOOD: the lovely, white flaky fish is foremost, of course. I loved the salsa and the balsamic sauce – it was just a wonderful combination. And the little bit of crunch from the pine nuts too. There’s enough of the salsa for each bite to contain some.
What’s NOT: there is nothing not to like about this. As I mentioned, it would make a great company meal. Easy too.

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Wow. Was this easy baked salmon ever off the charts delicious! I almost can’t wait to make it again, it was that good. The salmon is flavored with red onions, garlic and green onions, then soaked in olive oil, agave nectar and lime juice. And an itty-bitty pinch of cinnamon.

This salmon dish could hardly be easier. Well, maybe a little, but we’re not talking much effort to make this, that’s all I’m saying. The recipe came from a fellow blogger, Karina Allrich, also known as the Gluten-Free Goddess. Karina eats GF (gluten free), but she has plenty of “regular” recipes as well (meaning they’re not alternative-flour-centric) on her very popular blog. This one was from some years ago. I used the essence of it and adapted it slightly to suit our family. Agave nectar, although it’s a low glycemic carb and slow absorbing into the body of a normal person, is still SUGAR to a any person, let alone for a diabetic, like drinking sugar syrup.

At left is a photo of the fish before I sealed it up in foil – onions, garlic, green onions and you can see the olive oil/agave mixture around the bottom.

There were 4 of us for dinner that night, and since this dish is made in individual foil packets (hooray for easy cleanup!), I was able to adapt my DH’s serving with less agave. The other 3 portions were as the recipe shows below. Here’s what I did differently from Karina’s recipe: (1) I sprayed the foil to make sure the salmon wouldn’t stick; (2) I reduced the amount of agave and olive oil, just because I thought 1/3 cup of each was more than needed for 4 servings – in any case, you don’t eat all of it anyway; and (3) I used ample of the dark green part of the green onions – flavor, I suppose, but also for color. The only thing I’ll do differently next time – and I’ve put this in the recipe below – is place the slices of garlic underneath the salmon. We found the garlic was still nearly raw when placed on top of the salmon. Perhaps if the garlic was placed in direct contact with the salmon flesh it would cook, but I’d put the onions on first, then the garlic and they were definitely raw. Anyway, I salted and peppered the salmon first, added the pinch of cinnamon, then thin slices of red onion are placed on the salmon fillets, a bunch of the green onions, then I mixed up the olive oil/agave mixture and used a spoon to drizzle it all over the top of the salmon. It puddled below in the packet, but all of the salmon was dampened with the mixture. Then, just before sealing it up I squeezed a half of a lime over the top – I drizzled it directly on the salmon. The packets were sealed up, then I placed them on a big rimmed baking sheet (4 just barely fit).

The 350° was just right – the salmon cooked in exactly 20 minutes. The fillets we had were about 1” at the thickest part, so 20 minutes was perfect. If you have thinner fillets, you’ll want to reduce the baking time by a few minutes.

What’s GOOD: every single, solitary morsel of this dish was fantastic. The fact that it’s relatively easy to make just made it even more fun to prepare. Worthy of a company meal for sure. The taste is on the sweet side – just know that going in.
What’s NOT: nothing. Absolutely nothing!

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Love trout? If so, you’ll enjoy this unusual sauce. Bacon, yes. Onions, yes. But raisins and trout? Really different, but somehow they’re perfect too.

This is only the 2nd trout recipe here on my blog. It’s not something I ever seek out, and even though I see them at the markets frequently enough, I breeze on by. There’s a reason. Reasons. I hate bones. Really I do. I’ll avoid eating any kind of fish that has a high risk of bones. Not that I’ve ever swallowed one. I haven’t. But I hate picking bones out of my mouthful of fish. And if there are 4 fish portions on a platter, with just one of them with some accidental bones, guess who will get that serving? Always me. And this filleted trout – sure enough – I did get one bite with bones. It didn’t exactly ruin it for me, but it made me sigh. Of course, I’d get bones. And these were the little itty-bitty tiny ones, so I had to spit out the whole bite. The other reason is that as a child, I had to eat a lot of trout, caught by my Dad when we’d go camping every year in the California Sierra mountains. My dad was an avid fisherman, but only for freshwater trout. Rainbow, Dolly Varden mostly.

When I wrote up my other post about trout I told the story about our camping trips when I was a youngster. They were our annual vacation when I was about age 5-12. At age 14 we moved for a few years to Newport, Rhode Island, so no fishing trips during that time. Back in California once again, and after I left for college, my parents continued to go camping, but I think they bought a trailer then. Prior to that it was tent camping, always alongside a stream. I do have fond memories of a couple of the campgrounds, some on the west slope of the Sierras, near Sonora, and some on the eastern slope NW of Bishop at Virginia Lakes.

I liked to read even then, and usually my Mom brought along several new magazines, like McCalls, Ladies Home Journal, and always the Reader’s Digest and I read those cover to cover. I remember reading a few paperback books back then too. Occasionally I’d go fishing with my Dad. My Mom did fish a little bit, but it was my Dad’s passion, not my mother’s. And it certainly wasn’t mine, either. I didn’t catch many, and it seemed so tedious from the vantage point of a youngster, to stand on the shore of a lake or stream and keep casting out into the water and slowly, sometimes jerkily (on purpose) reeling in the hook and line.

My Dad made his own lures for several years. On a whim I just now went to the ‘net and sure enough, the lures my dad used to make, called super-dupers, are still made and still sold. Back in the late 40’s and early 50’s they were expensive – and new. If you’re a fisherman, you know that if fish are biting on some new fangled lure, then you’d better have some. I helped my dad make dozens and dozens of these lures and he gave them to old friends and new fishing friends he’d meet beside the lakes and streams.

Anyway, since many of you may have read about this story before, my Dad was happiest when he came back to camp in the mornings, before breakfast, with a creel full of trout. There was a limit of how many he could catch (I don’t recall what it was) and it was always my Dad’s goal to catch “the limit.” He’d dutifully clean them and they’d go into a separate ice chest in our camp. And then we’d eat breakfast. Usually pan fried trout coated in cornmeal and fried in bacon grease, along with eggs and toast. Lunch, maybe something else, but trout was always on the menu for dinner. My mother and I got very tired of trout, and truly, so did my Dad. Finally my mother would issue an edict – my Dad couldn’t catch any more trout until we’d eaten up all the fish we had. That was a tall order since my Mom and I had stopped eating them. So my Dad would reluctantly give them away. Oh, it pained him to give them away. But what was even funnier, to me, was that most other campers, strangers and friends alike, all had more than enough fish themselves. Only people who were new arrivals didn’t have any – yet.

Obviously it was on these camping trips, eating trout morning and night, that I developed my aversion to bones. And I can’t say that trout is something I ever order, hardly. Yet it’s a very delicate flavored fish, and there’s nothing wrong with trout. It’s just not a favorite for me. But if you like trout, you’ll surely like this recipe.  Tarla Fallgatter prepared it at a cooking class recently. I found the recipe (Tarla made a few changes to it) online, as it was printed in Gourmet, in March of 2007. The sauce is the best part of it – I think trout and bacon do go together somehow. The sauce is very easy to make – bacon, onion, raisins, wine vinegar, sugar and salt. The trout is filleted, hopefully, and it’s drizzled with a little oil and given a rub-dub with some kind of Creole or spicy spice rub and broiled. It’s done in no time flat, then serve with the sauce and some Italian parsley on top.

What’s GOOD: the delicacy of the trout flesh, and the combo with the bacon/raisin sauce. It’s really very tasty with trout. This recipe is also very easy.

What’s NOT: actually nothing, unless you have an aversion to bones too. Did I mention that I hate fish bones? Tee-hee. The sauce is really, really good.

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Do you like crab? I sure do, yet I don’t get it – eat it – very often. Rarely, in fact. But this, oh, yes, I could eat this every so often. It takes some doing (i.e., there’s quite a bit of prep involved) but the result is succulent, sweet, ever-so tender and nearly falling apart with deliciousness.

I do hope all of you – since you’re foodies like I am – watch America’s Test Kitchen (the TV show). I have it automatically record on my Tivo, so I never miss a program. There have been many of them recording lately (more than one a week), and every single recipe they’ve made has been something I want to try. Which means I need to remember, the next time I’m at my computer, to go online to the TV series’ website to print it out. The website is different than the regular Cook’s Illustrated website. Why? Because you can get these recipes for free, whereas all the others are only available to subscribed members.

What I had in my refrigerator was one of those plastic “cans” of fresh crab, but they’re stabilized somehow and keep for quite awhile under refrigeration. You can get it at both Costco and Trader Joe’s. They’re one pound containers, with very little liquid. So, here’s the short-list of what has to be done:

1. Toast the panko in a nonstick skillet until the crumbs get golden brown
2. Soak the crab meat in milk for 30 minutes
3. Chop up some raw shrimp which is added into the mixture
4. Chop and cook some onion, celery and garlic
5. Combine the drained crab and shrimp with the veggies, a little jot of cream, Dijon, hot pepper sauce and lemon juice, some seasonings and form into balls and let them rest, refrigerated, for awhile
6. Gently – oh so gently – pat the toasted panko crumbs on both sides of each one
7. Fry the very fragile crab cakes in some vegetable oil until golden brown, turning them with 2 spatulas and serve them immediately!

It took me about an hour to do all that prep, and when I got to the final part of frying, I had a tough time keeping the crab cakes in one piece. The instructions are clear – fry over medium-high heat for 3-4 minutes with oil shimmering in the pan, turn them over (using 2 spatulas, mandatory), add a bit more oil, turn down the heat, and continue frying for another 2-3 minutes until they’re done. If you cook them long enough – and at the absolute perfect temp (whatever that is) the crumbs have turned a dark golden brown and they help hold the crab cakes together.

What there isn’t in these crab cakes is a stick of filler. No bread crumbs (the panko is just on the outside, none in the mixture), or eggs. Or flour. Nothing. So you can imagine how fragile they are. But I managed to get 5 of them to come out beautifully. The other two, not so much. But oh well, it didn’t make them taste any less delicious, so what does it matter, right? Be sure to use fresh crab, not canned. And be careful about how salty the crab is – crab meat from King crab legs are often quite salty. Soaking the crab in milk is a great step – moisture is provided and it takes away any kind of off-flavors that might be lurking in the shellfish.

What’s GOOD: the clean, fresh taste of the crab – no filler, just good flavor all around. And texture from the panko – gosh those panko crumbs do a great job providing texture. Be sure to serve these the moment they’re out of the pan – I mixed up a salad and already had it on the plate so it was easy to place the crab cakes next to it and whisk the plates to the table. Except for taking the picture you see at the top!
What’s NOT: if I had to complain about anything it would be the amount of prep. But then, some things do take awhile to prepare – you want good flavor? then sometimes it requires some elbow grease, like these did.

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