Oh my. Oh my. Yes, this was SO wonderful. Can’t wait to eat the left overs, which will be gone by this evening. This is a quick dinner, as long as you have all the ingredients (shrimp, heavy cream, chives, parsley, FRESH lemon juice, angel hair and zucchini). If you love pasta, and shrimp – well, this dish is IT.

If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you’ll already know that I don’t make pasta very often. Even though I love it, it’s not good for my DH (Type 1 diabetic) and probably not all that great for me, either. But sometimes, for a splurge, we have it. And oh, am I ever glad. This dish was downright sensational. And EASY. Our granddaughter Taylor was here, and although she professes to not like fish or shellfish, she ate all but one shrimp on her plate. Her Dad, Todd, loves shrimp, so he had no trouble downing all of his own plus any of Taylor’s discards.

The inspiration for this recipe came from Simply Recipes, a blog I read regularly. As long as I’ve been reading food blogs, Elise’s has been one of my favorites. I love her easy-going writing style and her stories about her family’s recipes. I also love her recipe index. That might not sound so important to you – if you don’t write a blog, but recipe indexes aren’t automatically produced – nobody (that I know of) has written code to create recipe index entries when you post something new. I did use one for awhile, but it’s not meant for recipes and it was dreadfully hard to read. So when I go to Elise’s website I can easily find what I’m looking for. My recipe index here on my blog I created myself using the minimal amount of WordPress coding I know how to do, and I have to update it regularly. I do it about every 2 weeks or so. It’s tedious.

Anyway, back to shrimp and angel hair. The huge shrimp were defrosted first. Then I cut them up into manageable (and different) sizes. Some I chopped. Some I sliced in half lengthwise and then I left one whole for each serving.

These shrimp were huge, and probably not the ideal size for this dish as the whole (or even the half) shrimp required a knife and fork. But the whole and halves looked so pretty on the dish.

Even though there is heavy cream in this, I was almost surprised when I looked at the nutrition analysis to see that to serve 5, each serving has 20 grams of fat. Not too bad considering . . . We had a green salad to go with this, which added a few grams of fat also, but not much. So this dish wasn’t as wicked as you might think. Just so you know . . .

Elise’s recipe didn’t call for zucchini. I added it just cuz I wanted some veggies in it (although to tell you the truth – and you can see from the photo – you can’t even SEE the zucchini). I chopped/sliced up the zucchini in tiny little pieces. I also added some additional seasonings (thyme, oregano). I used fish stock (or you could use clam juice too) because I have some of Penzey’s soup bases in my frig, but Elise suggests chicken stock, which would be fine too. I also added a couple of cloves of minced garlic to the cream as it simmered with the zucchini.  When you simmer garlic in a sauce (not sautéed in oil, for instance) it mellows out. I grated just a bit more Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese than the original. And lastly, because I was using Meyer lemons (which are sweeter than regular lemons), I added just a bit more lemon juice. Oh yes, I also used more lemon zest too – half of it I put into the cream as it simmered, and the remainder I added just at the end.

What’s good: oh, everything! I just loved this dish. The lemon, you might think, could overwhelm the dish, or be acidic. It was neither. Even our son-in-law, who says he doesn’t love lemon particularly, thought it was very nicely balanced. I agree. Definitely a make-again dish. Nice for guests too.
What’s not: absolutely nothing at all.

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This is almost a soup. Yet it’s served kind of like a stew with rice. In either case, it’s a filling and very tasty way to use shellfish (especially the “Seafood Blend” at Trader Joe’s that combines all of those things in one convenient package).

At a cooking class a couple of weeks ago (all about fish) Phillis Carey fixed this delicious soup or stew or whatever you want to call it. I love these kinds of Thai-inspired saucy soups. It was easy to make and full of flavors I enjoy. If you happened to be in Trader Joe’s territory, do use their “Seafood Blend,” available in the freezer area (pictured at right). It’s just perfect for this! Phillis actually isn’t crazy about fish, so she likes to camouflage it with lots of other flavors (like sugar, Worcestershire, onions and oodles of coconut milk). Camouflaged or not, I like the flavors in this a lot. The shellfish is cooked only briefly (important), then combined with all the rest of the sauce ingredients, including the full-fat coconut milk. And do serve it over fragrant jasmine rice. Save a few of the herbs to sprinkle on top for garnish.

I didn’t have to thicken (reduce down) the sauce at all – it was sufficiently thick just from the flour that you toss the seafood mixture in before you add it to the pot. I didn’t use as much butter as her recipe called for, and I didn’t use as much brown sugar OR lime juice either. I started out with less (she suggested this might work) and didn’t think after tasting it that it needed more sugar (Phillis actually prefers a sweeter soup – she thinks it helps mask the fishy flavor). I’ve adjusted the recipe accordingly. I actually served it with brown jasmine rice, but after reading about all the arsenic in rice, I’ve thrown out the rest of the box and will use white rice in the future. Probably white jasmine – it’s wonderfully flavorful for this dish. Next time I’ll make it with low fat coconut milk – I really doubt it would make that much difference – Phillis said it would, but I may try it anyway.

What I liked: everything about it – maybe that it was easy to make! I served it to dinner guests and they both loved it. My hubby told me it was a real keeper. He doesn’t say that about very many recipes I make, so I take notice when he says it!

What I didn’t like: nothing at all!

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A really tasty piece of fish, if I ever had one. The buttermilk in the mix gives the coating a really light texture. What makes the coating, though, is the Ritz type crackers. Oh my!

No wonder this was so good! Ritz crackers. I never keep them on hand – I just know they’re bad for me. Trader Joe’s carries a cracker that’s similar, called Golden Rounds, which is what I used. Phillis Carey used the real thing in this recipe – an honest, to goodness, tube of Ritz (to serve 6 people requires 20 crackers). They went into a plastic bag and you use a meat pounder to reduce the crackers to fine crumbs. As flaky as they are, it didn’t take many raps to make them tiny pieces.

You can use a variety of fish – tilapia, or cod, halibut, sea bass or catfish, even. I used halibut because I got some nice fresh filets at Costco. The fish is dipped into flour first, then buttermilk, then the crumbs mixed up with Parmesan cheese. Ideally, do this part a few hours ahead and place the pieces on a sheet of parchment paper and refrigerate. When ready to cook, add oil and butter to the pan (you may have to do batches, so it’s 2 T. of butter for a pan full) and sauté the fish until they’re golden brown. Because of the butter, the cracker crumbs and the cheese, the fish browns beautifully. Turn over and brown the other side. Phillis’ recipe indicated to remove them to a rack, on a baking sheet and bake the fish for just a few minutes. The halibut I made wasn’t all that thick, so it didn’t require oven baking at all. To check, use a fork in the middle of a thicker piece, pull the fish apart slightly to see if it’s flaky. Have all the sauce ingredients all ready so the fish doesn’t get cold! It’s easy to make the sauce – lemon, wine, capers (in the pan the fish was browned in) and gently stir in the butter just at the last.

What I liked: the texture and the taste. This is going to become one of my regular rotation fish dinners. It was SO good.
What I didn’t like: well, you can’t make any of it ahead, really, except coating the fish, so you’ll spend the last 10-15 minutes at the stove and oven pulling it all together. But it’s worth it.

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If you had told me a month or so ago that I’d be CRAZY about asparagus pesto, I’d probably have thought you were brain-addled. Asparagus – well, I love it – but as pesto? It’s kind of hard to get your mind around that combination. You’ve gotta try it, though!

The oldest mention I found online about this pesto is from 1999, a Gourmet magazine issue. It’s not quite this same recipe, but very similar. I mean, pesto is pesto, meaning it’s a type of condiment – the main ingredient of course, be it basil, or cilantro, or Italian parsley – and in this case it’s asparagus. And it gets mixed with pine nuts (also a usual staple in pesto, although I’ve had it with walnuts too), garlic, olive oil and Parmigiano cheese. All yummy ingredients in my mind! But to put them together amazes me. Who THINKS these things, I want to know? More creative cooks than I, certainly. This recipe came from a cooking class with Phillis Carey, who keeps managing to find new and different ways to cook. It’s why I keep going back to her classes – she keeps me interested. And learning. I wouldn’t go to cooking classes if I didn’t learn something!

In the class she offhandedly mentioned that the sauce is good on fish or shrimp, and to serve it with coconut rice or buttered orzo. Or, to make it a pasta main dish – as a pasta sauce with fish or shrimp (or salmon). All those things sounded good. She prepared it with salmon and napped the sauce on top of it. So I’ve made it two ways so far – over pasta as a side dish, and with salmon. Both fantastic. Both worth making. But if you have left overs (as I did) then you’ll know you can make it other ways too. I think it could also be served as an appetizer with toasted bread.

One of the questions you might have – does it still taste like asparagus? Yes it does. And I wouldn’t have made it myself if you’d lose the asparagus flavor – why do that when asparagus has such a unique taste. But yes, the asparagus flavor is quite prominent. You also taste the Parmigiano. You can’t pick out the pine nut flavor, but am certain it wouldn’t be anywhere near as good without them.

My favorite of the two was with the salmon, and I’m including the full recipe for that below. Using a unique broil/bake method to cook the salmon. It’s so easy to do, and very, very tasty. Make the asparagus pesto several hours ahead (or even the day before) and cook the salmon at the last minute. The salmon is marinated for 20 minutes, then it’s baked – actually on the broil setting – but you put the pan way down low in the oven – so the salmon browns beautifully and cooks through without having to turn it over (such a nuisance, especially if there is skin attached). The salmon is so moist and succulent this way. Do put it on a heated plate, though, then spoon the pesto over the top. Don’t cover it – you want to see the beautiful browned salmon.

What I liked: every single solitary thing about it. Taste, texture, versatility and with salmon? Delish.

What I didn’t like: absolutely nothing at all. Very worth making.

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Okay, listen up, folks. If you like risotto, this one’s a winner. It’s going onto my “favorites” list, if that gives you a clue as to how delicious it is! It’s the lime juice and lemon juice that “make” this, in my opinion.

We had invited friends over for dinner a week or so ago, so I decided to fix this new recipe I’d acquired at a cooking class recently. I took photos of it at the time, intending to share it here, but then accidentally deleted all the photos. Duh! So I just had to make it sooner rather than later, that’s all.

This recipe does take a bit of prep, but once you have everything ready to go, it’s easy enough to start the risotto itself. You can do all that prep a few hours ahead. I made the marinade but didn’t put the shrimp in it until it was near to dinnertime. I’d prepped all the salsa mixture and I cut up the avocado too. One of the quick tricks Phillis Carey shared with us was about rinsing avocado in water. I guess I’d not heard that one before – if you rinse avocado in cold water, it will sit for a few hours without turning brown. Very simple, eh?

The risotto on its own, without the salsa part is fairly bland. But you add in the tomatoes, green onions, avocado pieces AND the lime juice (a must) it transforms this rice dish to spectacular. The Parmigiano doesn’t hurt, either. The raw shrimp slumber in a citrus marinade for about an hour, then are briefly grilled (you could do this on a stovetop grill too – or even do it in a frying pan if that’s easier). The risotto is like lots of other recipes – uses chicken broth, stirred a lot, then at the very end, when the Arborio rice is almost done (al dente is how you want it – with just a little bit of bite) you add in the colorful stuff – the tomatoes, avocado (and I added in some corn cut off the cob because I had some and remembered how good another of Phillis’ recipes was that included corn in a risotto). I added just a little more lime juice because I loved the tartness of it – be careful and don’t use too much.

Once it’s ready, have everything in place to portion out, garnish and serve before it gets cold. You’ll hear raves at the table, I promise. Even my DH commented to me the next morning how delicious this was. Phillis also said the recipe works equally well with salmon, halibut or sea bass instead of shrimp. I loved the shrimp, though.

Our friends brought a very simple baby arugula salad with a sweet lemon juice dressing that was a perfect foil to the risotto. And just because it was so good, I’m also showing you a photo of the dessert I made – it’s already on my blog – a very special dessert since plums are in season these days. This dessert, Purple Plum Torte,  is on my favorites list too – an all-time, highly-requested recipe from the New York Times. If you haven’t made this dessert yet after reading my blog about it, you’re missing a great addition to any menu. I served it with almond-flavored whipped cream.

What I liked: the piquant taste in the risotto (from the lemon and lime juices, I’d guess). I love everything in it and about it.

What I didn’t like: gracious . . . nothing at all. So worth making.

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You know, don’t you, that brown-ish food doesn’t photograph well. Period. And pictures don’t look very nice if you move the camera when you press the shutter. Da—! But that doesn’t detract one whit from the TASTE of these guys. Oh so delicious. Loved this stuff. Worth making.

If I’d read this recipe in a magazine I’d have slid right on by. If I’d seen it on one of the tv food shows, I might have changed the channel. But when it’s served to you at a cooking class and you taste it, well, that puts these in a whole new category! Shrimp sliders didn’t SOUND all that good, but if Phillis Carey was making them I really thought they’d be good. Indeed!

It’s not necessary to use huge shrimp in this, since it’s all pulsed in the food processor. But you do need RAW shrimp, not cooked. And tails off, too. The shrimp (cut up into smaller chunks) is whizzed up lightly with an egg yolk, green onions, Dijon, lime juice, cilantro and some seasonings. A little bit of panko crumbs go into the shrimp cakes too, and they’re dipped into more panko before frying in vegetable oil. Meanwhile, you make a very simple mayo based aioli (with garlic, lime juice, Dijon, sugar, hot sauce and green onions). A bit of that is spread on each bun, the shrimp cakes are put on, a bit more aioli and a nice-sized fresh spinach leaf and you’re done. Easy. And delicious. You can make the raw shrimp cakes several hours ahead of time, and the aioli. At dinnertime, all you’ll need to do is cook the shrimp cakes, toast the buns, and you’re done. Phillis says she makes these often for catered parties she does – she does them in much smaller form as an appetizer and folks dip them into the aioli. She used to have to cut little bread rounds to put them on, but now most stores carry slider buns. Makes it super easy!

What I liked: well, how much I even liked mushed-up shrimp in a cake/burger form. It was really, really delicious. I like the bit of chewiness to shrimp anyway. And I liked the garlicky aioli Phillis put with it. These are easy.

What I didn’t like: nothing, really. I liked it all. Worth making as I mentioned at the top.

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Luscious leeks in a bit of butter, a little jot of maple syrup, some orange juice, orange zest and some orange supremes over a salmon fillet and you’ve got a little salmon magic.

The photo doesn’t do this justice. The salmon fillet there on the bottom, is lapped with all those delicious morsels of leeks, maple syrup and orange segments. Oh my. This dish was absolutely fantastic. And EASY besides. I can’t take all the credit for this, as Phillis Carey devised the original recipe. I just did a riff on it and made up my own proportions. I added maple syrup and I added orange zest and the supremes as well.

The salmon almost cooked too long – it’s so hard to tell with salmon – I couldn’t have simmered it for more than about 5 minutes and already the white collagen had begun to seep up through the top layer, so I knew it was truly DONE. Quick like I took out the fish and finished the sauce with the addition of the zest, the orange supremes and a bit of cream. Really not very much – just enough to give the leek mixture some “sauce” consistency. Piled it on top of the fish and it was served.

Be sure to have everything else for your dinner completely finished before you start, as it comes together that quickly. Please make this!

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A so-very refreshing salad made with some grilled Cara Cara orange segments, some of those ultra-thin rice noodles, crab (or you could use chicken, or shrimp even) with a tangy citrus, garlic, lemon grass dressing. Add veggies of your choice (this one contains cucumber, carrots and mint).

It’s really quite fun cooking when somebody else has done all the sous-chef work, the grunt work. At the class I attended (sponsored by Sunkist, to introduce me to the cara cara oranges), they set up little work stations including one of those free-standing induction cooktops for each group of 3, so we grilled the oranges for this salad (I’d not done that before), made the dressing and put the salad together right there. We added in cucumber, a bunch of julienned carrots, a bunch of fresh mint and topped the salad with some chopped peanuts.

The oranges are drenched in a bit of the dressing, then grilled just long enough to get pretty grill marks on them, then they can be removed. This could be made ahead of time as the oranges don’t need to be served hot. The point is just to make them attractive! The rice noodles could be made an hour or so ahead of time too, although when they sit, they start getting sticky and it’s much harder to separate the strands. You don’t want big clumps of noodles that are very hard to eat. When you toss the dressing into the noodle mixture, mix it around – best method is your hands, although we didn’t do that!  – and separate the noodles as much as you can.

Over the years I’ve learned that it’s best to mix the main ingredients together and leave out the protein (crab, shrimp, chicken) and put those on each serving, so each person gets the same amount. Put a little bit of dressing on the crab too so all of the salad is dressed. You could add some sugar snap peas, some snow peas, some blanched asparagus cut up in pieces, even some very small florets of broccoli. It might not be quite so authentic, but it would be good! Put the pretty oranges on top, decoratively and you’re set. A bunch of green onions would be good in this too, including some of the dark green part.

What I liked: It was such a beautiful salad – the color contrasts were gorgeous (I suppose that’s the artist’s eye in me). The taste: really yummy. I liked the different textures and particularly liked the addition of the citrus.

What I didn’t like: really nothing. We don’t eat many carb-centric dishes, however, so it would be a special treat. I liked the crab and also think shrimp would be a great alternative. Worth making.

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Just plain and simple fish soup – no cream – nothing all that unusual, just lots of flavorful spices, tomatoes and some delicious broth – altogether good.

I had a number of filet of sole, individually frozen, in the freezer. And a nice piece of halibut. Plus a package of Trader Joe’s mixed shellfish. A marriage was made in this soup. My photo shows the title as Freshwater Fish Soup – well, I didn’t have the catfish and trout suggested in the recipe, so duh – it’s not really a freshwater fish soup at all. Forgive my mistake.

What I did have on my pantry shelf is, however, a can of Muir Glen tomatoes. I don’t know about you, but I always keep numerous cans of different tomato products on my pantry shelves – whole tomatoes, diced organic tomatoes as you can see in the photo, the fire-roasted tomatoes that are dear to my culinary heart, tomato sauce, tomato paste and even some sun-dried tomatoes too. So this time, I grabbed the diced tomatoes and added them to this simple soup – no cutting and chopping required. And nearly all of them are Muir Glen. Most grocery stores carry one or two types of their tomatoes, rarely do you find one that carries them all, so each different store I visit, I’ll pass by that section just to see.

Recently Muir Glen offered to send me their 2011 reserve selection – a lovely 4-pack of tomatoes, including two of their premium cans of “reserve” tomatoes. Those are only available by mail order, to the best of my knowledge. I certainly don’t hide my preference for Muir Glen tomatoes, and have mentioned them numerous times in the past with recipes.

Anyway, back to soup . . . using the website Eat Your Books, I found a recipe in an old cookbook I have – Crescent Dragonwagon’s book The Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread: A Country Inn Cookbook. The Inn (in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, Ozark country) isn’t open any longer, I discovered. We have friends who once stayed there; otherwise I’d have never discovered any of the numerous cookbooks by the author. Anyway, I own just this one book and have made soup from it numerous times (none of them since I’ve been blogging, I don’t think).

What I’ve always liked about the recipes is that they’re full of flavor. That’s my idea of a good cookbook. This recipe isn’t a difficult one – it’s really fairly straight forward. Don’t be intimidated by the long list of ingredients – it’s not all that difficult – or time consuming – to make this. I have in my frig a small container of fish soup base, that wonderful stuff made by Penzey’s. The recipe called for chicken stock, but why use that when you’ve got fish stock? The finished soup is very flavorful – it’s mostly fish, tomatoes, the soupy stock and a bit of rice. Not a lot of other vegetables, really. I added the baguette slices (they’re not in the recipe). Suit yourself – but we enjoyed that as a texture addition. The recipe has two components – the soup – and the fish. And really a third – the rice. The author fixes a pet peeve of mine – when you make fish soup, all the fish falls apart as you’re making it. Dragonwagon has you prepare the fish separately (and you use all the good broth from it in the soup so nothing’s wasted). And the rice – and not very much rice, which I liked. Only in the bowl do you co-mingle everything. A great idea, I thought. It’s a trick she developed when she ran her restaurant – people don’t like to eat fish soup with tiny flakes of fish – they want pieces. Her method works like a charm.

What I liked: this was clearly a fish soup – no waffling – there’s lots of fish in it. Good flavor; good broth. No cream. No thickening agent. Just the straight stuff. The different components are combined in the soup bowl – as long as the soup stock part is nearly boiling, you can pour it over the fish and rice and it all warms up to the right eating temperature.

What I didn’t like: nothing at all. Not very suitable for freezing, though. The fish would disintegrate, I think, in the process. So, make and eat.

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Last week our daughter-in-law, Karen, made this for dinner one night when our family was staying at our desert house. Can I just say it was absolutely delicious? And easy. Really easy. The recipe came from an unusual source. A cookbook, yes. But a very different cookbook! Recently our son and his family flew to the D.C. area to attend a wedding, and it was recommended by their host (the groom, a physician) that they should visit the (new since 2004) Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, and that they had to have a meal at the Mitsitam Café contained within the museum. That’s exactly what they did. And Karen was so impressed with the meal (the book is authored by the chef, Richard Hetzler) she bought two of their cookbooks (one for me for Christmas, she finally told me after watching me painstakingly hand-writing several recipes into a notebook). The cookbook – The Mitsitam Cafe Cookbook: Recipes from the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian is just so interesting. Lots of fascinating stories about Native American cookery, about the culinary heritage of many different American tribes. And interesting headnotes about each and every recipe. Mitsitam means “let’s eat” in the Piscataway and Delaware languages.

I’ll be sharing one other recipe from this same cookbook that Karen made for our Thanksgiving dinner (a wild rice and watercress salad). It was delicious also.

So, this salmon. First you need some cedar planks – they impart such a different flavor to salmon or any fish for that matter. Karen was supposed to soak them for 6+ hours. We didn’t have 6 hours, so they soaked for about 2 is all. And the planks were severely burned on the bottom when the 10+ minutes of cooking was over. But at least it didn’t burn through!

The berry glaze is easy – fresh blueberries, raspberries and blackberries (and huckleberries if you happen to have access to them – we didn’t – so used more blackberries). It’s simmered gently with water and sugar (we used Splenda) and set aside. Then you grind up fresh juniper berries (juniper is what makes that unique scent and taste in gin), add some salt and that’s patted/rubbed onto the salmon flesh. It’s baked on the cedar plank for about 8 minutes. You remove it, add most of the berry glaze and continue to bake for 4-8-10 minutes, depending on how thick the salmon is. Done. Serve with any remaining sauce. Easy. Delicious.

What I liked: the taste overall – the juniper berries add a unique flavor. So does the cedar plank.

What I didn’t like: you do have to find, or have on hand, some juniper berries. They’re not standard in most kitchens, I’d suppose. And the cedar planks aren’t easy to find, either. Grinding the juniper berries in a mortar and pestle was difficult and time-consuming even though these were freshly purchased berries. I dug around in my desert house kitchen and finally found a little mini-Cuisinart, which made quick work of the powder. I’d recommend that!

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