recipes: dijon-cayenne salmon.

As I have written about before, I love sushi, and fish in general. Whenever I go back to the east coast, I always make sure to eat plenty of fresh fish to tide me over during months in the dry desert where nary a body of water and therefore, delicious fish, is to be found. However, one of the staple fish you can easily find in New Mexico just never appealed to me: salmon. You can find it in almost any restaurant, and it's often local, fresh caught, and good to quite a few people. I don't know whether it was the taste, smell or a combination of the two, but I just never really liked salmon. That is, until I realized when prepared correctly, how good it can be. I recently tried salmon at Jennifer James 101, a local favorite of mine, and I was blown away and decided that maybe salmon wasn't all that bad. However, getting it to taste as good at home as it did eating out could proved to be a challenge - until I created this recipe. The flavors are just spicy enough to add something extra to the salmon, but not overpowering, and cooking in the oven makes sure the salmon doesn't get too soggy or overcooked. Needless to say, this salmon is a new favorite in my kitchen repertoire.

Dijon-Cayenne Salmon
makes 1 serving


Ingredients:
1 salmon filet (about 2" x 5")
2 tablespoons of good dijon mustard
1 teaspoon of cayenne
pinch of kosher salt
cracked black pepper

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. While oven warms, prepare salmon on small baking sheet with kosher salt and cracked black pepper.
2. Right before putting the salmon in the oven, cover the top and sides with the dijon mustard and sprinkle cayenne over the top.
3. Cook for 15 minutes at 400 degrees, or until fish flakes with a fork.

gluten-free is me, too.

One of the most annoying things about having Celiac's disease is finding a recipe that looks delicious only to realize it is chock-full of wheat or something else my body hates. You can adapt, but things that aren't designed to be made with gluten-free ingredients are often missing something in the taste department. So you can guess my happiness when I ran across Feed Me Phoebe, a new blog from one of the founders of another one of my favorite cooking blogs, Big Girls Small Kitchen. One of her regular columns on the site is called "Gluten-Free is Me." On it she features recipes that are made to be cooked with gluten-free ingredients. Since this is just a new discovery, I have yet to try anything out, but I'm looking forward to making some, especially the black bean arepas, which are one of my favorite Latin American foods. Please share any new recipes in the comments, especially the gluten-free variety!

recipes: fried eggs galore.

I happen to be kind of a lazy chef when I'm cooking for just myself. I also happen to love fried eggs, particularly when cooked in olive oil. Luckily for me, these two phenomena go hand-in-hand. This past weekend, alone at my parents' house while they were bringing my brother home from college, I had fried eggs for almost every meal. This gave me an opportunity to experiment with all of the different ways to eat aforementioned olive oil fried eggs:

1. Fried egg on bagel with salsa, spinach, and arugula.
2. Fried egg and adzuki bean burger on bagel with dijon mustard, spinach, and arugula.
3. Fried egg over brown rice with marinara, spinach, and cracked black pepper.
4. Fried egg on English muffin with avocado, tomato, and cilantro.

Fried egg on an English muffin with cilantro, avocado, and tomato

Version 3 was by far my favorite, although they all turned out quite good, considering I was pretty much winging it in the kitchen and throwing together truly random ingredients. It really was such a fun way to spend the weekend trying to figure out all of the ways to eat a fried egg, although I went for a couple of days sans eggs after the weekend was over...

Happy Memorial Day weekend! May it be filled with barbecues, friends, and maybe some fried eggs!

recipes: marbled buttercream brownies.

Although gluten-free baking is now the norm for me, I still haven't mastered some of the notoriously finicky gluten-free recipes - brownies being one of them. I have yet to find the right mixture and baking time to get the same fudgy, dense texture that are in my regular brownies. Going to a potluck the other night, I wanted to bring brownies since they're always a crowd favorite, and I didn't want to subject others to my experiments in gluten-free baking, so I decided to just go the regular route with a twist. I found this recipe at BGSK and decided to make these for the potluck. My version turned out a little marbled on top because I didn't have time to let the buttercream completely cool before putting on the chocolate glaze, but it turned out to have a rather pretty marbled effect on the top. Whatever they looked like, they were a big hit, and I'm sure I will be making them again, gluten-free or not.

Pretty.

Yum. 

recipes: rosemary roasted red potato salad.

My mom and I share a love for many things, one of those being roasted red potatoes with olive oil and rosemary. I love the crispiness of the potatoes combined with the freshness of the rosemary. For mother's day this year I made my mom one of her old school favorites - BLTs with a couple of upgrades, but I thought this springtime picnic classic deserved another to go on the side, hence a version of our favorite potatoes in a salad version. Although it was very windy, cold, and unspringy here on mother's day this year, this potato salad will be one of my spring favorites for a very long time.

Rosemary Roasted Red Potato Salad
makes 4 servings


Ingredients:

6 small red potatoes
4-5 sprigs of rosemary
4 tablespoons of olive oil
1/4 cup of mayonnaise
1/4 cup of dijon mustard
1 1/2 teaspoons of sriracha
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon cracked black pepper

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Slice potatoes into 1/2'' x 1'' pieces and place into bowl. Cover with olive oil and add in rosemary. Stir together until well coated. Place in oven and cook for 30 minutes or until golden brown and fork tender.
2. In a small bowl, mix together mayonnaise and mustard. Stir in sriracha. When well mixed add in salt and pepper.
3. Let potatoes cool and place in large bowl. Pour in mayonnaise/mustard mixture and stir until potatoes are well coated.

recipes: moral-laden pizza

Trying to cook for yourself comes with many lessons. Sometimes it's the cooking part, and sometimes it's what comes long before the cooking part, and even before the grocery shopping part. Since my boyfriend is visiting for the next couple of weeks, he decided to make dinner for me and my parents one night, with help from the sous chef: yours truly. We decided to just go to the store sans list because the ingredients for making pizza should be pretty simple, right? Not. The base for the sauce we bought was terrible, all of the eggs in the refrigerator were cracked, and oregano was nowhere to be found in the pantry. This supposedly "simple" dinner required six trips to three different grocery stores and much sighing and odd looks from cashiers that had seen me maybe four times in the span of two hours. While my parents and my boyfriend had regular versions of the pizza, I had great gluten-free pizza that was some of the best I have ever had post-Celiac diagnosis. While everyone loved the pizza my boyfriend made, I couldn't help but think that there was a lesson or two to be gained from aforementioned grocery store fiasco: 1) Make a list. 2) Make sure you actually have the ingredients you need, and that they have not gone bad. These may seem like obvious things, but I thought I would pass the message along. However, it was all worth it, because it resulted in a really, really good pizza for me.

Moral-Laden Pizza 
makes 2 servings


Ingredients: 
One package of Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free Pizza Crust Mix (just follow the directions on the bag to make the dough)
4 slices fresh mozzarella
Small spoonful of pizza sauce (use whatever kind you like - I'm normally lazy and just go for some marinara)
Small handful basil
1/4 cup of pitted Greek olives
1/4 cup shredded Italian cheese mix

Directions: 
1. Prepare dough according to instructions on bag, and preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. After making the dough, spread out over a floured surface. I made a 10-inch crust, about 1/2 inch thick from this dough, but you can definitely make more if you spread the dough out more to make it thicker.
3. Bake just the dough for 12 to 15 minutes or until golden.
4. Take out the crust, and layer with sauce, shredded cheese, mozzarella slices, tomatoes, basil, and then olives. Bake for an additional 8 to 10 minutes, or until cheese is melted.

recipes: gluten-free & vegan lace cookies.

My grandma was the resident baker in our family. While she doesn't bake as much anymore, I still remember her many confections. One thing she made rarely, but was such a delight that I still remember it, is lace cookies. These light-as-a-feather cookies are very southern, wonderfully delicate, and almost ethereal in your mouth. After I found out about Celiac's disease and its ban on wheat, I bought this wonderful cookbook full of vegan, gluten-free baked goods. To my delight, a version of lace cookies were included. These cookies turn out wonderfully thin, light, and are a perfect cookie to start off the warm spring months. Missing one of the ingredients, vanilla, I threw in cinnamon and substituted some brown sugar for a wonderfully scented dough.

Gluten-Free and Vegan Lace Cookies
adapted from Babycakes Covers the Classics


Ingredients: 
1 3/4 cups of Bob's Red Mill All-Purpose Gluten-Free Baking Flour *
1 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1/4 cup arrowroot *
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon xanthan gum *
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup canola oil
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 teaspoon cinnamon
* These ingredients may sound weird, but they are easily found in Whole Foods and similar stores.

Steps:
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees and line 2-3 cookie sheets with parchment paper.
2. Mix flour, sugar, brown sugar, arrowroot, baking soda, xanthan gum, and kosher salt in a large mixing bowl until well combined.
3. Stir in canola oil, applesauce, and cinnamon.
4. Scoop teaspoon-size rolls onto cookie sheets, with about 15 dough balls per sheet.
5. Bake for 7 minutes, and rotate and bake for another 7 minutes. Do 6 minutes on each side for a less crunchy cookie.
6. Let cool for 15 minutes before removing from cookie sheet.

Although these are vegan, they are wonderful with ice cream, even soy for that matter.

recipes: cinnamon cafe ole

I am an unapologetic coffee addict. If it has caffeine in it, I will probably drink it. A few months ago when I realized I was lactose intolerant, I thought I might have to cut back on the coffee-milk drinks because I always had an aversion to soy milk. However, those days are long gone and now I am an official vanilla soy milk addict. But this new realization of how yummy vanilla soy milk has also hurt my purse on account of how much I was spending on frilly coffee drinks without even realizing it.

 

 

 

Don't judge me. I work right above a Starbucks. 

However, I have found a great solution to this which actually gives you a couple of benefits. Instead of getting the sugary coffee drink, opt for a cafe ole. It is half coffee, half milk (soy, skim, or half and half). It's cheaper,and it has calcium - something everyone (especially women) need to stay healthy in the long run. To get an extra flavor fix add some cinnamon. Not only does it taste delicious, it has many health benefits, including clearing sinuses, preventing cancer and heart disease, and warding off colds. Even if all that doesn't hook you, it just tastes great and is easy on your wallet.

recipes: peach salsa

This past week I went to a speech and debate holiday party with all of my students and the other coaches. It was snowing like crazy outside, but a ton of people ending up making it to a really entertaining party. Everyone brought a dish and a gift for a round of white elephant. But to the main event, the food. Instead of dividing up the appetizers, entrees, and desserts by last name, as is usually done with potluck-type events, we did it by debate/speech event. So the LDers and Policy kids (if you did debate, you'll know what this means), and their coach (me) brought in appetizers. I really wanted to try something different and fun, so I looked around for some new recipes. I found this great peach salsa on Big Girls Small Kitchen. It is such a fun and different recipe that you can make to your own tastes, prepare super fast, and it's a nice way to spice up a chilly winter party. The citrusy-sweet-spicy taste really makes this recipe stand out.

Mint and Cilantro Peach Salsa

adapted from Big Girls Small Kitchen

Makes 4 cups, or 1 large bowl 

Ingredients:

 

4 cups of peeled peaches, in a quarter inch dice (I threw in some canned peaches to make up the difference since there are not a ton of good peaches around here this time of year)

3 tablespoons of chopped cilantro

3 tablespoons of chopped mint leaves 

juice of 1 lemon

a sprinkling (or a handful) of red chili flakes (vary amount depending upon how spicy you want it)

3 tablespoons of sugar

additional sugar to taste

Steps: 

1. Dice your peaches. Pretty self-explanatory. Also, the most laborious part of this recipe. Put them in a bowl!

2. Chop cilantro and mint leaves into a half-inch dice and add on top of peaches in bowl. 

3. Add the juice of the whole lemon. I squeezed it right in the bowl. Just make sure you don't get the seeds in the bowl. Ew!

4. Add the red chili flakes. A little bit does really go a long way, so add sparingly. Being a spicy food  addict, I put in quite a bit, but even a pinch adds a lot of flavor. 

5. Put in a little sweetness. You can add more later on if you would like it a little sweeter. 

6. Stir! And you're done! I would recommend tasting a bit so you can add more sugar or chili flakes to adjust. 

I think this will be a favorite at parties, as well as a great side to fish, tacos, or Tex-Mex dishes. I like to think my debaters enjoyed it, or at least they told me it was so that I wouldn't make them read awful articles on philosophy. By the end of the evening, I was also the proud owner of Mensa Mind Bender cards from the white elephant gift exchange. Now I can entertain myself and my cats over winter break!