Salmon with Mixed Greens

We eat quite a bit of fish, and I'm always trying to cook it different ways. Today we had salmon. I mixed some melted butter with garlic powder and a little Old Bay seasoning. Then I sprinkled it with some smoked salt and baked it. It's served on top of some mixed greens.

I also made some corn and a yellow rice mix. The creamed corn is just 2 corn cobs with the corn sliced off, a tablespoon of butter, and some freshly ground pepper. I put the butter on top and put the corn in the microwave for two minutes. Then I stirred it and put it in for another minute. It's really quite good, probably my favorite way to eat fresh corn.

The salmon was okay, but it definitely needed more seasoning. I also think I like salmon better broiled than baked, generally. But, it was a nice fast dinner, which was good after my garlic extravaganza of yesterday!

Iron Chef Blogger Challenge: Garlic!

This week it was my turn once again to pick the secret ingredient! I thought about it for a while, and for some reason I kept thinking about garlic. The Stinking Rose is one of my favorite restaurants, and the last time we were there, I bought their cookbook. So, I decided to recreate what I think is one of their best - Forty Clove Garlic Chicken.

First, garlic had to be roasted! I used two cups of peeled garlic cloves. Travis had to help peel the cloves, my hand started cramping. (I ended up using 6 heads of garlic overall, between chicken and the salad dressing that I made.


For the roasted garlic, mix 2 cups garlic cloves with 1 cup olive oil, cook for 40 minutes over low heat on the stove. Stir after 20 minutes. Then, use a slotted spoon to put the cloves on a cookie sheet and roast on 250 for another 25-30 minutes.


This picture is really just because I was so dang proud that I quartered a whole chicken by myself. Never managed that before.

The chicken was pretty dang tasty, if I do say so myself. The only thing I should've done differently was crisp the skin somehow. I probably should have cranked up the heat at the end or something. Or put it under the broiler for a minute? I don't know. So, here's the recipe!

Forty-Clove Garlic Chicken
from the Stinking Rose Restaurant Cookbook

1 large 2 1/2 - 3 lb broiler fryer chicken

Marinade:
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons minced garlic
Leaves from 1 sprig rosemary, minced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Sauce:
1 cup dry red wine
1 shallot, quartered
4 cloves garlic, chopped
Leaves from 1 sprig rosemary, minced
Leaves from 2 sprigs thyme, minced
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup unsalted butter, cut into chunks
salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 1/2 cups roasted garlic cloves

1. Remove giblets from chicken. With a large, sharp knife, cut chicken in half lengthwise, then cut in half crosswise to separate the breast from the thighs.

2. To make the marinade: Combine all ingredients in a small bowl. Put chicken in a heavy resealable plastic bag, pour the marinade over the chicken, and seal the bag. Work your hands over the bag until the liquid covers all the chicken parts. Place bag in refrigerator for 1 to 3 hours.

3. To make the sauce: In a heavy saucepan combine the wine, shallot, rosemary, garlic, and thyme. Bring to a boil over high heat, then decrease heat to medium-low and cook, stirring occasionally, for 2-3 minutes. Gradually stir in the cream and cook to reduce the liquid by one-third, about 10 minutes. Add butter in batches, stirring to melt. (Note: Just try not to think about the amount of butter you just added. It'll come to no good.) Season with salt and pepper. Pass the sauce through a fine-meshed sieve, cover, and set aside.

4. Preheat the oven to 350. Put chicken in a heavy baking dish and bake for 20 minutes. Remove from oven, turn chicken, baste with pan juices. Return to oven, bake 20 more minutes, or until skin is crackly and golden brown and meat is opaque throughout (Note: this never happened for me.. although I'm not sure why).

5. Arrange chicken on serving platter. Pour warm sauce over the chicken and sprinkle with roasted garlic cloves. Serve immediately.


What? You still want more recipes from other Iron Chef Bloggers? Fine!

Banana Nut Bread
Eggplant Curry with Saffron Rice and Naan
and my personal favorite: Black Bean Brownies

Iron Chef Blogger Challenge: Black Beans!

For this challenge, I really wanted to use dried black beans, but it just wasn't meant to be. I already had a can of black beans in the pantry, so I opted for this quick and delicious turkey chili. It makes a lot for just me, since Travis doesn't eat beans, so I plan to freeze some.

It turned out really well. If I do again, I'll probably let it simmer a while longer - I like my vegetables to a bit less crunchy than these were. But, the flavors are really good, and it really was incredibly easy to make. Nice for a bit of a blustery day.

You can find the recipe here.

And, here some other recent posts from the other Iron Chef bloggers:

Sicilian Grilled Eggplant (Yes, there was a whole week I missed - I was in Washington DC!)
Banana Cake
Ugli Fruit

Mt. Vernon Inn - Peanut Soup

While we were on vacation recently in DC, we had lunch at the Mt. Vernon Inn. The Inn is located at Mt. Vernon (which was George Washington's estate, if you somehow don't know).

Lunch was actually really good. I ordered a spinach salad and one of the specialties, peanut soup. Apparently this is a old traditional recipe in the area. It was definitely interesting. I couldn't eat the whole mug. It had a very strong peanut taste and was really salty. But, I'm glad I tried it. Everyone seemed to enjoy their lunch, it was a nice restaurant.

Orange Cream Sherbet

Decided to utilize my ice cream maker this weekend to use up some heavy cream that was in the fridge from Easter. So, this sherbet recipe seemed like just the thing. It was actually quite good, if a bit grainy. It tastes like an orange creamsicle.

Recipe (from cooks.com):

1 12 oz can Minute Maid frozen orange juice
1 1/2 cans cold water
3/4 cup heavy cream
4 tablespoons honey (or to taste)
1 scant tablespoon vanilla extract

Combine all ingredients in an ice cream maker. Freeze according to manufacturer's instructions.

Serve immediately when mixture begins to mound on a spoon, or place in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator and scoop out and serve as you would use sherbet. May also be poured into pop molds before it has frozen solid for creamsicle-like treats on a stick.

Iron Chef Blogger Challenge: Bananas!

The challenge ingredient this week is bananas. This does pose a slight problem for me, which is that I don't like bananas. At all. Luckily, Travis loves them!

I didn't want to make banana bread, because I make that fairly often. The company I work for provides fruit for the employees, and sometimes when the bananas are starting to brown, they put up a "please take this fruit home!" sign. And with it, I make bread.

However, I also wanted something simple that I could make after work. So I found this Banana Spice Cake recipe on southernfood.about.com - I don't know if I've ever mentioned, but this is one of my favorite sites to find recipes on. I think about.com is really helpful for recipes in general, because they have these topic sites for particular ingredients and types of food. Anyway.

It was pretty easy. I don't think I did a good job mashing the bananas - I hate the smell and the way they look when mashed, so I may have thrown in the towel a bit early on that one. The batter smelled really good, like pumpkin spice cake only with different fruit. In the spirit of full disclosure, neither Travis nor I have tried this cake yet. I think I undercooked it a little, because the top looks a bit... gooey. One of the perils of baking after work is that sometimes I neglect to really pay attention to what I'm doing. But, you can take a look at the recipe in the link up there if you think it looks interesting! Maybe I'll add an addendum when Travis finally tries it.

A Busy Week

It's been a crazy time here. Travis's first script to be made into a proper movie came out last week, which was super super exciting. His family came out to visit, we went to the premiere, good solid fun was had by all.

Then, a couple of days later, we had a big Easter/Zombie Jesus Day get-together at our apartment, which was also loads of fun.

But, all in all, it was an insanely busy week. And therefore, I missed another Iron Chef Blogger Challenge. It was about exotic fruit. I was going to get some cherimoya at the Farmer's Market (although in retrospect I'm unsure as to whether these are actually fruits or vegetables), but there really just wasn't time.


I was going to attempt to pawn off these strawberries as exotic fruit, but I didn't think anyone would fall for it. I did try to make a pie out of them. It turned to liquid. There are number of things or combinations of things that may have gone wrong. I'm leaning towards not cooling long enough before adding topping to filling and not draining the strawberries well enough after sweetening them. They didn't really even need to be sweetened, they were amazing as is.

I do have pictures of the Easter food, which I will post below. The roasted cauliflower is the best, you should really try it. Just cut up a head of cauliflower, toss with olive oil (2-3 tablespoons), sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast on 400 25-30 minutes. When done, grate some parmesan cheese over it. You'll thank me.



This week's blogger challenge is bananas. I'll try to do better.