Salmon and Potatoes in Jars

I've been meaning to post this recipe for, I believe, about four weeks now. I made this as a first course for a Saturday night dinner when my folks were visiting from Ottawa. It was dynamite. Easy and elegant - definitely a dish for a special night. The thing with this recipe is that salmon, the good stuff I mean, is pretty pricey. The good stuff that I bought was wild-caught Pacific coho. Buying fish has become a bit of a minefield lately - it's hard to keep straight what's being sustainably fished, what kinds of farmed fish are okay, etc., etc. Suffice it to say that when it comes to salmon, stick with the Pacific coast and stay away from farmed. For a much less simplistic and much more cohesive take on sustainable seafood, check out Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch site.  

And yes, I do recognize that there was a similar "rustic cutting
board ingredient layout" shot in the last blog post. 

Okay, enough sustainability talk. So this dish is from the mega-awesome Dorie Greenspan (she's come up a few times before on this l'il site). It's perfect for a summer dinner party because there is no cooking involved, only a kind of brining/curing/letting the salmon soak in olive oil with some delicious friends like thyme, bay leaf, and coriander seeds. You need to plan ahead, but seriously, that's what you want to do if you're having people over, right? Get it done and then relax. You also need a couple of big canning jars for this recipe. I used mason jars and they worked like a charm.

The coolest thing about this recipe is that you serve the salmon and potatoes right out of their jars. Put out a platter of sliced rye bread, lemon wedges, and have people help themselves to jars of goodness. It felt cute and quaint and homey when we did it. I seriously can't wait to find an excuse to make it again.

Salmon and Potatoes in a Jar
from Dorie Greenspan's killer cookbook, Around My French Table. Every single thing I've made from it has been awesome.


1 pound salmon fillet, skin removed        (get the folks at your fish store to take off the skin for you - I had to do it myself and it was not pretty - mangling would be a good word to describe how that went down)
2 tablespoons coarse salt

Happy brining salmon.  

1 tablespoon sugar
1 pound baby potatoes, either red or white, new or old
20 coriander seeds      (obviously this seems ridiculously specific but stay with me)
20 black peppercorn seeds      (see the line above)
4 bay leaves, halved
8 thyme sprigs
2 large carrots, peeled and thinly sliced       (it looks pretty if you do a bit of diagonal slicing action)
2 small onions, red or yellow, thinly sliced
4 cups or so of olive oil        (I know, you're like wtf - but you don't eat all the oil, and you don't have to break the bank - just use your basic - i.e. cheap - olive oil)
3 tablespoons white vinegar or white wine vinegar
lemon wedges for serving
rye bread for serving

Mix together the salt and sugar in a bowl or other glass container. Slice your salmon into fairly thin pieces. See the photo above for an idea of size and shape - you want pieces that are easy to lift out of the jar and place on a piece of rye bread. Make sure that you remove all the little pin bones that can sometimes hang out in your salmon. I do this with a pair of tongs, and I basically just run my fingertips all over the surface of the salmon feeling for the pins. It's actually quite a satisfying task. Place your sliced salmon into the bowl or whatever you're using with the salt and sugar, and gently toss to ensure it's evenly coated. Cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 12 hours, and no more than 18 hours.

So, the next day, get out your jars. And Dorie says you can also use a terrine, or a bowl. So don't let not having jars stop you. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, and drop your potatoes in. Cook them until they're tender, but not mushy. Drain the potatoes and let them cool. Take out your salmon from the fridge and rinse off the salt/sugar. The salmon will have released a fair bit of liquid, so don't be alarmed by that. So yeah, rinse it off, and pat it dry. Divide up all of your coriander, peppercorns, bay leaves, thyme, and sliced carrots and onions. Half will be for the jar of salmon, half will be for the jar of potatoes.

Wide mouth masons.

Basically you're first going to layer the salmon in the jar with its half of the aromatics - a little bit of salmon, a little bit of peppercorns, coriander seeds, bay leaves, thyme, carrots, and onions, and repeat until you're out of salmon. Top the jar with olive oil, covering all of the ingredients. Seal the jar. Do the same layering number with the potatoes in the second jar, but with the potatoes add a pinch of salt with each layer of them as well. Top with the olive oil to cover, and also add the vinegar to the tater jar. Shake that jar a bit to mix up the oil and vinegar. Put the jars in the fridge for at least 6 hours and up to three days.

More food should be served directly out of jars, no?

Serve right out of the jars with lemon wedges and rye bread. This seriously ruled. It was kind of heavenly, really. And cute because it was in jars and stuff. Serves about 6 as a first course or 4 as a main.  

Weekday Fancy Times With Virtually No Work: Baked Sausages With Tomatoes

Before shot.

This meal will mos def become part of your regular meal rotation...and it's so deeply flavourful and delicious that it's an easy winner for a wee dinner party like the one we had last week. Having people over for dinner on weeknights can be, well, a pain in the ass. It ends up feeling too stressful and frantic - cleaning, cooking, setting the table, etc, etc, all when you're running in the door around 6pm and people are coming for 7.

So this is one of those recipes that will alleviate at least the cooking franticness...you basically throw a bunch of cherry tomatoes, garlic, and some herbs in a big pot (one that you can put in the oven), lay some sausages on the top, pour over some olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and pop her in the oven. About 45 minutes later, you get beautiful, moist sausages sitting in this herby, hefty, rich tomato sauce that has just miraculously appeared (well, no, it came from the tomatoes, but it's one of those dishes where it's so different after the oven does its work that it's hard to not be a bit delighted). Serve it over mashed potatoes (or polenta would also be nice - but I have screwed up polenta all three times I've tried to make it and I just eventually said that we were breaking up, because it's not like without polenta in my life, I'm walking around missing it all the time).

This pot is about to become the home of a sausage party.

Baked Sausages and Tomatoes

Adapted (only slightly) from a Jamie Oliver recipe

3 pounds of cherry tomatoes, or roughly chopped regular old tomatoes 

a handful of herb sprigs, including rosemary, thyme, oregano

3 cloves of chopped garlic

8 delicious sausages        (I think it's worth it going to a good butcher for good sausages - they are inexpensive and you can tell when they're made with care - for this I used a mixture of hot italian, sweet italian, and garlic sausages)

Olive oil

Balsamic vinegar

Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Farenheit. Get a big oven-proof pot or pan, and toss in your chopped tomatoes, garlic, herbs, and a good dose of salt and pepper. Add a couple of good glugs of olive oil, and mix everything up so well coated. Then, lay your sausage on top of the tomato bed, and pour a bit more olive oil and a good glug or two of balsamic vinegar. Mix everything around together a bit, and make sure that the sausages end up on top. Put the pot into the oven for half an hour. Once that time has elapsed, take it out of the oven, give things a bit of a shake and turn the sausages over. Pop it back in the oven for between 15 and 30 minutes.  

As you'll see, we're still only working with sausages here.
They're never gonna be that "presentation-friendly".

So, after a total of 45 minutes to an hour, the tomatoes will have broken down and become a lovely sauce. If the sauce is too thin for you, you can take out the sausages, and put the pot over a high heat to reduce some of the liquid. I did, and I think it intensified it even more, in a good way. I served it with mashed potatoes (which I gussied up by adding about a quarter cup of sour cream and a big handful of grated parmesan with the milk and butter). It was awesome.

Square One. And Frozen Grapes.

Hello my legions of followers! Or just Mom and Dad, or whatever! Welcome to my blog, to my blog about food.

The goals of this blog are twofold:  one, to share information about the kind of food that I cook, and perhaps some of the places I eat, in the hopes that that information might be useful and/or helpful to someone somewhere out there. I want this place to be a resource for ideas for people that like to cook already or for those that would like to cook more. My other goal is really just creating a place for me to practice becoming a food writer, with some semblance of public exposure (public exposure = Mom and Dad, see above re legions).

And I can't think of a better, more special, fancier way of inaugurating this l'il blog than to tell you about a potato salad I made yesterday. How's that for aiming for the stars, hmmm? Honestly though, it was crazy delicious. I hit on a recipe from a wicked website called Smitten Kitchen (written by a sassy, thoughtful, extremely knowledgeable food blogger in NYC). It was a potato salad of the vinaigrette variety, not of the heavy, mayo-laden, gloopy salad in a giant tub variety. It called for new garlic (garlic that's picked while it still looks like a fatter green onion, before the end fattens into a bulb and becomes the garlic you see around), and I had some!  Also asparagus, snap peas, and potatoes, obviously (which oddly, I had all of - this was clearly a sign).

Here's the thing though – recipes are made for adapting. I had some of the key ingredients, but I also had some other stuff that wasn't in the recipe that I thought might be a good addition (things like feta, and anchovy paste in the dressing, and later, for round two of the salad, I added some shrimp and avocado). And if you didn't have a key ingredient, like say all you had lying around was some regular old garlic, or snow peas not snap peas, no matter – just use what you have. All this to say that I started with a basic premise and then worked with what I had. And I made lots, hence 'round two' for dinner.

Oh! And it's hot now, yes? Buy a bag of grapes. Place them in the freezer. Remove when frozen. Eat. I've been eating frozen grapes every summer since I could eat solid foods.  Can't imagine summer without 'em.

Here's the recipe for the salad:

Spring Potato Salad
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen:  www.smittenkitchen.com

about 2 pounds of new potatoes (white or red) - if they're bigger, chop them into chunks
1 pound of asparagus, cut into one-inch lengths (a bunch)
a handful of snap peas
1 shoot of new garlic, sliced very finely (or use regular garlic, or even just a green onion)
1 big sour pickle, diced - this added a whole lot of deliciousness, don't leave it out if you're into pickles
pea shoots (or watercress, or sprouts would be nice too)
a medium-sized chunk of feta, crumbled
about ten medium-sized cooked shrimp (optional)
half an avocado, diced (optional)

for the dressing:

2 tbsp of olive oil
1 tbsp of apple cider vinegar (I like Bragg's the best)
1 tbsp of smooth dijon
1 tsp of anchovy paste
juice of half a lemon
salt and pepper

Place chunked potatoes in a pot with salted cold water to cover. Bring to a boil, and let 'em go for around 10 to 15 minutes (test with a sharp knife for doneness - you want them to be cooked, but not overcooked, meaning the potato should yield easily to the knife but not be all smushy). Remove the potatoes to a bowl and throw in the asparagus lengths and the snap peas. Cook them for about two minutes. Seriously, that's it. Take them out and run cold water over them so they stop cooking immediately. You could also prepare an ice bath - a bowl with cold water and ice cubes, and plunge the veggies in there after their two minute boil. For some reason that always seems like a lot of work to me, so I just run super cold water to shock them into stopping with the cooking.

Add the crumbled feta, diced pickle, new garlic, and pea shoots into another big bowl. Once the potatoes have cooled a little (but it's better when they're still a bit warm), add them to the bowl, along with the asparagus and snap peas. In a small empty jar (like an old mustard jar, or one that had capers in it) add all the dressing ingredients and give it a good shake. Pour it over the whole shooting match in the bowl, and toss thoroughly.

If you want to make this salad even heartier, add the cooked shrimp and avocado along with the other veggies and toss them all up together. This is an awesome salad for a barbecue, a picnic, or just any old meal. Leftovers also make a great bag-lunch for work the next day.

Note:  I will be posting photos of dishes to accompany the posts imminently. I need to get a camera, basically, as I'm told you need one of those to take photos.