Tag: peas

Weekend Finds 7:6:14

I don’t know about you all, but I had a truly lovely July 4th. I ate possibly one of the most delicious summer holiday meals every – perfectly grilled steak, BBQ chicken, grilled veggies, and that green rice salad I’ve been going on about. Now I’m at the coast with family, and couldn’t be happier that I get to spend this holiday weekend with people I really love. With that, on to the weekend finds.

1. Corn, Tomato, and Garlic Confit Pasta

Past with roasted tomatoes, corn, and garlic confit from Food52 // Weekend Finds on Serious Crust
Doesn’t that look like a bowl of summer?

Garlic confit sounds intimidating to me. It really does. But let me say this – it was so easy to make. Like painfully easy. And it added immensely to this dish from Food52 (by Dash and Bella). This dish screams summer, and was so creamy and flavor packed. Just start roasting those tomatoes early! They need 2-3 hours in a low oven.

2. Easy Marinades

Easy Marinades // Weekend Finds on Serious Crust
Marinate everything!

I love summer because it means marinating meats and throwing them on the grill. I’ve got a couple good marinade recipes in my back pocket, but more can never hurt, nor can the ability to throw one together no matter what you’ve got on hand. This little tidbit from Bon Appetit offers some great ideas, as well as a general equation to make your marinades perfect.

3. Apricots!

All things apricots // Weekend Finds on Serious Crust
My favorite apricot recipe.

If I’m being honest, I think apricots are kind of an undervalued stone fruit. I love their small size (the perfect snack), their soft skin, and their mild/sweet/tart flavor. Perhaps my favorite thing to do with apricots is halve them, fill the hole where the pit was with a spoonful of honey, and throw them under the broiler for a few minutes. Top with Greek yogurt, mascarpone, or freshly whipped cream, and some chopped pistachios. Other bites of apricots that look delicious are these crostinis, a different roasted apricot technique with butter and brown sugar, this couscous with apricot (sub fresh for dried apricots please), and this apricot miso jam (I know the recipe calls for dried apricots, but still, two of my favorite things in a jar together, yes please right now thank you).

4. Peas, peas, peas

Summer Peas // Weekend Finds on Serious Crust
A little ingredient education never hurt anybody.

I love ingredient education, and various kinds of peas are something that I confuse sometimes. It’s actually pretty important to know the different between your peas, particularly shelling peas and snap peas. Read here about which are best for what.

5. Vibrant Table by Kimberly Hasselbrink

Vibrant Food by Kimberly Hasselbrink // Weekend Finds on Serious Crust
Doesn’t that cover make you want to cook? Photo from The Vanilla Bean Blog.

This is the cookbook that the green rice salad with nectarines and corn is from (the one I haven’t been able to stop talking about and made for the 4th of July), and that recipe was so freaking good, now I really want this cookbook. I love when books are organized seasonally – I feel like it makes it easier to flip through. And taking a look at some of the recipes in the table of contents, I feel like this book is something I’d reach for again and again. Wish list!

Spicy-Miso Salmon and Citrus Rice Bowl

Salmon rice bowl
Miso Salmon
Miso Salmon

Miso Salmon

This meal all started because Annie gave me a wonderful Christmas present: The Sriracha Cookbook.  You’ve probably seen Sriracha at your local asian restaurant, and you may know it as “rooster sauce” – or if you don’t know it, its basically an asian hot sauce made with chiles and garlic and its ohhh so good.  And you need it for the recipe that follows.

So the Sriracha Cookbook, as one might expect, is chock full of recipes that include Sriracha in them.  I picked the Miso-Sriracha Glazed Salmon recipe for dinner, mostly because we already had miso paste and Sriracha in our house.  The recipe in the book tells you to serve it atop steamed rice, but I wanted to do something more interesting, so I found a great recipe on Martha Stewart.com that I adapted to include the miso-Sriracha salmon.  Its a wonderful rice bowl that includes salmon, orange slices, and sugar snap peas atop some brown rice with a great orange sauce and mint to sprinkle on top of it all.  It tasted so light and substantial at the same time, and was a wonderful meal in a bowl!

A note on the rice: I actually used a rice called Camargue Red Rice, which Annie’s mom brought us from the south of France, where it grows.  The package had no English on it so I actually had to get online and do a little research before cooking it.  Anyway, it was delicious but I don’t think its necessary to make this dish great, so I put brown rice in the recipe below.

Spicy Miso Salmon and Citrus Rice Bowl

Ingredients

Spicy Miso Salmon

1/2 Tb. toasted sesame oil
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 Tb. soy sauce
2 Tb. white miso paste
1/2 Tb. Sriracha
1 clove garlic, minced
1 lb. salmon fillet(s)

Citrus Rice Bowl

4 oranges (I used Valencia)
A 1-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
1 bay leaf
1 tsp. coriander seeds
1 Tb. rice vinegar
1 tsp. soy sauce
1 tsp. honey
1 tsp. toasted sesame oil
1 cup uncooked brown rice
1/2 cups sugar snap peas
1/4 cup fresh mint, chopped, for garnish
sliced green onions, green part only, for garnish

Instructions

Cook the rice according to the package directions.  I added a bit of chopped garlic and butter into 3 1/3 cups of water, brought it to a boil, and then simmered for about an hour.

In a small mixing bowl, make the Spicy Miso Salmon glaze: combine the oil, brown sugar, soy sauce, miso paste, Sriracha, and garlic.  Set aside.

Peel and separate 2 oranges into individual boats.  Now comes the hard part: you are supposed to detach and discard the membranes in order to get to the meat of the orange slice.  I experimented a lot during this step, and eventually found that I could cut down the back of each orange segment, pull it apart, and pull off the membrane from each side.  You could just skip this step entirely, but the orange slices won’t look as pretty, and you won’t get the same taste.  Regardless, put these orange segments in a bowl and set aside.

Remove the stems from the sugar snap peas, rinse, and chop into 1/2-inch pieces (I just chopped each pod in half).  Set aside.

Now juice the remaining 2 oranges into a small saucepan, and add the sliced ginger and bay leaf.  Crush the coriander seeds with the side of a knife and add them to the orange juice mixture, then bring to a boil.  Cook the mixture until it reduces to about 2/3 cup, about 6 minutes.  Take it off the heat and let it cool, then strain into a bowl to get rid of the ginger, bay leaf, and seeds.  Now whisk in the vinegar, soy sauce, honey, and oil.

Preheat the broiler to high. Lay the salmon fillet(s) across an aluminum foil-lined broiling pan (or any baking sheet with a rim).  Take out the glaze you made in step 2 and spread it generously on top of the salmon.  Broil the salmon 6 inches from the flame (or heat coil, as the case may be), until the fish flakes easily, about 10 minutes.  I spread more of the glaze on the fish after 5 minutes of broiling.

Dish the rice into bowls, and top with salmon, peas, and orange segments. Garnish with mint and green onion slices.  Reheat the orange sauce/mixture if it needs reheating, and drizzle it generously over everything.

Enjoy!