Tender Salmon

This is a real simple recipe for the people who always think oven roasted salmon has to be dry and require gobs of sauce to make it palatable. Not so, even though it uses a lot of butter, the butter is not really absorbed into the salmon so it is a pretty low calorie dish, so to speak.

Pre Heat your oven to 250. Take your salmon fillet and cut into proper serving size usually 6 oz is perfect per person size, but I'll leave it up to you.
Melt 2 TBS of butter in a 12 inch pan, generously season the cut salmon pieces with salt and pepper. Place the fish into the melted butter and turn all sides to put an even coating of the butter. Then sprinkle to tops of the fish with the remaining salt and pepper.
(Be sure and take the salmon out of your refrigerator so that it comes to room temperature)
Put the ovenproof pan into the oven.
Every 5 minutes quickly remove the pan, so the heat from the oven doesn't escape and with a brush take the melted butter that is in the pan and paint the individual fish pieces ( A nice aqua will do).
Do this one more time about 13 minutes into the cooking time and at that time check the fish for doneness. Depending on the oven, I usually will find the fish is perfectly cooked at about 15 to 16 minutes.
It will not hurt to leave it in for a few more minutes, since the low cooking temperature will not over cook the fish or rather dry it out.
Remove from the pan, plate it on some warm dishes, put some sauce on it, and there you go!

Just a note, When cooking items you want to be sure that the product is brought to room temperature. All recipes take into that into account. Why? Becuase let's say if the fish has an internal temperature of 40 degrees , which is what it should be if it is in a properly working refrigerator and you put it in the oven, first of all it will reduce the temperature of the oven down a few degrees, just like opening the door and letting the heat escape. It will take an extra 5 to 8 minutes or more depending on the thickness of the fish to overcome the cold inside the fish......The result would be that a piecie of fish, lets say our salmon, would be cooked ok on the outside but undercooked inside. That is why it is probably the most important thing you can do in anykind of cooking, like outdoor grilling, with steaks, or oven roasted etc. to equalize the temperature of the item you are going to cook.

Stuff you will need:

Salmon fillets or whole side cut into serving pieces
butter,melted to brush on the fish
salt and pepper.

Moist and Tasty Salad de Camarones

One of sad things a lot of people do when they cook shrimp, prawns or camarones common with a lot of recipes, is they inadvertently wind up cooking the moisture out of the poor little fish.

It doesn't need to be that way.

Here is a great recipe that has taste, great texture and is not a mayonnaisey salad with some seafoody meat chunks.

The trick whether your cooking prawns into a pasta recipe or using them for salads, DO NOT OVERCOOK them, for they will reward your heat escapade by turning into little rubbery chewy things.

So, take a pound or half kilo of 21-25's ( frozen are good, most of the time better than fresh shrimp, because they have not become mushy)
thaw out in a bowl of water for a few minutes, usually about 20 minutes or so.
Make a poaching liquid.
Put the shrimp into the liquid and let poach, DO NOT ALLOW TO BOIL!
remove, dry or reserve for use the next day or just before you want to make the salad.
Once dry cut the shrimp in half lengthwise, then into quarters.
Toss into the mayo mix, place on lettuce or into a warmed soft bun and you have a superior tasting sandwich. Otherwise place on several leaves of butter lettuce, and enjoy.

Stuff you will need:

For Poaching liquid.
1/4 cup for fresh squeezed lemon juice
One small handful of cilantro leaves, chop fine
One small handful of parsley leaves, chop fine
1 tsp, whole peppercorns
1 tsp regular sugar
1 tsp salt
2 cups water

To make poaching liquid, take a 2 quart sauce pan and put the lemon juice, peppercorns, sugar, salt, water, the squeezed lemon parts, half of the chopped cilantro, half of the chopped parsley and stir to combine, put the cleaned and deveined shrimp in, turn on fire to low, and watch. Check the temp with an instant read thermometer, it should stay around 170. Stir once or twice to be sure all the shrimp have become pink, then remove and put into a ice bath to stop the cooking. Remove only the shrimp, toss all the poaching stuff away. Drain shrimp on paper towels and either reserve for final assembly or continue.

To make the dressing

1/4 cup of your favorite Mayonnaise.
I small shallot chopped very fine.
1 small stalk of celery chopped fine.
remaining half of the finely chopped cilantro
remaining half of the finely chopped parsley.
salt and pepper to taste.

Take the dried shrimp pieces and combine, let sit, and use on bread or as a salad.

Not Plain old Black Bean Soup

One easy soup I make about once a month is Black Bean soup. My recipe is a little more detailed than the ones I see around but it tastes better at least to me! It is easy to make and you can either use it for just plain old beans or puree it for a great soup.

Always wash and pick through the beans. About half the time I find small rocks or garbage in the bean sack. Some sources allow their beans to be dried on the ground on tarps so it is not uncommon to find stuff that is not 100% bean material, and besides if you use a food processor or immersion blender, one pebble can dull your sharp expensive blade pretty quick.

I find that soaking the beans does little for them, unless they happen to be very old bean, eh Old Bean?

After you have washed and picked through set aside.
Into the bowl of your food process toss in, chopped cilantro, onion, garlic and bell pepper. Blend until you have almost a puree.
In a large stockpot add the oil heat and toss in the puree, let it cook on medium for about 7 minutes. Add the cumin and oregano, stir to distribute. Add the washed beans, two quarts of chicken stock, 3 bay leaves and a smoked ham hock. If you don't have a ham hock, get one! Otherwise, toss in two cut up pieces of smoked bacon.
Now depending on your heat tolerance I will toss in a pepper or two.
Take a Serrano or a Habanero and cut it down the center straight down, do not remove the seeds. Toss that in, you will later remove it along with the bay leaves.


Cover and let simmer for 2 to 3 hours. If too much liquid has left the room, (like Elvis) just add a cup or two of water so that you are back to the same level you started with.

Remove the ham hock, let cool, throw the sink out, pick the meat off the bone , dice and return to the beans.

At this point you can do a couple of things, first fish out the pepper and bay leaves and discard.
If you drain the water which is tasty, you can just use the beans, otherwise continue on for soup.
Remove about 1/3 of the beans less the liquid, reserve.
With an immersion blender whirl away inside the pot, until fairly smooth.
Put back the beans, and add salt. This will be to YOUR taste. I usually will add about 1/2 a teaspoon. This will depend on if the used ham hocks or bacon, and how salty the chicken stock was. If you used a dry chicken soup base, etc,etc,etc.
That's it!

When serving I usually will top it with some sour cream, crema or yogurt. To make the crema, just zest the lime and mix with the cream stick it into a squeeze bottle and make a zigzag or logo on top of the soup after you have plated it in a bowl.

Stuff you will need.

1 lb of beans, a little more is OK.
1 large white onion chopped
5 garlic cloves with skin removed
1 green bell pepper
1 cup of cilantro chopped
4 TBS olive oil or vegetable oil
2 or 3 sprigs of fresh oregano or 1/2 tsp of dried
2 tbs ground cumin
1 large smoked ham hock
1 Serrano or Habanero Chile, split down the center
2 qts of chicken stock
Salt and Pepper
3 Bay leaves

For the Crema

1 Cup sour cream, plain yogurt or crema
zest of two limes
2 TBS of very finely chopped cilantro

Ok, some Russian food , Meat Piroshki

Every culture has their dough stuffed with stuff pocket hand held food item. For Mexicans it is the Empanadas, the Chinese have their Cha Siu Baau The Polish have their pirogi, and the Russian have the Piroshki.

Guess which ones I like? Well actually I like them all, but I know how to make really great Piroshki!

Piroshki were not a daily food for me growing up , they were a special once in a while food that took my mother or grandmother seemed to take half a day to make.

It is not a difficult process but it is worth the effort. I make them when I know that someone is going to come over and visit, I have yet to find anyone that doesn't enjoy them. Sometime I just make them because I want to reward myself and why not. I can hold back on the foie gras another time.....

There are lots of varieties of them, whether they are fried or baked or stuffed with meat, potatoes, cabbage or fish and rice noodles.

This one is my normal meat one.

You will first need to make the filling, then the dough, the filling can be made up a day or two ahead thus making the assembly on the final day pretty easy.

Take a 12 inch skillet and place on the heat on medium, while adding the hamburger or ground meat, try and break it up into the smallest chunks, it will make it easier in the end. While browning the meat, add the chopped onion, egg and dill. Once it has cooked 5 to 10 minutes remove from heat and let cool a little, add the pepper and salt. If you never have had them before , taste your salt as you add it, to your comfort taste level.

Let cool, and I usually tilt the pan on something damming up the meat to one end to let the grease run off, then I dab it with a paper towel removing the most.
It is at this point you can transfer it to a plastic tub with a cover and stick it in the refrigerator until needed.

The dough

There is the "from scratch" method and the "easy". I will give you both.

From Scratch.

Dissolve yeast in lukewarm water, (not over 110) add sugar and enough flour to make a consistency of sour cream, maybe a tad thicker. Cover with a towel put in a warm place and let it rise until it has almost double in bulk. The when it is ready punch down and add the rest of the ingredients. and enough flour to make it soft but not sticky dough.
Cover again and let it rise in a warm place.

Once the dough is ready, lightly flour a surface and foll out the dough to 1/8 of an inch thickness.
If you are having a problem with getting it that thin, you can roll it out to 1/4 then cut it smaller and roll out the dough circle to workable thinness.
Now I like to make decent sized Piroshki. Some people like small ones, to me it is easy to make them larger, that way you make fewer ones, and eat less dough. Or at least the theory goes.
You need to find a round object to use as a cutter, I like a 6 inch coffee can, it has decently sharp edges, to use to press the dough in order to cut the circle.
You could use almost any object that will give you a impression in the dough good enough to cut through or you may have to finish it off with a sharp knife.
So now you have a lot of cut pieces of dough.
If you left the dough thicker, now would be the time you could roll it out a tad thinner, but remember to keep the dough in a circle or as round as you can. The thicker the dough is the more doughy the end product will be, because the dough will puff up during the cooking process!

Final assembly.

Take the dough disk, and in the middle of it place enough meat to fill about 1/3 of the circle. If you use a spoon to do it, you will have the meat be loose and the ratio of meat to bread will be higher.
What I like to do is take the cold meat and form it into meat "pods" the size of what I want to place into the dough. Naturally you cannot do it immediately before since your hands will be greasy and it will be a mess. You can do it in a prior step kind of like making meatballs, just form them and press them tightly together as tight as possible, then let them rest, ready to use.

So...back to the dough. Place the meat in the center of the dough and then pick up the edges of the dough and bring the two opposite side together. The dough will stretch if your did it correctly and you will also judge the amount of meat that is correct for the circle you cut. Once you have the dough together, you pinch the seam together with your fingers, keeping the meat inside and not in the seam. The end result will sort of look like a large almond, with the dough completely surrounding the meat, evenly crimp at the seam,. Once you have it all crimped you can lift it up and rest it on a piece of wax paper on a sheet, I usually will let it rest on the seam, this makes sure there is no pressure trying to pull the seam apart. Lightly press the meat pod to flatten it while it rests.
This process will take a little practice but it really is easy after you do, a couple.

Once they have rested, you can let them rise for about 10-15 minutes.
Get the oil in a fry pan ready, heat enough oil so that it will cover at least half of the Piroshki
fry until the dough is a golden brown, turning it half way to get the other side, then remove and drain on a paper towel and then eat!
Once you bite into the steaming hot piece of dough you may want to season it more with either salt, pepper or I will dash some soy sauce into it, but most often if you seasoned the meat correctly it will not need anything else.
Be sure and serve them hot they are the best that way!

The easier dough method, if you have available at your store, Pillsbury Hot Roll Mix. This comes in a box and usually I need two boxes to make a batch of Piroshki. Any excess dough can be fried up and make a great buttered bread for breakfast. ( Not a low fat product)

Stuff you will need:

Filling:
1 lb of ground beef 10% fat
1 small onion chopped 1/4 dice
2 hard boiled eggs chopped as onion
3 TBS soy sauce
2 TBS flour
3 TBS chopped fresh dill or 1 TBS dried
salt and pepper to taste

Dough:
2 cups lukewarm water
1 package dry yeast
1/2 sugar
1/4 cup melted butter
2 egg yolks
dash of salt
5-51/2 cups of flour


Once you have mastered the process you will find it quiet easy to put together. Or you can find a Russian Delicatessen and pay anywhere from about 2 to 4 dollars each, and they will not taste as good. They are usually a lot more breadier and have little meat filling!

I'm too tired to cook tonight nite.

Whats more trouble to go change clothes get into the car and go find somewhere to get some no frills eats or just throw something together at home.
Well at least at home I can walk around in old tattered clothes.
Well I can do that to a restaurant too, and maybe they will feel sorry for me, you think?

Here is a less than 5 minute throw together dish that will work great on an old flank steak, even better on a New York or other steaks. Or if you add one other ingredients in the recipe will do wonders for chicken.

Combine all the stuff in a food processor, pulse a couple of times so it has been mixed good, do not over process since that's not good, at least for this recipe.

Toss the steak into a zip lock bag, throw into the refrigerator for at least 2 hours,
then remove from the refrigerator at least one hour before tossing it on the grill or grill pan.

That's it!

Oh, this also make a great salsa to put on meat or fish that you didn't season before cooking, just adjust the amount of oil to your desired consistency!

And here is some totally useless information and a quote from Miguel de Cervantes, the writer of Don Quixote.

La mejor salsa del mundo es la hambre
or to translate it is, Hunger is the best sauce in the world!

Stuff you will need.

One or two portions of steak, or one large flank steak or one or two strips of skirt steak. A New York steak is pictured above.
3 cloves of garlic peeled
1/2 an white onion, chopped roughly
juice from 3 small limes or 2 lemons
1/4 cup vegetable or olive oil
1 large hand full of cilantro rough chop
1 Serrano chili, seed removed rough chop
1/2 tea fresh ground pepper
1 tea Kosher salt
1 TBS Worcestershire sauce (or for a better flavor, toss in 4 or 5 anchovy fillets)
1/2 cup apple cider ( use this only on the chicken)

Real Easy, really really easy bread

One of the things I love to do is bake bread. Almost more than spreading some butter on it after about 10 minutes when it has come out of the oven. If you have never baked bread because you felt it was to hard and pain to make this recipe is for you!

You don't need anything special, no mixer , no special pans, nada!

You can even pre make the dough , put it in to a refrigerator, take it out 12 hours later bake and eat.

Place the warm water into the pot, add the salt and flour. Then add the yeast. Take large spoon and stir in the pot to be sure everything is mixed well and there are no dry flour spots. The dough will look almost too soupy unlike a ball that you normally would knead. It will have quite a bit of moisture. That how you want it.
Cover with plastic or another pan or lid.....
Wait until it bubbles up and increases in size almost double.
Take the spoon then and punch it down, stirring once or twice, no more. Now be sure your pot is a non stick type otherwise you will have some difficulty in releasing the bread. You can also after you punch down the dough the second time transfer it to a standard non stick loaf pan or one that has been buttered. That way you will have a standard loaf size for sandwiches etc.
The you want it to rise again, it will take about 2 hours, in a nice warm area. Then
Preheat your oven to 400
When the oven is hot, stick it in , preferable in the middle rack
Bake for about 20 to 30 minutes.
The way to tell if it is ready is take it out of the oven and with your finger give it a thump
If it sounds hollow, it's done!
Take out, let cool for about 20 minutes, it will shrink down a tad, turn the pot over and the bread will fall out, cool or cut and enjoy!


Stuff you will knead.......
4 cups all purpose flour
2 1/2 cuts warm water
1 tsp salt
1 tsp yeast
1/2 tsp honey or brown sugar

Easy Spiced Salmon #2

This one is another throw quick no fuss reciepe, but takes use of a blender, so go out and buy a blender if you don't have one! Soriana has them for about 20 bucks now that they are all made in China, just image what it really cost to make them when you consider shipping, profits etc,etc.

Take two cups of cilantro , and toss in 2 cloves of garlic with the paper removed. If you have a chance to roast some garlic, so much the better it will give a much better flavor, put in 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper. Put in the juice of one lemon.
Start the blender,
add about 1/2 cup of olive oil, preferred if you don't have it vegetable oil will do.
Whirl away until all is smooth and green.

Rinse the salmon fillets or steaks, pat dry with a paper towel.
Let the fish swim in a shallow dish in the sea of cilantro marinade for at least one hour.

Get your cast irongrill skillet ready or if you are going to grill it, get that going.
If you are going to use the skillet, preheat your oven to 375. I also use a plain sheet pan with a cookie cooling rack place in the sheet. Spray the rack with PAM or other oil spray for a easier release.
Test doneness after about 15 minutes.
Depending on your oven, it will be ready, either check it with the touch method or cut and separate the middle of one of the fillets to see.
If you are grilling, put it on a well oilied place on a hot part of the grill, then carefully lodge a metal spatula after about 4 minutes then turn it onto the grill again and cover it with on old tin pie plate or the plate from a store bought pie that you bake in the oven.

(This is an old restaurant trick when drilling fish on a medium to hot grill, so that you don't over cook and dry the fish out)

The reason you need to do that is most of the time the fish will need more heat to surround it than the grill will provide. This way you are using a pie plate to make a mini oven.

Check it in about 4 minutes and it should be ready.
Oh, use some tongs to remove the pie plate over the salmon.

I usually service this with some pasta of some sort, linguine or fettuccine cooked then tossed with butter and some roasted garlic and a little salt.....
Enjoy.

Stuff you will need:

One fresh bunch of Cilantro
2 to 6 salmon fillets, thick cut if possible 1" ( if thinner adjust your cooking time)
1 teaspoon Kosher Salt
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
1/2 olive oil
Juice of one lemon
2 Garlic cloves, skin removed, Roasted preferred.