Jenn Cuisine » Responsible Eating

A Food Revolution

Jenn — Mon, 03 May 2010 05:33:19 +0000

If you are in the US, and unless you’ve been living under a rock lately, you’ve probably heard about Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. I mentioned his mission a little bit before in a previous post, but today want to talk about it a bit more. While I’m not going to get into the politics of American food policy, I do think that everyone can benefit from learning to enjoy fresh quality food that came from real ingredients. Providing ways to eat real foods has always been what my cooking has been about – if for no other reason than quality homemade food tastes good!

Though for the yet uninitiated, the entire process of converting from processed to fresh foods can seem extremely daunting. Produce is expensive, and so is local grass feed beef. Not to mention the “withdrawal time” it takes to readjust the body and taste buds away from the salt. And what’s with all those crazy ingredients? For ex. celery root? How in the world am I supposed to eat something that ugly?? Ok ok, celeriac, or celery root, is intimidating to a lot of people, but it’s alright! However, you’d never know this vegetable has the most delicate taste and makes for a fantastic mash!

Switching to fresh produce and cooking for the first time is about as daunting as learning that my husband was gluten free and I could no longer cook with conventional bread, flour, pasta, oats, beer, etc. etc…. To make such a drastic switch, one has to reteach themselves their way around the kitchen. But it’s alright. You can do it. It may take a little time, but one can learn the routine again, and the benefits of cooking present themselves in so many great ways besides the health. Cooking can be a family activity. It can definitely be a tasty activity. And my favorite, cooking is a form of communication, a way to share friendship and love.

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Shrimp and Avocado Salad

Jenn — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 06:53:26 +0000

I had a post ready for you all. I was so moved by Shauna‘s recent post where she poured out her heart and soul about her life; it was exactly the wake-up call that I needed. I immediately wanted to share with you all my story, and my struggles with my own body. For, while not nearly to the same magnitude of hardship as Shauna went through, over the past few years I have had extremely valid reasons for maybe finding a little too much comfort in food.

I let two of my best friends read it first. I wanted to make sure it was still relevant for you all. And I think it is. But, I’m not ready, not just yet, to share all the gory details. It’s a story for sure, but one for another time, a different day. Not this day. For now, I give you the brief version.

There was a time when very suddenly, several instances of tendinitis in my legs all at once rendered me unable to walk, let alone even stand on my own. It was not so long ago. Eventually, after some harrowing and some fantastic experiences, the problem was fixed – only a momentary disturbance in my well-being. Though I remember that summer, not just for the experience I went through, but also for how those events marked the time when food became my comfort. I remember the strawberries at the farmer’s market were heaven that year. My mother and I gorged on them every weekend because they were as sweet as candy. As time went on I could stand and walk a little, and after several months found the strength to stand and make a quiche for my darling now-husband. I watched a lot of TV that summer, and taught myself to make risotto by watching Gordon Ramsay. Cooking became an outlet. This was something I could do, when so many things were so far out of my reach. While I was cooking I got excited about the possibilities that presented themselves, and for a few moments each day, the pain went away. Cooking, creating, and eating, took away pain for me, and gave me hope that things would return to normal. Maybe too much so, and it continued to be this way with each major life-changing event that occurred from then on. Even now, the role food plays in the status of my emotional well being is a bit out of whack.

(we interrupt this regularly scheduled program for a Technorati claim token – wooo Technorati!) SMEAARW4R7P4 – I promise this will be removed once verified….For now please keep reading the rest of this post for some delicious shrimp & avocado salad

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Banana Tapioca Pudding

Jenn — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:42:09 +0000

Because I hate to waste food, one trick that I have learned to adapt is that when I have bananas that have ripened too far for me to want to eat, I throw them in the freezer to use for later (in cupcakes, banana bread, or things like this pudding). Throwing away good usable food makes me want to cry, one because of the dollars wasted that I see going in the trash, and two because it’s not very socially responsible to throw away what could have been perfectly good food. If I can freeze bananas and save them for later, then great! I’ve just found a quick and easy way around this problem

I’d never added bananas into pudding before, and this turned out to be the perfect use! You’ll notice that there really isn’t that much sugar in this recipe. In fact, looking back, I think I could have made it without the sugar at all. The bananas add so much sweetness and richness to the flavor that they really didn’t need any help. If you like bananas, and if you like pudding, this is the perfect dessert hot or cold – though after a couple taste tests – ok so I totally ate banana pudding for dinner tonight, I guess that’s more than a mere taste test haha – I think I prefer it chilled for sure.

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups milk
3 tbs. brown sugar
3 tbs. tapioca
1/4 tsp salt (just a small pinch)
1 egg, beaten well
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1.5 cups of very ripe bananas
1/2 cup heavy cream and 1/4 tsp vanilla for making whipped cream

Directions:
1. Peel bananas, (thaw them 1st if you used frozen ones like me) and puree in a food processor until smooth. If you still have lumps, strain the banana mixture through a sieve to get a perfectly smooth consistency.
2. Add milk, brown sugar, tapioca, salt, egg, cinnamon, and nutmeg to a medium pot and let stand 5 min (this is the suggestion on the back of the tapioca box – not really sure why you do this, but I’ve never done anything differently – it might have to do with helping the tapioca absorb the milk)
3. Turn heat on medium (or just past), and stir nearly constantly with a whisk until the mixture starts to steam.
4. Add in the banana puree. Keep stirring with the whisk, and bring the pudding to a full boil.
5. Take off the heat, stir for a couple more minutes, and then let cool for a few minutes before serving. Alternatively, you can chill the pudding in the fridge and eat the pudding cold. Just make sure to cover it. This pudding is definitely yummy both ways.

I then garnished with some homemade vanilla whipped cream. Yum! Whipped cream is SO easy to make by hand, and once you start doing this, you’ll never go back to that fake stuff ever again. Making whipped cream goes like this – pour cream into a bowl. Take mixer (I use a hand mixer, you can also use a stand one) and place in bowl. Turn onto highest setting, keep going until magically it looks like whipped cream, with stiff peaks -meaning that when you stop beating, the peaks stay in place. Gently fold in the vanilla, and voila, fantastic whipped cream. This process seriously takes less than 5 minutes, and is LEAGUES better than the store bought fake stuff. So go spend the $1.67 on some heavy cream, and make the real stuff. Please. You’ll thank me, I promise.

Oh and please forgive the terrible piping job I did with the whipped cream, I took this picture when I first made the pudding, so it was still warm, and I wanted to get the whipped cream in and the picture taken all before it melted….Melty whipped cream still tastes super yummy, but tends not to look as pretty, as evident in my French toast.

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Roast Chicken with Sage Butter Pesto

Jenn — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 05:15:42 +0000

This recipe is my addition to an awesome monthly gluten free recipe meme, Go Ahead Honey, It’s Gluten Free! – this month hosted by Carol over at Simply Gluten-Free, and the theme for this month is MANLY FOOD. Well, I don’t think anything can get more manly than a beautiful roast! And in my “waste-not” ways, I’ve figured out how to use the entire chicken for a variety of uses. This was my first roast bird, and it was quite the experience. But it was SO delectable, I wonder if I will ever see myself making chicken in any other way again. This was moist. And tender. And FLAVORFUL. Can you ask for anything more?

I’m not writing a specific recipe for how to roast this chicken (just the sage butter pesto), because it wasn’t a recipe, it was a process, haha. This whole post is that process.

This entire process was learned via a phone call with my mother, since it’s not like I have Thanksgiving dinner experience (ha, kinda hard for 2 newlywed grad students to host our huge families for Thanksgiving!). The first experience was prepping the bird. I purchased a whole bird from my grocery store (all natural antibiotic and hormone free, I know not as awesome as from a farmer’s market, but it was on sale and so I bought it a couple weeks ago and quickly stuck it in the freezer until this awesome date), and the first thing I noticed after I had thawed it and was ready to go, was that was there was no cavity to stuff the veggies. I called my mom and she said “well honey, you have to take out the bag of innards first” – ha well this chicken was natural enough there was no such bag. Thus began my mini anatomy lesson as I removed each organ from its original location to create the cavity to stuff my mirepoix (carrots, onion, celery) into. Good thing I don’t get grossed out easily!

Actually it was a good experience and I didn’t mind. Food doesn’t start off in a nice neat package. Food starts off as a living breathing form of life. I have no doubt that I ate an actual bird tonight, and not just some random thing called meat that comes in a shrink-wrapped styrofoam packing. It’s important to connect to your food. This is something that Michael Pollan espouses again and again in Omnivore’s Dilemma.

After that, I rinsed it to get all the blood etc. out, and then heavily salted the insides per my mother’s instructions. I stuffed it with veggies and was ready to lay it on the roasting pan. Wait, roasting pan? I don’t have one of those…turns out a cookie rack propped on top of my lasagna dish worked just fine – yay for ingenuity!

The next part was all me – I created a sage butter pesto to massage on to the chicken, stick under the skin, and into the main area with the veggies as well. I omitted the traditional cheese in this pesto, since I didn’t think that would work flavor wise or well in roasting.

Sage Butter Pesto for Roast

Ingredients:
1/2 cup sage leaves
1/4 cup thyme leaves, stripped from stems
1/4 cup rosemary leaves, stripped from stems
3 tbs butter, cut into small pieces
1/4 cup sliced almonds
2 cloves garlic, sliced
Fleur de sel (I have good French Gray Sea Salt)
Good cracked pepper
3 tbs. EVOO

Directions:
1. Add all into food processor. Mix until thoroughly blended.

Ok, now to roast. Stuck a meat thermometer into the bird (taking care to make sure it was in muscle tissue and not the place where the veggies were or any bone), and into the 325F oven it went. Better Homes and Gardens estimates about 1.5-2 hrs for a 4 lb. bird. Mine was 4.66 lbs and it really took 2.5-3. Maybe if I didn’t open up the oven door every 30 min it would have been less. But I had to – I basted this chicken with some of my homemade duck stock every 30 minutes. And while that may sound odd, to baste a chicken with duck stock, oh was it a good idea. Each time I would end up using about half a cup at a time, and I am convinced that is what kept the roast so moist.

And voila! my beautiful roast -

Now what to do with this roast? Roast chicken is great because of 1.) how economical it is (I paid $7 for 4.66lb) and 2.)how many things you can make with roast chicken meat. After gorging myself fully enjoying some great dinner tonight, I plan on making with the leftovers a pesto chicken salad, and of course using the bones and the neck for making some awesome chicken stock. I also plan on freezing some of the chicken, and saving it for later use in a casserole. Not bad for one $7 bird!

By the way, when I carved this, I carved it with a fork. Yes my friends a FORK. That’s how tender it was, I didn’t even need a knife!

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Mongolian Beef with Maitake and Green Pepper Stir Fry

Jenn — Tue, 19 May 2009 00:44:07 +0000

This was SO delicious!

Mongolian Beef

I made two things here – a fantastic Mongolian beef recipe that I found on Confections of a Foodie Bride who got her recipe from Pink Bites. This recipe makes 4 servings

The only difference I did here was I used tapioca flour instead of cornstarch, and of course gluten free tamari instead of soy sauce. I also used a top sirloin cut. OMG this tasted fantastic, I loved it! Fantastic recipe!!

Maitake and Green Pepper Stir Fry

I made this recipe to go with it (also 4 servings), to try a new culinary mushroom and add in some whole grains and vegetables to the dish

What are maitake mushrooms? Also known as hen of the woods, they are known for being full of flavor and were used medicinally in Chinese and Japanese cultures. I saw them in the store, and thought I’d give them a try. A full flavored mushroom would do much better in a stir fry than those boring white button ones. It looks very unique, not like a typical mushroom that you are probably used to:

So with that I decided it was stir fry time!

Ingredients:
1 cup brown rice, cooked in broth (I used beef broth to go with the mongolian beef dish, but you could use any broth, veggie would be fine)
3 tbs. veg. oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 dried red chile
1 tbs. fresh ginger, minced
1 maitake mushroom, chopped into bite size pieces
1 bell pepper, sliced
1 scallion, chopped
3 tbs. tamari (or soy sauce)

Directions:
1. Heat up a large skillet or wok with oil. Slice and deseed chile into the pan, and add garlic and ginger. Heat on high for about a minute or so to impart the flavors into the oil.
2. Add in the veggies, and toss them in the skillet on the high heat for 2-3 minutes. You know you are ready when the peppers turn bright green. I like my veggies not to be too cooked, to still have a little crunch to them. Then add in the tamari and the rice.
3. Toss frequently on high heat til flavor is incorporated into all the rice and the veggies are evenly mixed in.
4. Garnish with scallions, serve and eat!

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Appalachian Springtime Classic – Ramps with Eggs and Potatoes

Jenn — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 17:07:08 +0000

Ramps, also known as wild leeks, are a plant native to Appalachia. One good thing about living in the midwest is that right now they are everywhere! These broad leafed members of the onion family are very pungent, and can be used in place of onions or garlic in most dishes. But I decided, why not embrace the culture that is best known for embracing them, and create a dish inspired by traditional Appalachian cuisine?

I foraged for these near the river, and felt a little bit like Pollan during his last segment of Omnivore’s Dilemma, when he created a meal entirely from food he foraged himself. Now I didn’t go wild boar hunting, but foraging for ramps oddly inspired a sense of coming back to the earth, kind of like finding your own roots (ha, no pun intended!). Foraging for food is great. You aren’t encouraging any non-sustainable food industry, and it’s free! Just make sure that you forage in places where it is ok to do so. Don’t go foraging on protected land, etc.

Ramps are pretty easy to identify – they smell really strong when you dig them up, have these big broad leaves and reddish stems near the base of the plant, and grow in bunches.

The entire plant is edible – the bulb, stem, and the leaves, so if you cook ramps, please eat all of the plant to enjoy the most that you can!

When I got home, I washed them and let them soak in water overnight so that I could make my dish this morning. Being in a little bit of water in the fridge worked really well for keeping them looking fresh and happy:

Ok now that you know all about ramps, onto the dish that was inspired by them!

Ingredients (Serves 6):
4 tbs. veg oil, or butter, or if you are using bacon you can use the bacon grease here
2 oz. prosciutto*
1 1/2 – 2 cups ramps, chopped
1 1/2 cups spinach, chopped
3 medium to large sized red potatoes, skin on, cubed (*omit to be diabetic friendly)
5 eggs
1 cup milk
1/4 cup parmesean cheese, grated
*Note - you can sub in just about anything here – bacon, sausage, pancetta, the list goes on, or to just keep this dish vegetarian, you can put in some wild mushrooms or just keep it simple with the ramps and spinach.

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350F
2. In a cast iron skillet (or something that goes stove to oven, but cast iron is best because it is non-stick), heat up oil on med to med-high, and fry up prosciutto, ramps, spinach, and potatoes, until the potatoes are soft enough to eat. You may want to reserve some of the ramp leaves for decoration on top, like I did.

3. In a separate bowl, crack eggs, and add milk and cheese, and beat until uniform.
4. Remove skillet from heat and pour in egg mixture and add reserved ramp leaves for decor.
5. Bake in oven about 15 – 20 min, or until the eggs are cooked. This time might need to be adjusted, I wasn’t really keeping track. Usually when I bake, I just keep it in the oven til whatever is baking starts to smell really good throughout my place, and that’s when I know to start checking on it to see how done it is. Seriously this is how I bake. But I provided a time for the rest of you who may not like to be so carefree with their cooking. I’m just putting in the disclaimer that this time could be off, so don’t hold me to it
6. Take out of oven and serve! (Make sure to use a trivet and a pot holder before placing cast iron pot on pretty coffee tables. Don’t worry I there is a lot of padding underneath that cast iron skillet in my top photo!)

This dish was very budget friendly too, yes even with the prosciutto – 5 eggs is about $1.50, 3 red potatoes is about $1 worth, the ramps were free, the fresh spinach was about $1.50 worth, but this can be cheaper if you buy frozen, I used about $3 worth of prosciutto, and the 4 tbs. of oil and little bit of milk and cheese can’t have been more than $.50 worth. You are looking at under $8 for 6 servings here, not bad.

And just for fun, here is a really cool shot I got after I chopped up the ramps, don’t they look so yummy!!

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Happy Earth Day! and a Candied Walnut Salad

Jenn — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 02:02:56 +0000

Since we are celebrating Earth Day today, I wanted to make something fresh and yummy that tasted like spring. I’m not sure candied walnuts taste like spring, but they just kind of happened as I was putting together this salad (yum!). The salad is fresh though, and flavorful. I love the mix of salty and sweet that comes from the candied walnuts and the prosiutto.

However, I want to point out something that Michael Pollan iterates a number of times in his books, as well as made sure to point out again today on his appearance on the Oprah show. It’s OK to limit your meat consumption. In fact, limiting your meat consumption can help conserve vast amounts of resources. Yes, I know it’s funny for a poor grad student to pay $7 for 4 oz. of prosciutto, but that prosciutto will last me most of the week – see, I only used one slice here in this salad, that’s it! And this was my dinner. The great thing about prosciutto is that it is SO flavorful. So you don’t need a lot. Instead, most of my protein for this meal comes from the candied walnuts, which worked great for sustaining me, even through my super intense kickboxing class tonight. It’s really OK not to eat meat all the time. In fact, most of what I eat is either vegetarian or meat limited. I do consume seafood (which I also think about it’s source and health, etc.), but it’s rare that you’ll see me eat more than 2-3 oz. of meat in a sitting – and all of you readers would know, I literally blog I think 99% of everything I make!

But enough of my rambling. The point is, “Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.”

And now onto some candied walnut salad!!

Ingredients:
spinach (or lettuce, not really critical here)
1/2 apple, thinly sliced
about 3 crimini mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 slice of prosciutto, thinly sliced
small handful candied walnuts – 1/2 cup sugar, 1.5 cup walnuts, some salt
a sweet balsamic dressing

Directions:
1. First toast the walnuts, and I just followed the directions for candied walnuts that I found on Simply Recipes. I had never made these before, and it seriously took like 5 min. after toasting. It literally is – toast walnuts, melt sugar until starts to brown, mix walnuts in melted sugar, and lay out so that they can cool. As they are cooling, sprinkle salt. They will cool very quickly, so don’t worry this is quick.
2. Then just assemble your salad.
3. For the balsamic dressing, I made one with some honey, balsamic vinegar, EVOO and lemon juice. No measuring, just put the ingredients together in the proportions you like. I did heat and cool it a bit, to help it get a bit “gooey”.’
4. Put the rest of the candied walnuts in a sealed container and quickly put it out of sight. Or you will eat them all because they are so good.

And now, to finish my Earth Day post, I leave you with a picture of Spring that I took today, enjoy! I just love all the fresh green and flowers coming up around this old log, it’s the perfect image for how out of death comes life, which is exactly what Spring is about – regrowth.

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Blackened Catfish with Crawfish Étouffée

Jenn — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 21:39:11 +0000

My husband is in NOLA right now on a business trip, and talking about yummy cajun food reminded me of my trip to Mississippi for work a couple of years ago. My trip into MS was an interesting experience. We were in a rural area near the river, and it was really hard to see all of the abject poverty around us in the area we were staying in while we were sampling. But it was a good experience I think, we got to meet some great people, experience a different culture and man was the food rockin’ the entire time and the local blues music was fantastic. Ok so I know you are all wondering…what in the world did we sample for in MS?

Why catfish ponds of course!!

Catfish I think is MS’s largest industry – if not the largest, one of the largest, and MS raises more catfish than any other state. If you are not a fishy eater, farm raised catfish might just be the fish for you. Unlike wild catfish, farm raised catfish are NOT bottom feeders. They are trained to eat feed from the surface of the water, which means that they are a lighter and more delicate fish than their murky wild counterparts. Rated “Eco-Best” by the Environmental Defense Fund, farming catfish do not appear to cause ecological damage and are fairly low in contaminant levels.

One of my favorite meals that I ate in MS was “blackened catfish with crawfish étouffée”. Like I said, the food, even in rural MS, just rocked. So tonight is my attempt at recreating the dish. I used this recipe from Louisianna Cookin‘ as a base to start from, but was absolutely horrified at the amount of butter involved. I attempted to create a dish that was not quite so artery clogging. Also, the étouffée recipe makes at least 4 servings, so you can cut it in half (I listed a half recipe here), or just have lots of étouffée leftovers to eat over rice!

Ingredients (for 2 servings)-
1/2 cup dry brown rice
2 catfish filets, about 4 oz. each
2 tbs. veg. oil per filet
Herb rub for catfish – I used: paprika, basil, marjoram, thyme, oregano, salt, pepper, and some minced garlic
1/2 lb. crawfish, though if you live in the midwest like me and crawfish are unavailable, use shrimp
1/2 bell pepper, chopped
1/2 celery rib, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
2 tbs. butter
1 tbs. flour (doesn’t matter what kind, GF flours are friendly to this type of use)
1 tbs. tomato paste
1 tbs. red pepper flakes
1/2 cup water
salt, pepper

Directions –
1. Start the rice enough ahead of time so it that you have about 10 min left when you start the rest of the dish. That way it will be ready all at once.
2. I used a small 8″ stainless skillet for the catfish, this worked well. I spread the veg. oil on the fish, mixed up the herb rub together, and then rubbed it into the catfish, and set it in the skillet on just above med. to cook like the recipe stated. I’m not sure that my catfish necessarily came out “blackened”, but it sure came out flavorful and yummy and fall off of the fork tender!
3. For the étouffée, pretty much just follow the directions in the recipe, but you can totally cut the butter in half like I listed in the ingredients here. I found adding the red pepper flakes really added to the dish too, so play with some kick depending on your tolerance
4. Serve rice on the bottom of the dish, then top with catfish and then the étouffée. Eat!

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Pasta with Parsley and Sun-dried Tomato Cream Sauce

Jenn — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 02:52:39 +0000

This was a 15 min “throw-together” dish, and made a very easy yet tasty dinner. I used up some leftover morel cream sauce from my ravioli dish I made last weekend, and some parsley that really needed using soon. I recently read that the average American household throws away over a POUND of food a day, and that isn’t counting scraps etc. That is just wasted ready to eat food! I am amazed and shocked. Eating responsibly, as I think many of us strive to do, means trying to not throw away a pound of food a day. So this is my dish to use up food and not throw things away

I wrote the recipe as if you didn’t have half a cup of cream sauce leftover from making ravioli, but were making this on its own.

Ingredients (for 2 servings):
4 oz. pasta – can be regular or gluten free
2 tbs butter
2 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp. cornstarch
1/2 cup heavy cream
splash white wine
1/8 cup chopped mushrooms
1/4 cup chopped sundried tomatoes
1/4 cup chopped parsley
grated parmesean

Directions:
1. Start pasta cooking and cook to taste (I like al dente).
2. Slice garlic and toss in a small pan with the butter on med.-high heat until garlic is softened. Then deglaze with white wine, and add in mushrooms and tomatoes.
3. Take a little bit of wine/butter mixture and mix with the cornstarch to form a paste, then add back into the pot and make sure it blends together – you don’t want clumps.
4. Pour in heavy cream, and stir often until comes just to a simmer and starts to thicken.
5. Remove from heat, add in chopped parsley.
6. Toss sauce with pasta, and grate cheese on top. Yum!

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Salmon Cakes with Tomatillo/Cilantro Pesto

Jenn — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 22:31:13 +0000

Ok I know this combo sounds odd. But it’s tasty. I was inspired to make salmon cakes after checking out this post from Cara’s Cravings. But I wasn’t really feeling like wasabi and tofu. So I made a slightly different twist on the flavors, using fresh (well as fresh as Ohio gets, in that it was previously frozen) Alaskan salmon, since Atlantic salmon is a bit too contaminated for my tastes. The Environmental Defense Fund has a really good site called the Seafood Selector for checking out the safety and eco-friendliness of various seafoods. For example, this is the entry on wild Alaskan salmon, which they rate as “eco-best”:

Salmon caught in Alaska (chinook/king, chum, coho, pink, sockeye) are among the better-managed fish stocks in the U.S. They are also low in contaminants. Most Alaskan salmon populations are healthy, and fish are caught with gear that does little damage to the environment.

Part of eating responsibly is knowing where your food came from and how it got to you, as well as the safety of that food – i.e. things like contaminant levels. I try to compromise between price, safety, and management practices. The wild sockeye salmon I bought today was a very decent price, and is much better for me and the environment compared to say, Atlantic salmon, rated as an “eco-worst”.

For the salmon cakes, I mixed in some egg, some fresh chopped cilantro, and some GF bread crumbs (really any bread crumbs will do, so if you are not GF, don’t worry about it), and some tomatillo salsa. They ended up created pretty decent patties that I cooked in my skillet, and then topped with a “pesto” of sorts.

Ingredients (for 4 servings):
Salmon Cakes
8 oz. salmon filets
3 tbsp cilantro, chopped
1/3 cup GF bread crumbs (give or take, I didn’t really measure this) – I get these from a local community market, sorry I don’t make my own!
1 egg
1 tbsp tomatillo, choppped
1/2 small onion, finely chopped
“Pesto”
1 bunch cilantro
2 tomatillos
1/4 cup asiago cheese
1/4 cup walnuts
2 tsp. lime juice

Directions:
1. Remove salmon filet from skin, and chop into small pieces and place in a bowl.
2. add in cilantro, bread crumbs, egg, onion and tomatillo, mush together and mix, not to different from making a crab cake.
3. Form into patties, and in a skillet on med-high heat (I spray my skillet with some oil first) cook a few minutes on either side, until done. (I checked the middle of one to make sure the salmon had cooked all the way through first).
4. To make the “pesto”, I do this in steps, so that I make sure I achieve the right consistency. I start with the cilantro in a food processor, and then add the tomatillos. Then comes the walnuts and lime juice, and then the cheese last. That way if I need to add more of something, I know.
5. I assembled mine on a bed of greens, topped with the “pesto” and a couple of slices of roma tomatoes.

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