SIMPLY ELEGANT: SALMON CURRY

Posted in Celebrate Wednesday, Seafood by sallybr

Here’s a very popular dish from the restaurant “Terra” in Napa Valley, another recipe from the “Secrets of Success” by Michael Bauer.

If you are looking for a dish to impress your friends, your in-laws, or that special someone having dinner at your place for the first time… this is it! The kind of food that gives a pause of satisfaction after the first bite, a meal that you’d expect from a first-rate restaurant, but instead… you made it yourself! … And it wasn’t even hard! An impressive concoction that you can definitely bring to the table on a weeknight after a hard day at work… A “Celebrate Wednesday” kind of deal. 😉

Everything in this dish is balanced, a contrast of flavors and textures: the subtle heat of the curry, the freshness of the salad, the silkiness of the sauce on the crunchiness of the cabbage and peanuts, and luscious salmon as the centerpiece! It’s a symphony for your tastebuds. Try it, and I’m sure you’ll make it again.

SALMON WITH THAI RED CURRY SAUCE and CABBAGE SALAD
(from Terra restaurant, recipe published in M. Bauer’s Secrets of Success)

(receita em portugues na segunda pagina)

for the curry sauce:
2 tsp peanut oil
1 tsp garlic, minced
1 tsp ginger, minced
1 tsp coriander seeds, cracked
1 1/2 tsp curry powder (I used mild curry, from Penzey’s spices)
1 1/2 tsp Thai red curry paste
1 1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 1/4 cups unsweetened coconut milk
3 Tbs tomato puree
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1.5 Tbs firmly packed brown sugar

for the cabbage salad:
2 cups very thinly sliced cabbage (red or green)
1/3 cup julienned cucumber
2 T fresh cilantro
2 T fresh mint
1/2 teaspoon soy sauce
2 teaspoons rice vinegar

4 pieces of Atlantic king salmon filet (6 oz each)
1 Tbs olive oil
salt and pepper

roasted peanuts, coarsely chopped

cooked white rice

Make the sauce… (you can make it the day before if you prefer)
Heat the oil and saute the garlic and ginger until it is just beginning to get golden. Remove the pan from the heat and add the coriander seeds, curry paste and powder, paprika, and ground cumin. On low heat, saute for a couple of minutes. Stir in the coconut milk, tomato puree, soy sauce, and brown sugar. Increase the heat and bring it almost to boiling, and then remove it from the heat. Keep warm or gently reheat if it was refrigerated. Sauces containing coconut milk should not be boiled, as they tend to separate.

Make the salad…
Mix the cabbage with all other ingredients in a large bowl. Add the soy sauce and vinegar, toss well. Reserve until serving. (I like to do it 30 minutes in advance, if possible).

Cook the salmon…
Brush the salmon fillets with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Grill to your liking, but salmon is best cooked medium, for a thick filet about 4-5 minutes per side on a hot grill. You can also cook it on the stove, making sure it is still translucent in the center.

Assemble the dish….
Place rice in the center of the plate. Ladle 1/2 cup of sauce around it, place the salmon on top or next to it. Top each fillet with a tall mound of the cabbage. Sprinkle the sauce with roasted peanuts.

Enjoy the compliments!

(to print the recipe, click here.)

Comments: Please don’t be put off by the number of ingredients. This is a very simple dish to prepare, and if you want to make it even easier, get the sauce ready the day before. It’s a good idea to make more than called for, because it is wonderful. Try it on seared sea scallops, on grilled shrimp, or even pork tenderloin, they all go quite well with it.

I have made this dish with red, green, and also with napa cabbage. In general, I am very fond of napa cabbage, but this dish calls for a little more crunch, and Napa doesn’t deliver the same snap. Try them all yourself, and pick your own favorite.

If I ever make it to Terra, I’m definitely ordering this dish!

proxima pagina: receita em portugues

19Aug2009

Greens + Grapefruit + Shrimp = Great Salad!

Posted in Salads, Seafood by sallybr

This recipe comes from one of my favorite cookbooks: Secrets of Success, by Michael Bauer, who is a restaurant critic for “The San Francisco Chronicle”. In this wonderful book, we encounter 300 recipes of “signature dishes” from San Francisco restaurants. More than providing the recipe, he shares little secrets used by the chefs: small details that often mean the difference between a good and a great meal.

At some point in my life (ca. 1989) I left my heart in the Bay Area, 😉 so buying this book and cooking from it was a nice way to fight my withdrawal symptoms.

This recipe comes from chef Fabrizio Laudati (owner of an Italian restaurant called Panta Rei). It was offered as an appetizer in his previous restaurant, Baraonda, that no longer exists. I find it perfect for a summer dinner: it’s light but substantial enough to fill you up, especially if you serve a good loaf of bread with it. In this case, the recipe will feed 2 or 3 happy people.

MIXED GREEN SALAD WITH GRAPEFRUIT AND WARM SHRIMP
(serves 6 as an appetizer course)

Para receita em portugues, veja o final desse texto, na proxima pagina

for the shrimp
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup grapefruit juice (freshly squeezed)
2 garlic cloves, minced
salt and pepper to taste
12 ounces uncooked medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 T butter

for the vinaigrette
1/4 cup olive oil
2 t balsamic vinegar
2 t grapefruit juice
1 garlic clove, minced (I omitted)
salt and ground white pepper

for the salad
3 ounces mixed baby greens of your choice
2 heads Belgian endive, separated into spears
2 pink grapefruit, peeled and cut into segments (see my comments)
1 t minced fresh Italian parsley

To prepare the shrimp, combine the oil, the grapefruit juice and the garlic in a bowl. Add the shrimp, season with salt and pepperand refrigerate everything for 6 to 24 hours.

To make the vinaigrette, combine all ingredients until blended.

Place the greens, endive and grapefruit segments in separate bowls, adding the vinaigrette to each bowl and tossing the ingredients. Make sure to save any grapefruit juice that runs out of the segments.

Heat a skillet that will hold all the shrimp over high heat. Add the shrimp and the marinade and stir them until the shrimp are cooked and the sauce slightly reduces, about 3 minutes. Add the butter and toss the shrimp until it melts, then remove it from the heat. Add the reserved juices from the grapefruit segments to the skillet and stir to blend.

For nice presentation, assemble the salad by placing the endive spears in a circle on individual plates. Add a grapefruit section on top of each spear,and pile a mound of greens in the center, topping the dish with two hot shrimp and another grapefruit piece. Drizzle with a little of the sauce; sprinkle with parsley.

Bon Appetit!

Continue reading →

17Aug2009

FROM SEA TO TABLE: SUSHI

Posted in General, Seafood by sallybr

Have I made those? No, I’ve never made sushi myself, and I doubt that I’ll ever attempt it. But, we love sushi, and it would be crazy not to enjoy it here, in this Hawaiian paradise. Yes, we are in Hawaii, the North Shore of Oahu… We love this place so much! With all due respect to Honolulu and Waikiki, nothing beats the aura of the North Shore. No shopping centers, no fancy restaurants, no movie theaters, just the ocean, the white sandy beaches, the waves that can catch you by surprise and throw you around like a puppet… And the seafood, as fresh as you can dream it!

We had dinner at a small sushi place in Hale’iwa, called Banzai Sushi Bar. Clockwise from top left you see a Bowl’s Roll (a California roll topped with shrimp and avocado), a Hawaiian roll (coconut shrimp in the center, macadamia nuts, mango and eel sauce on top), Bowls roll revisited, and the ahi tuna sashimi.

We are lucky enough to be very close to what we are told is “one of the best kept secrets in the North Shore”: a beach with no obvious entrance from the road. Apparently only folks living here know about it. From a bike path, you can see a small dirt path, that seems to lead nowhere…. But as you approach the end, big surprise…. a beach, almost deserted, particularly considering these pictures were taken on a Saturday morning!

Beach1a

I share with you a few photos, they can all be enlarged by clicking on them.

(clique e amplie!)

Look to your left….

Look to your right….

Look ahead into the ocean….

Some shots around a nice running route…

ALOHA!

12Jul2009

SHRIMP MOQUECA

Posted in Brazilian cooking, Seafood by sallybr

It’s time for me to post something typically Brazilian. For those who are not familiar with Brazilian cooking, this dish is a great introduction. It originates from Bahia, a very beautiful Brazilian state, where Summer never ends. Most dishes from Bahia, or as we say “comida baiana”, are very spicy, just like in other hot places of the world. The warm climate goes hand in hand with a ton of pepper, which helps get the sweat going…

The only exotic ingredients for moqueca are coconut milk and dende (a kind of palm oil). These days one can find coconut milk rather easily – I advise you to buy brands from Thailand and make sure it is NOT the sweetened version. I feel a bit queasy just imagining a moqueca made with sweet coconut milk.

At the risk of receiving hate mail from Brazilians, I will share with you my recipe for shrimp moqueca, which does not include dende oil, for two reasons: first, I am never able to find Brazilian dende here. Second, I actually do not mind a moqueca made without it. With this last phrase, I’ve infuriated the whole population of Bahia (more than 14 million people), and 95% of all other Brazilians (about 168 million folks).

If you are still with me, allow me to show you a slightly unconventional, but delicious moqueca recipe… And, by the way, if you want to listen to the correct pronunciation of the word, click here to listen to the very writer of this blog saying it in native Brazilian portuguese 😉

moqueca1

SHRIMP MOQUECA a la Sally
(receita em portugues ao final da proxima pagina)

1 pound large shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/4 cup kosher salt
1/4 cup sugar
juice of 1 lemon
1/4 cup olive oil (or a mixture of dende oil and olive oil)
1/2 yellow onion, diced
1/4 cup roasted red bell pepper, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 cup fresh cilantro leaves, minced
1 14.5oz can diced tomatoes (I like to use fire roasted, they work very well in this dish)
1/2 cup to 3/4 cup coconut milk
hot pepper sauce (Tabasco, Sriracha)
fresh cilantro to taste
salt and pepper to taste

Prepare a mild brining solution mixing 1 quart water with 1/4 cup kosher salt and 1/4 cup sugar, plus the juice of half a lemon. Submerge the shrimp in the solution for about 15 minutes (see my comments). Remove shrimp from brine, rinse briefly and dry on paper towels.

Saute the onion in olive oil until it starts to turn golden, add the red bell pepper, garlic and fresh cilantro and saute for a few minutes longer. Season with salt and pepper. Add the tomatoes with their juices, cook for 5 to 10 minutes to marry the flavors, and add the shrimp. Cook just until it turns opaque, add the coconut milk, reduce the heat to low, and cook until everything is heated through and the sauce is smooth. Do not let the coconut milk boil too much or it may separate (it will still taste delicious, but it will look curdled). Add hot pepper sauce, taste, adjust seasoning and right before serving add more fresh cilantro and the juice of the other half of the lemon.

Serve right away over white rice.

Bom apetite! 😉

for comments and more photos, click here