Maple Glazed Salmon

Whenever my mom is gone, it falls on me to cook. I got a little pamphlet thingy called "Inspirations" from The Fresh Market that had a recipe for maple glazed salmon. It sounded good and fairly easy, so I had my brother pick up salmon on his way back from dropping my other brother off at the gym. (Side note: The amount of peanut butter they put in their cereal is increasing. It's slowly but surely taking over the bowl. I'm afraid.)

Maple Glazed Salmon (from The Fresh Market)
Serves 4. Double if two of those people are teenage boys.


Ingredients:


1/2 cup maple syrup (Don't you dare use Hungry Jack. I bolded, italicized, and underlined it because it's that important.)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons soy sauce

3 garlic cloves, minced

1/2 teaspoon ginger, minced
1-1/4 pounds salmon
2 tablespoons scallions or cucumber, thinly sliced


Instructions:


Mix everything but salmon and scallions together.

Place salmon fillet, cut in half if doubling recipe, in shallow dish or gallon plastic bag.

Drizzle marinade over fish, reserving 1/4 cup. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat grill to medium-high. Place salmon on grill skin-side up.

Cook until fish flakes easily with fork, about 5 minutes per side.

It's flaking, all right. 

To serve, put reserved marinade out as sauce and top fish with scallions or cucumber.

This was very tasty. The marinade/sauce is pretty sweet, so I wouldn't recommend dumping it all over the salmon. My dad grilled the salmon to perfection, and the great salmon flavor went very well with the marinade. The fish doesn't keep very well, so eat the leftovers as soon as possible. This salmon goes well with polenta and a light salad.

The entire fillet couldn't fit in the picture. And yet, thanks to my brothers, we ate three-quarters of it.

Chicken Marbella

I was at my grandparent's house last week and my aunt and I were trying to think of something to cook for my cousin's birthday. She pulled out her go-to dish, chicken marbella. Having never heard of it, I was slightly terrified when I looked at the recipe, which includes prunes, olives and capers. At least it doesn't have anchovies, I thought.
I was also unable to pronounce it correctly. (It's pronounced mar-bay-ya, not mar-bell-a, as I thought it was.) Though I was skeptical, everyone assured me that it was amazing and we had to make it.
So I did.

Chicken Marbella (Adapted from The Silver Palate Cookbook):
Serves 10-12


Ingredients:


12 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 medium head of garlic or 2 small heads, pureed
1/3 cup dried oregano
coarse salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1/2 cup plus 1/3 cup red wine vinegar

1 cup olive oil, divided
1-1/2 cup pitted prunes
2/3 cup pitted Spanish green olives, drained
1 3.5 oz jar capers with juice
6-8 bay leaves
1-1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup white wine
1/4 cup Italian parsley or fresh cilantro, finely chopped


Instructions:


In large bowl or roasting pan, combine garlic, oregano, pepper and coarse salt to taste, 1/2 cup vinegar, 1/2 cup olive oil, prunes, olives, capers with juice, and bay leaves.

Mix until combined. Add chicken breasts and coat with marinade.

Cover and let marinate in fridge for at least 6 hours; preferably overnight. Turn chicken over and re-coat halfway through marinating.

Coolest. Fridge. EVER.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Arrange chicken in a single layer in one or two large baking pans. Sprinkle with brown sugar and pour white wine around chicken.

Bake for at least 20 minutes, until inside of chicken is cooked. Baste every 15 minutes.

(We had oven problems, so I don't have an exact figure on the baking time. Ours took an hour, but the breasts were still partially frozen and the oven was being opened every few minutes. My aunt said that it should have taken around 20 minutes.)
With a slotted spoon, transfer chicken, prunes, olives, and capers to serving platter. Pour several spoonfuls of marinade on top and pour remaining pan juices into a sauceboat. Sprinkle chicken generously with parsley or cilantro. Serve.

To serve cold, allow to cool to room temperature in roasting pan, then transfer to a serving platter and serve.



Well, my relatives were right. This was great! The chicken was moist and perfectly cooked, despite our oven "issues", and tasted great. It had a slightly sweet outer crust with a nice tang from the vinegar. The prunes were really good after soaking in the pan juices, although I've never liked olives before and I still didn't like them then. It was really easy to prepare the marinade. My only issue is that we had so much trouble cooking it, which was really my fault. I recommend serving this with rice or really good bread, as we did.
Question of the Day: Who the heck thought of marinating chicken with prunes, olives, and capers? And why?

Garlic Herb Pizza Dough

When I found out that we were having one of our infrequent pizza nights, I immediately reached for The Joy of Cooking. Since we wanted to start our pizzas at around 6:30, I decided to start the dough rising at 10:00 that morning.
Needless to say, that didn't happen.
After a frantic bike ride to Jewel because I couldn't find the yeast my mom insisted we had, one restart because I thought I had killed said yeast, and one flour explosion later, I had my dough.
It was almost 11:00.
Oh well.
We didn't eat until nearly 8:00 that night.

Garlic-Herb Pizza Dough
Makes 8 individual, 4 medium, 2 large, or 1 absolutely enormous pizza

Ingredients:

1/2 cup warm water (about 105 degrees)
1/2 teaspoon yeast (If you are reading this now and need dinner in two hours, use a full packet of yeast. It'll only take two hours to rise. However, a longer rising time allows more flavor to develop so it may not be as wonderful. It'll still be good, though.)
1-1/4 cups room-temperature water

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
4 medium minced garlic cloves
1 teaspoon minced fresh thyme, oregano, or rosemary
2 cups bread flour (use all-purpose if you don't have bread flour), plus extra for dusting hands and workplaces
2 cups whole-wheat flour
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
Vegetable oil or spray for oiling bowl


Instructions:

Measure warm water into a 2-cup measuring cup.
Sprinkle in yeast and let stand until yeast dissolves and swells, roughly 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a small skillet.

Add garlic and herbs and sauté until garlic is golden brown, 2 to 3 minutes.

Allow to cool and add, along with room-temperature water, to the yeast. Stir to combine.

Pulse flour and salt in a large food processor fitted with a steel blade.

Continue to pulse while adding wet ingredients through feed tube, holding back several tablespoons. Try not to let the garlic stay in the measuring cup. Keep pulsing until dough forms into a ball.

If the dough doesn't form readily into a ball, add the remaining liquid. Process until smooth and elastic, about 30 seconds longer. Use rubber spatula to turn out dough onto a lightly floured work surface. It should be a little tacky.

Knead by hand for a few strokes to form dough into a smooth, round ball, then oil or spray deep metal bowl.

Place dough into bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Don't allow the wrap to touch the dough.

Let rise for 8-8.5 hours at room temperature or until doubled in size.

Punch dough down with fist and turn out onto lightly floured work surface. Divide into 8, 4, or 2 dough balls.

Place damp cloth on top and let sit for 5 minutes.

Cook as desired and freeze extra dough balls. To stretch out, flatten with palm and spread with fingertips.

This is right.

This is wrong.

If necessary, allow to rest before continuing. If desired, roll edges into a crust.

For the really daring, roll cheese into the crust!

This is a delicious and healthy pizza dough with better flavor than other doughs, although it didn't seem as garlicy as it should have. (My fault. I found out later that the garlic cloves I used qualified as "microscopic" in the spectrum of garlic sizes.) It was moist and crispy, despite my not using bread flour. The grilled dough was was good enough to serve as a side by itself if brushed with some olive oil, as The Best Recipe claimed. One person had trouble stretching the dough into a pizza shape, but that may have been my fault if it was smaller than the others.

A Small Ramble on Mom Witchcraft:
I mentioned that I couldn't find our yeast, right? My mom said it was in the fridge. I looked literally everywhere in the refrigerator. I pulled everything out, but I couldn't find the stinking yeast! So then I made my frantic bike ride to Jewel and bought some. When mom came home and I told her about it, she reached into the fridge and pulled it out.
This happens Every. Single. Time.
I'm not kidding. Whenever I lose something, my mom walks into the room and pulls it out from some spot that I HAVE ALREADY SEARCHED. Is every mom like this? I'm beginning to think that she magically summons things out of oblivion.


The end.