Nothing fishy about marinated salmon

If you've been lucky enough to have a friend of Scandinavian descent bring gravlax to a party, you know how delicious marinated salmon can be. You may also have thought, "What a lot of work" or "I could never eat that much fish at home." Also, it may be hard to find fresh dill at certain times of the year.

A side of salmon is a pretty party dish, but a bit impractical for a weeknight dinner unless you regularly feed a dozen or so people a sitting.

But marinated salmon can be a blessing when you buy a fillet and find yourself invited out for dinner or an unexpected meeting demands your presence. When you get home, fix the smaller recipe below, and a few days later, slice, add bread and a green salad and you've got a light midweek meal.

First, the original recipe, for a whole side of salmon, filleted, from Trina Hanemann's "The Scandinavian Cookbook" (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2008, 224 pages, $30).  My version for a half-pound salmon fillet is below it.

Marinated Salmon 
Serves 20-24

Ingredients
1 orange
1 lemon
1 1/2 cups superfine sugar
10 ounces sea salt
1 side of salmon, filleted
For serving:
1 orange
1 lemon
Toasted bread
Green salad

Instructions
If you have a zester, use it to remove the zest from the orange and the lemon it will look fresh and tasty.  Alternatively, finely grate the zest from the fruit. Mix the zest with the sugar and salt.
Use tweezers to remove any pin bones from the salmon fillet. Spread the zest mixture evenly over the entire surface of the salmon, then wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 3 days.
After 3 days, take the salmon out of the refrigerator, remove the plastic wrap and wipe off the marinade with a paper towel. Wrap the salmon in plastic wrap and freeze for 12 hours, then take it out of the freezer and defrost it.
Before it is completely thawed, put the salmon on a board and cut it into thin slices with a very sharp knife. The traditional cutting technique starts diagonally at one corner of the salmon and works toward the center of the fillet.
To serve, remove the zest from the remaining orange and lemon and sprinkle it over the salmon. Serve with toasted bread and a green salad.

Lori K's little marinated salmon
Serves 2

Ingredients
1 lemon
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1/2 pound salmon fillet
Crusty bread
Salad

Instructions
Zest the lemon; save the fruit. (Wrap it in plastic to keep it from drying out and put it in the refrigerator.)
Combine the sugar and salt in a clean coffee mill and blend until the sugar is superfine. Add to the zest.
Pull out with tweezers any bones left in the fillet. Spread the sugar mixture over the fillet and either put it in a covered glass dish, or wrap in plastic, and put in the refrigerator.
After three days, take it out, wipe off the marinade with a paper towel, rewrap it and put it in the freezer while you're at work. When you come home, take it out of the freezer to defrost. When it is almost defrosted, cut it in thin slices diagonally with a sharp knife and remove them from the skin.
Arrange on plate. Cut the reserved lemon in half, remove the seeds and squeeze over the salmon. Serve with crusty bread and salad.

Cookbook: The Art of the Dessert

We have a winner - Janice Dean of Charlottesville. Check back next Friday for another cookbook giveaway.

Although I love to cook, I have always been frustrated by baking. As the years have gone by, I have come to realize that they are two distinct disciplines and success at one does not ensure great results at the other.

But I do appreciate a good dessert and the pastry chefs who make them. Ann Amernick is one of these. While the rest of us poor slobs are trying to do our best with cup measures and tablespoons, she's expertly measuring out her ingredients with a gram scale for consistent results. But in "The Art of the Dessert," she also has tips for the home cook, and shares her techniques for getting the best out of your recipes. And then there are her recipes, nearly a hundred of them: cakes and tortes, pies and tarts, cookies and candies, cold desserts, warm desserts, and dessert sandwiches to impress your guests.

 If you want this week's book, "The Art of the Dessert," be the first to click the PayPal button (Buy Now) below, follow the directions to deposit a payment to my account, AND leave a comment at the end of this blog item with some way to contact you for your address or in case you were not the first one (I have only one copy of each book). I will send the book by Priority Mail. Offer good in the United States only at this time. You don't need a PayPal account, but you will need a credit card to pay with the button.

If this isn't the book for you, keep checking back on Fridays. I offer a different cookbook each week. I'll edit the post to indicate when a book is no longer available.

If you live in Charlottesville, you can save the money by coming to pick up the book. Be the first to leave a comment, with a way to contact you.

To give you an idea of the recipes in "The Art of the the Dessert," here is a sample recipe.

Triple Chocolate Terrine
Yield: 1 9x5inch loaf

Ingredients
5 ounces white chocolate
5 ounces milk chocolate
5 ounces bittersweet chocolate
2 3/4 cups heavy cream

Preparation
Lay a length of double thickness plastic wrap large enough to cover the bottom and sides of a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan on a work surface. Smooth out any air bubbles. Fit the plastic wrap into the loaf pan, lining the bottoms and the sides and allowing it to extend over the sides of the pan. Press the plastic wrap in well to get rid of any air bubbles. Set aside.

Instructions
Chop the white, milk and bittersweet chocolates separately and place each in a microwave bowl. Whip 3/4 cup of the heavy cream until soft peaks form. Set aside.

Microwave the white chocolate on medium power for 20 seconds, then 10 seconds, stirring between each interval. As soon as the chocolate begins to melt, decrease the interval time to 5 seconds. The chocolate should be warm and completely melted without being burned. As soon as the chocolate is melted, fold in the whipped cream quickly, so as not to solidify the chocolate with the coldness of the cream, until no streaks of chocolate show. Pour into the prepared loaf pan and smooth the top with a 2-inch wide offset metal spatula. Refrigerate.

Whip another 3/4 cup of the cream until soft peaks form. Set aside. Repeat the melting process with the milk chocolate, then fold in the whipped cream. Pour over the white chocolate and smooth. Refrigerate.
Barely whip the remaining 1 1/4 cups cream to less-than-soft peaks, until the tracks of the whisk are just visible in the cream. Remove 1/2 cup of the cream and set aside. Melt the bittersweet chocolate using the same method as the white and milk chocolates. The chocolate should be very warm to best mix with the whipped cream.

Working very quickly, pour the very warm chocolate into the remaining whipped cream and immediately begin whisking the mixture very quickly and thoroughly to combine the chocolate and cream, until no chocolate bits are visible. (This step must be done quickly so the chocolate goes in smoothly.) Add the reserved 1/2 cup whipped cream, whisking it in thoroughly until blended.
Pour the bittersweet chocolate mixture over the milk chocolate mixture in the pa and smooth the top.

Cover and refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight. Turn the terrine out onto a serving platter, remove the plastic wrap, and cut into 1-inch slices.

Place a slice on each plate and surround with raspberry coulis, a blend of 2 pints mashed fresh raspberries, 1 tablespoon framboise, and 2 to 3 tablespoons sugar (or to taste).

The big breakfast

A proper English breakfast

When we were hiking from inn to inn in the Lake District in the early '90s, one of our joys each morning was watching a goofy morning British TV show, "The Big Breakfast," where one of the gimmicks was that the crew would arrive at a home, clean the house and prepare a proper English breakfast for the inhabitants, then clean up. Of course, they came unannounced, so the people were often in their bathrobes, curlers in their hair, etc. Sometimes the crew even brought a brass band for entertainment.

But to me, the big English breakfast was entertainment in itself. The American breakfast - bacon or sausage, eggs, hashbrowns and toast - pales in comparison.

This morning, I attempted a variation on the English breakfast. I started with turkey sausage crumbles, heating them until hot in a skillet, then adding two farm-fresh eggs, a little salt and pepper, then scrambling them until just done. I kept those warm while I browned the ripe tomatoes, halved and cut side down. Meanwhile, I sliced a couple of pieces of coffee cake, and topped them with a fresh currant sauce (recipe below). It was a very hardy and pretty breakfast.

Fresh Red Currant Sauce
Makes about a half cup

I had never seen fresh currents, only dried, so when I came across them at the grocery store, I had to try them. By themselves, they are almost as tart as cranberries.

Ingredients
4 ounces fresh red currants
1 tablespoon water
2 tablespoons sugar (approximately)

Instructions
Wash and pull stems off currants. Put them in an ovenproof French canning jar, the ones that look like wide glasses with orange plastic lids.  I added one tablespoon of water and one tablespoon of sugar and microwaved them until the mixture boiled to the top of the jar. I removed the jar from the 'wave, tasted, and added another tablespoon of sugar. I again brought the mixture to a boil, and tasted again. This time it was just right for my taste; you may want yours sweeter, but the tarter sauce tastes nice when paired with a rich, sweet dessert.

Dressing up fresh fruit

Mission figs

The fading days of summer are full of ripe fruit of all kinds: figs, pears and melons to name a few. And while you may be busy canning some of this goodness to tide you over for the winter, or laying in containers of frozen fruit to be enjoyed in smoothies later, be sure to enjoy all that you can right now, because nothing is better than fresh, ripe fruit.

As good as fruit is, sometimes it needs a little something extra - an accessory, the culinary equivalent of a silk scarf or a fine silver necklace. After poaching pears in a red wine the other night, I had a little of the mascarpone that I served with them left over. And I had a pint of very ripe figs.

I'll probably lose my foodie credentials for admitting this, but I've never had mascarpone straight. I've had it in tiramisu, but never by itself. It's nothing short of amazing; calling it a triple-cream soft cheese does it little justice. It is more like a luscious whipped cream condensed into a spread.

After I halved half the figs and put a dollop of cheese on each, I made another batch of the wine sauce and poured it over. Mmmm, it was almost as good as the pears, the sauce kicking up the sensuousness of the figs to a gasping height.

Lori K's wine sauce
Serves 4


Ingredients
250 ml red wine
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup water
1 small vanilla bean, split


Instructions
Mix everything in a small heavy saucepan. Bring to a boil then simmer until the sauce reduces to about half (this may take up to a half hour). Remove vanilla bean halves. Pour over fruit or ice cream.

Sugar, sugar

Well, well, well... several well-known brands are trying an experiment, reformulating their products using sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Heinz Ketchup, Mountain Dew and Wheat Thins are among the reformulated offerings.

But these companies are just sticking their toes in the ocean, and don't expect them to go for a swim anytime soon, unless there's major money to be made by doing what's right. If more people demand sugar than are apathetic about what they ingest, a bigger change may come.

The obesity problem in the United States won't end by just replacing HFCS with sugar. Humans are hardwired to crave sweets.

The epidemic, however, seems to have started with the addition of HFCS, which is much cheaper than sugar, to many items that had no sugar in them before, such as crackers, popcorn and nuts, along with the cultural switch from drinking water or milk to consuming soft drinks with meals. Add to that the decline of health classes, where good eating habits such as consuming five fruits or vegetables each day are taught, and a lessened emphasis on physical education, and a generation of Americans have come to see overweight as the rule rather than the exception.

It's good that many people now recognize severe dieting practices as dangerous, but we as a culture still need to learn portion control and how to limit our sweet tooth, as well as get 30 minutes or so of exercise each day.

A tax so sweet

Sugar, rum, and tobacco are commodities which are nowhere necessaries of life, which are become objects of almost universal consumption, and which are therefore extremely proper subjects of taxation.
— Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776

Kelly D. Brownell, Ph.D., writing in the New England Journal of Medicine last week, is proposing we tax soft drinks and snacks containing sugar and high fructose corn syrup to lower obesity and raise revenue. Why we are loathe to take that step when we have controlled alcohol and tobacco consumption in that way for years doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

My Mini-Med School class last week was full of information on the role of glucose in the body and how dangerous it can be when it spins out of control. If we have an epidemic, and many health professionals point out that obesity and diabetes have gotten to that point in the United States, we need to something about it. Taxing sugar more may be a first step.

A sweeter option

Worried about the reports of mercury in high-fructose corn syrup, which seems to be in many processed foods? First, cut down on your consumption of processed foods. If there is an ingredient listed that you can't pronounce or your grandmother didn't use in her baking, skip it. If you are still craving a sweet, carbonated drink, look for CocaCola made in Mexico (some Mexican groceries carry it), or if you like fruity flavors, try Jarritos or Hansen's brand soft drinks. Or buy seltzer water and add your own flavored sugar syrups, or Torani Italian syrups, to your taste.