Salmon Patties

I’m getting ready to go on vacation for a week, so I figured that I would leave you with a post or two before I desert you until a few days after June 20^th.  Hey, I’m just being realistic.  Things have been up and down here, as usual.  Tomorrow will be day six in a row of work, so that is definitely tiresome.  The weather has gotten HOT.  If I sit outside and try to read for more than twenty minutes, I swear I feel like I’m just going to flop over and dry out.  But the upside of that is that today has been really sunny, so I sat outside for as long as I could bear it to get some vitamin D and some Game of Thrones reading in.  I am still very stressed by the trying-to-find-an-apartment situation for when I move to Texas, but I am relaxing in the evenings by cooking new things with my friend Ellie and watching Pretty Little Liars.  (The new episode airs tonight and I am BEYOND excited!)

The recipe I am going to share today is actually one that I made weeks ago when my parents were out of town.  I was feeling ever so slightly lazy about cooking, but I knew that I wanted to make fish.  Problems: we had already had swai earlier that week and when I went to the store, the salmon did not look good at all.  The answer?  Salmon patties.  They’re super quick, super easy, and pretty delicious too!

Salmon Patties (recipe from Keeper of the Home)

Olive oil
2 cans salmon (the same size as your typical can of tuna fish)
2 eggs
1 cup seasoned breadcrumbs
½ onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon soy sauce
salt and pepper to taste

Mix together all the ingredients in a large bowl until the salmon has flaked apart and the rest of the ingredients are evenly distributed throughout.  Heat about two tablespoons of olive oil in a large frying pan.  Drop burger-sized spoonfuls of the salmon mixture into the frying pan and flatten slightly with a spatula.  Cook until the mixture no longer sticks to the bottom of the pan.  Flip and cook until browned and slightly crispy.  Continue until all of the salmon mixture is cooked, adding more olive oil to the pan if necessary.

One of the things I learned with this recipe is that canned salmon comes with the bones in it, and that the bones are soft enough to mash up and eat.  If you want to go for it, be my guest, but the idea of eating salmon bones really freaked me out so I got boneless/skinless salmon.  Also we had no lemons, and I completely blanked on them when I was at the store, so I substituted vinegar (it was one of the very handy substitutions listed in my handy kitchen substitution Bible).  Otherwise I followed the recipe pretty closely and I think it turned out pretty well.  Ian even gave me the “I thought these were going to be nasty but they are actually edible” compliment, so I felt pretty good about myself.

We ate them plain the first night, but the recipe made too many for just the two of us, so when my parents got home from Ireland, we served warm salmon patties on a bed of mixed greens with a really simple salad dressing: balsamic vinegar, olive oil, Dijon mustard, and salt and pepper.  The dressing really tied everything together and it made for a really simple and tasty meal and it used the cakes in a really different way than the first night, which was fun.

Tomorrow or Thursday morning I guarantee you will hear about one of these three things: plantain chips with Ellie, tamale pie with my Dad, or asparagus risotto with my dad.  I’ve got one vegan recipe, one vegetarian, and one that is definitely neither of those things.  Until then, I plan on showering, making my lunch for work tomorrow, and getting a really good night of sleep, since I’ve been a little on the short side lately.

Banana-Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding

So the banana-chocolate chip bread pudding worked!  And it was really, really delicious!  But before I get there I need to tell you all about the other ways in which the past two days have been fantastic.  Yesterday, after getting home from work, I showered, blogged, and then made dinner for the family.  I made an orzo pasta salad with broccoli and feta cheese and kalamata olives and pesto that was originally a recipe given to me by my roommate Karen.  My dad loves it and I’m pretty sure it’s one of the two or three recipes that will make Ian eat broccoli and not complain.  I used basil from our back porch to make the pesto, and instead of pine nuts, I used walnuts, and the pesto turned out heartier and a little nuttier in flavor than usual.  It was really good.  I ate the leftovers for lunch today.  I served it with a fresh baguette that I brought home from work.  Quite yummy!

After that, my friend Ellie came over to make the bread pudding with me and then we watched an episode of Pretty Little Liars over hot green tea with stevia.  I’ve never tried stevia before, but Ellie tells me that it’s an all-natural calorie-free sweetener that’s something like a thousand times sweeter than sugar and I know it comes from some sort of plant because my friend in Australia is growing one.  It was good.  It did have a different flavor from all the other sweeteners I’ve tried: it wasn’t nearly as obvious as aspartame (which is definitely a good thing and I’m pretty sure aspartame is now linked to cancer) and it wasn’t as rich as something like honey or maple syrup, but it still tasted different from everyday sugar.  I’d try it again.  And of course, Pretty Little Liars was amazing!  I can’t wait for the new episode to come out in a week!

Then, I met my friend Amber at The Chocolate Bar and we shared some fried ravioli (delicious) and we each got a martini—she tried chocolate salted caramel and I tried cherry lemon drop.  The cherry lemon drop was better than the salted caramel (which was basically the same experience we had last time we went—chocolate flavored martinis are not going to be anywhere near as good as the fruity ones), but neither were anywhere near as good as the pomegranate that we had a few weeks ago.  It’s unfortunate because it’s called The Chocolate Bar, so you would expect their chocolate drinks to be good, but what I can say about them is that they are interesting and I’m going to stick to fruity ones from now on.

Finally, today I slept in until 11:00am, which is entirely unheard of, though I suppose I was making up for all the lost sleep I’ve had in the past month or so, and then I ate lunch (breakfast?) outside while reading the fourth Game of Thrones book.  I biked to the bank and to the coffee shop with my brother and then biked around the neighborhood.  I got a letter from my pen pal in Washington State, to which I will promptly respond.  And now I’m sitting on my bed, thinking about how happy I’ve been lately, and planning on having a snack and doing some more reading outside after I tell you all about last night’s dessert!

Banana-Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding (adapted from Veganomicon)

6 cups stale bread cut into small cubes
2 cups milk (or soy milk/almond milk)
3 heaping tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons honey
½ cup minus 2 tablespoons pure maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
¼ teaspoon cocoa powder
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (or vegan chocolate chips)
3 large bananas, sliced

Whisk together the milk and the flour until the mixture is slightly thickened and the flour is no longer clumpy.  Add the honey, maple syrup, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cocoa powder.  Whisk together until smooth.  Place the cubed bread in a large bowl and pour the milk mixture over it, stirring to make sure that each cube is wet.  Let sit for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally to evenly distribute the milk mixture.  After 15 or so minutes, the bread mixture should still have some pooled liquid at the bottom and the bread should be saturated.  Fold in the chocolate chips and banana slices, mashing the bananas some.  Pour the mixture into a greased 9 by 5 inch bread pan and mush everything down—it will all fit in the pan.  Bake for 30 minutes at 350° F until the top is slightly browned.

I think that everyone really liked this!  Ellie, Ian, and I definitely enjoyed it, and both of my parents (one of whom isn’t a big dessert person, and the other who doesn’t particularly enjoy the banana-chocolate combination) also said that it was good.  Ellie went back for seconds and I’m thinking that the bread pudding will make the perfect afternoon snack!  I think it’ll be awesome served hot with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream.  Obviously I didn’t make this recipe vegan, but as it’s from Veganomicon, it can very easily be made vegan with the adjustments in parentheses above.  I’m sure it would be equally delicious that was as well, we just didn’t have any soy milk in the house, so my options were slightly limited.

Alfredo Sauce

There was leftover stale bread at work today and I think I am going to try an entirely new recipe tonight and attempt bread pudding.  I’ve only had bread pudding once in my life, and it was some sort of chocolate-bourbon-banana thing at The Mayan Café, and I was really dubious about it.  One bite in, though, and I was a convert.  So here’s hoping that I can recreate something as delicious as what was served in a gourmet restaurant…I’ll keep you posted on how that goes.

In the meantime, though, I have a recipe for alfredo sauce that is homemade and a little bit lower fat than you might expect.  It’s still super creamy and delicious, but I didn’t use any butter and I substituted some veggie broth for some of the cream, so it actually has a lot more depth of flavor to it than your everyday alfredo sauce.  I served it to Ian who later told my parents about it, and word got back to me that I’d made a fantastic meal, so I consider that a very high compliment from my brother, who can be a bit of a picky eater (even if he’s too shy to say it to me himself).

Alfredo Sauce

1 tablespoon olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups milk
1 cup vegetable broth
3 tablespoons flour + more if needed
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
½ cup shredded parmesan cheese

In a medium-sized saucepan, sauté the garlic in the olive oil until fragrant.  Add milk, veggie broth, and flour and stir until all of the clumps are gone.  Season with salt and pepper and add the cheese, stirring until it is all melted.  Keep the temperature of the stove to where the mixture bubbles slowly, but does not reach a rapid boil.  Cook until the mixture thickens, stirring relatively frequently.  This will take some time and more flour can be added if necessary.  Serve over pasta.

Ian is a plain Jane when it comes to pasta, but for mine I quickly sautéed some mushrooms and peas in olive oil to add to the sauce.  It turned out really well.  I used a combination of heavy cream, half and half, and two percent milk, which obviously increases the calorie count, but I was really worried about things in the fridge going bad before I had the chance to use them, so I decided to knock them out in one fell swoop.  You definitely could just use milk though, and I’m sure you could even use skim milk, though thickening the sauce would be a much longer process and probably take a bit more flour.  Regardless, though, the sauce was delicious and it lasted for a few days in the fridge. I’d say that this would feed four to six people, depending on how hungry you all are.

Next to share will hopefully be bread pudding, but I’ve got a couple backup plans if that doesn’t go too well tonight.  A friend and I are going to snack at The Chocolate Martini Bar soon, so I might have something exciting to say about that, and I have salmon cakes and tamale pie on the way as well!

Baked Swai

It’s been a few days since I’ve had much to say, even though I’ve had plenty of recipes just sitting here waiting to be posted.  Ready for the excuse?  I’ve been tired and watching way too much New Girl and Vampire Diaries to actually post anything.  My parents just got back in town from a trip to Ireland and New York, so I had to catch up with them, and I’ve also worked all weekend.  Yes, even today, on a national holiday.  The good news is that I’m feeling mostly awake right now so I figured I’d give you all a little something small to nosh on (And the even better news is that I’m off tomorrow so I’ll definitely have something good to share with you then too!)

This is a really simple recipe if you want a nice way to bake fish.  Dad claims that this is also a recipe that works with broiling, but as of right now I’m a little afraid of the broiler (read as: don’t really know how to use it/really don’t know how timing works with it), so I baked these fillets.  You can use any whitefish that you have on hand: cod, swai, catfish, tilapia, etc.  I actually used frozen swai for this recipe and it turned out pretty well.  The fish retained its flavor after being frozen and didn’t go the other route and become too fishy because of the freezing process either.  The seasonings are nice and give the fish a little bit of heat, but I definitely wouldn’t call it a spicy recipe (though I suppose that depends on the strength of both the cayenne and your tolerance for spicy things).

I think the recipe originally came from The Courier-Journal at some point in time, but like a decent amount of our recipes, it is a piece of newspaper containing only a cut-out of the recipe pasted to an index card, which is not particularly helpful for any sort of referencing.

Baked Swai

1 tablespoon olive oil
2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
1 lb. white fish fillets, cut into four servings
3 tablespoons Parmesan cheese
1/3 cup breadcrumbs
1 teaspoon paprika
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
½ teaspoon salt

Combine olive oil and vinegar in a small bowl. In another bowl, mix cheese, breadcrumbs, paprika, cayenne, and salt.  Coat fish in oil and vinegar by dipping each fillet individually into the bowl and then coat each fillet in the breadcrumbs mixture immediately afterwards.  Place on a greased baking sheet and bake at 400° F for 10 minutes or until the fish flakes easily.

Cheese Grits

There is nothing I love more than a little bit of down home country cooking.  So what better way to showcase that than with cheese grits!  My family has all sorts of grits recipes: pork and grits, shrimp and grits, plain grits for breakfast, cheese grits for breakfast, cheese grits as a side dish…etc.  Grits are so much a thing in my house that during high school, whenever my friend Hannah ended up staying for diner, 98% of the time my dad fed her pork and grits.  This was such a memorable moment that when Hannah got married last year my mom bought her some grits and wrote out the recipe.

Welcome to my kitchen.  We have arguments over whether yellow grits or white grits taste better.  I vote yellow, but white will do just fine.  We always add butter when we’re eating plain grits for breakfast because it makes them so much richer.  We always eat seconds so that there won’t be any leftovers (grits don’t keep well) and fight over who has to clean the pan (grits act like mashed potatoes, if you know what I mean).  So when my parents leave me in charge of the kitchen while they’re on vacation, the first thing I go for are the cheesy grits.

Cheese Grits

1 ½ cups milk
1 ½ cups water
¾ cup grits
¾ teaspoon salt
1 1/8 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 ½ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

Bring the milk and water to a boil.  Whisk in the grits and salt.  Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for about fifteen minutes, or until the grits have thickened.  Add the cheese, Worcestershire sauce, and cayenne, stirring until the cheese is melted.  Serve hot.

I was trying to use up some of the random cheeses that we had in the drawer, so I mixed some feta in with my cheddar, but I really, really would recommend sticking to a sharp cheddar cheese for this recipe.  Feta, blue, goat, or anything else a little bit out of the ordinary may not blend as well with the Worcestershire and the cayenne as the cheddar, and let’s be real cheddar is the only cheese for this kind of Southern recipe.

Up next this week I have baked swai, a homemade alfredo sauce, and salmon patties!

Best Chocolate Birthday Cake

I’m done being super talkative about Australia for a while and I want to (finally) post about that chocolate cake I mentioned weeks ago.  Our family has two go-to cakes for birthdays: angel food cake with buttercream frosting and double chocolate cake with chocolate fudge frosting.  Dad and Ian like the angel food cake while Mom and I always go for chocolate on chocolate.  I’m not sure whose recipe it originally was, though it was written out in Mom’s handwriting on a very tattered piece of lined paper for ages until I got my hands on it and typed it up all pretty for her.  I was about twelve so I added some stock pictures of cake to the document, as if the title wasn’t enough to prove it was a cake recipe.

The first time I made this cake it was a disaster.  I hadn’t had a ton of cooking experience yet and I didn’t know that “confectioner’s sugar” meant powdered sugar, so I just used granulated sugar, assuming that a confectioner would have to use granulated sugar at some point.  Oh, did I mention that I put the granulated sugar in the icing?  Needless to say, the majority of the cake was thrown out due to the somewhat crunchy texture of the frosting, though everyone did make a valiant attempt at eating it.  Now I can’t make this cake without catching some flak for what happened the first time around.  But it’s a tradition, and since Mom’s birthday was about a month ago, I knew exactly what I had to make.

Double Layer Chocolate Cake

Cake:
½ cup butter
2 oz. unsweetened chocolate
1 ¾ cups flour
1 cup sugar
½ cup brown sugar
¾ teaspoon salt
1 ½ teaspoon baking soda
1 ¼ cup buttermilk
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350° F.  Lightly grease two round baking pans.  Sprinkle each pan with flour until it is lightly coated.  Melt the butter and chocolate together.  Meanwhile, mix all other ingredients.  Pour the melted butter and chocolate into the batter slowly, stirring gently the entire time and taking care not to cook the eggs with the hot mixture.  Spoon the batter into the pans and bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.  Let cool and then remove from pans.

Frosting:
3 tablespoons butter
3 oz. unsweetened chocolate
2 cups confectioner’s sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
1/3 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Melt the chocolate and butter together.  Meanwhile, mix together all other ingredients.  Slowly add the melted chocolate mixture to the sugar mixture, stirring well.  Fill a separate pan with ice and water and place the bowl with the icing inside the chilled pan.  When the icing reaches a fudge-y texture, it can be used to frost the cake.

It is important to let the frosting reach that fudge-y texture otherwise frosting that cake will be a little harder than you might expect because the frosting will still be runny.  If you want to speed up the process of cooling the icing, you can stick the bowl in the fridge, but you’ll want to keep an eye on it so that it doesn’t harden too much, lest you have to warm it back up to frost the cake.  Also, let the cake cool completely before frosting it, otherwise you will not only warm the icing up and possibly cause it to melt and run, but you can also tear out bits of the cake, and the end result won’t be particularly pretty.

This is the best chocolate cake that I’ve ever had in my life.  It’s clearly not vegan and I don’t think that the substitutions that would be necessary to make it vegan would result in a cake nearly as delicious as this one (but if you ever try it, you’ll have to let me know how that goes).  Not a year goes by when I don’t have this cake at least twice (and sometimes more if we’re feeling the chocolate cake craving).  And the best part?  It also easily makes cupcakes!

Australia Day-by-Day: Part Two

Day 6: So that story about a mutiny on the Bounty?  It’s true.  I had no idea until I went to the Museum of Tropical Queensland and spent most of my time wandering through an exhibit about the ship Pandora, which was sent to collect the mutineers from the Bounty and bring them back to England to punish them for their crimes.  Let me back up a little.  There was a ship, the Bounty that was sailing around in the East Indies/Australia region and the crew committed mutiny.  They stranded the officers and took the ship and all of its cargo.  Well the officers managed to make it back to England and the English were not pleased, so they sent Pandora to go collect the mutineers.  Unfortunately for them, the mutineers were too smart and had burnt the Bounty and set up lives on East Indonesian islands.  But, unfortunately for the mutineers, Englishmen easily recognize their own and they arrested the men that they could find.  Then unfortunately for everyone, Pandora crashed on the Great Barrier Reef and sank and a lot of men died.  Long story short, the survivors bounced around different islands for a while, eventually caught a ship home, and some of the mutineers were put to death.  Bummer.  But this exhibit was super cool!  Sarah and I spent a lot of time marveling at the stories from crew members of the ship and, of course, trying on leg shackles, which are  really, really uncomfortable.

After the museum we ended up at this free art gallery and then one of the two botanical gardens in Townsville.  We saw a kookaburra from very close, which was really neat, and then wandered down to a café right near the beach where we both ate chocolate thickshakes (thick milkshakes) and basked in the deliciousness of it all.

Day 7: Sarah and I went to Billabong Sanctuary, which was a lot like a zoo (and zoos make me kind of sad, but I was too enamored by the Australian wildlife to get too upset about this one).  When we stepped into the sanctuary we were greeted by a handful of kangaroos, all vying for our attention, particularly the seeds that we had in our hands to feed them.  Some of the kangaroos had their baby joeys in their pouches and they really are just incredibly miniature kangaroos.  The joeys were so sweet and while Sarah was busy feeding a mommy, I let the joey lick my hand and I almost died of happiness.  We also got to feed grapes to a cassowary through a fence (they’re big birds that look like emus but have heads that look more like some sort of dinosaur), pet wombats and koalas, and hold snakes and crocodiles.  I’m really not the biggest fan of snakes, and the one that they were letting people hold was much longer than I am tall, but Sarah said that it would be a great way for me to conquer my fears.  I don’t think that it particularly worked, but I am glad that I did it because I definitely would have regretted not trying it. But now that I’ve done it once, I don’t need to do it again.

Day 8: Sarah and I enjoyed the marvelously sunny weather on the beach.  Sarah was really good at the whole reading on the beach thing, while the moment my body hit my towel, I was out like a light.  It was nice to have a relaxing day after spending so much time learning and experiencing and trying new things, so sleeping the day away on the beach was great.  We got some fish and chips for lunch, which was delicious, of course, and I got a green apple, ginger, and mint juice.  I’m not really sure what it was supposed to do (wake me up, maybe), but it was incredibly delicious.  I liked it just as much as the one in Cairns.  We spent the afternoon back on the beach, but decided to go into the downtown area of Townsville for dinner.  We ended up at The Brewery and tried a couple local beers, which were pretty good (and cheaper than any other beer we found!) and I had mussels for dinner again.  It was a huge pot!  I tried the red sauce that time and loved it just as much, if not more, than the cream sauce.  Sarah had a potato, rosemary, and prosciutto pizza, which was also delicious.  Apparently potatoes on pizza is a thing there, because I had it again on the airplane coming home.

Day 9: We got up early to take the ferry to Magnetic Island, which is just thirty or so minutes off the coast of Townsville.  We had plans to horseback ride through rainforest and out to the beach with a local ranch.  We ended up taking the bus a little too far and having to backtrack a bit, but it was nice to wake up with a walk, especially before getting on a horse for the first time in years.  We had a really small group, just two other people along with Sarah and me, and two guides, so the six of us had a merry time riding through the forest to the ocean.  We walked and trotted most of the time, but my horse got a little excited when crossing a streambed and decided to jump, which was a bit unexpected.  When we got to the ocean we took off all of the saddles, put on our stinger suits, and rode bareback into the water. It was really lovely.  The sky was so blue and the water was nice and warm and even though it sort of felt like my horse’s spine was impaling my crotch, I couldn’t help but feel serene and genuinely happy.  After the trail ride, Sarah and I headed back to town where we met up with a girl we had met a few days before (completely by accident!) and the three of us had lunch together.  We went to a restaurant called Barefoot, and they had a $20 special in which you got a glass of wine, a house salad, fish and chips, and a cookie for dessert.  I ate every single bite of lunch but couldn’t quite finish the cookie.  The girl we were with remarked that I may have a small frame but sure can eat.  I didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or pleased with myself.  After lunch we took a bus to the Forts Walk, which leads you up and around abandoned World War II fortifications and some really beautiful scenery.  After another ferry ride and the walk back to Hannah’s house, we ate grilled zucchini and kangaroo steaks while looking at the beach and ocean to end a really wonderful trip to Australia.

And so it went.  The next morning at 6am I hopped on a flight to Brisbane, then Sydney, then Dallas, and then finally home.  I had an interesting seatmate, but he woke me up every time the flight attendants came by with snacks, (clearly a man after my own desires), so we got along alright.  Jet lag was unfortunate, but I’m sleeping regularly now and I’ve headed back to work so that next year I can plan another vacation to another beautiful part of the world and have equally amazing experiences.