Salmon Burger with Kale Chips

Sometimes you just want a burger when you know you shouldn't have one. The craving is something that happens to many people, and in most cases, you'll justify succumbing to the urge to indulge.
"I deserve it!"
"I've eaten healthy all day!"
"If I put lettuce on it, it's like a salad, right?"

...

WRONG!

But, my friends, I have a solution that's delicious and much healthier than a beef burger: salmon burgers! These are pretty simple to make, and while they don't have the same juiciness as beef, they pack a lot of flavor, and go really well with a wide variety of sauces and toppings. For this meal, I made salmon burgers in pita pockets with avocado, lettuce, and tomato with sundried tomato pesto and kale chips.

Grilled Green Shark: Pesto Mako

Grilling fish in the summer is the best way to bring out the rich natural flavors of any fish and celebrate warm weather. In Cape May for Memorial Day weekend, we saw Mako Shark at the Lobster House Fish Market and picked some up. We bought 3 steaks to share and brought them home for a quick and easy meal. Mako is actually an overfished seafood, so buy with care, but we figured it was a vacation and a rare purchase. Mako tastes a lot like swordfish, but is a little more moist and has a milder flavor. 

Grilled Whole Trout with Orzo Salad and Spinach

As I always say, the best method of cooking in the summertime is grilling. In the summer, the produce is plentiful, the fish is fresh, and grilling is the best way to feature simple, delicious flavors in a beautiful way. I was on Martha's Vineyard for this meal, and we picked up some fresh whole trout, tomatoes, fennel, and spinach. All healthy, fresh ingredients that have bold flavors which don't need much else to shine.

Tilapia Bahn Mi

Most people think of a sandwich as an American staple. Whether a classic ham and cheese or tuna melt, or something more involved like a meatball sub or Italian hoagie (sub, hoagie, grinder, sandwich, whatever else you want to call it) the sandwich is considered standard American fare. Where this concept of patriotic sandwichism is thrown on it's head is on the menus of Vietnamese restaurants. One of my favorite dishes in Vietnamese cooking is the Bahn Mi (which comes at a close second to Pho soup, but I'll cover that at another time). A bahn mi sandwich is traditionally made with ground pork and pate and an assortment of vegetables such as cucumber, carrots, jalapenos, cilantro, and radish served on a warm, crispy french baguette. I've seen variations on the sandwich that have beef, chicken, fish, or tofu, but the flavors are usually in the same family with spicy chili sauce and peppers, crisp veggies, and salty meat. For dinner recently, I wanted to make my own simple, healthy take on the bahn mi, so I bought some fresh tilapia along with the standard bahn mi vegetables.

Crispy Thai Fish with Vegetables over Noodles

Asian flavors are beautiful to cook with. They mix a balance of sweet and spicy, tangy and tart. With this dish, I was trying to capture the interesting blends of Asian style cooking and use a lot of vegetables for a healthy dish that is out of the ordinary. The dish had four components, crispy tilefish (a mild whitefish that is similar to snapper), stir fried eggplant and mixed mushrooms, cabbage and carrot udon noodles, and fried shishito peppers. While this sounds like a lot to prepare, the dish didn't take too long, and the result was a tasty dish with a lot of personality.

Parchment Paper Steamed Fish

A very interesting way to prepare food is by steaming in parchment paper. You can toss all of your ingredients in a pouch, pop it in the oven, and once done, you've got a beautifully presented, delicious and healthy meal. It also makes for very easy clean up. Parchment paper cooked fish is a very fresh and tasty meal that has a very nice aesthetic.

Asian Style Roasted and Steamed Fish

White fish and Asian flavors go very well together. I like to use soy sauce, sake, mirin, and other Asian seasonings on white fish because the fish absorbs the flavor really well and the light flavor of the meat lends itself to those salty flavors.

So Few Ingredients, So Much Flavor

Sometimes, the tastiest dinners are the simplest. For this meal, I wanted to make a very flavorful dish with very few ingredients. I decided on making monkfish with artichoke and roasted tomato and endive salad.

Pretzels, Mustard, and Salmon

Earlier this summer, my roommate was in Alaska, visiting his sister. While he was there, he went salmon fishing and caught 6 salmon! He had the fish filleted and frozen and sent home to NYC. I am fortunate enough that he is very generous and offered up some of the fish for me to use. The salmon was a beautiful red color. Much darker than any fish you would buy in the supermarket.

Martha's Vineyard, Part II: The Tastes of Summer

On the second night of our time in MV, I wanted to feature some of the great flavors of the summer. To start, I made some fried calamari as an appetizer. I bought some tubes and bellies, sliced the tubes into rings, and coated them with flour, salt, pepper, and sugar. I heated canola oil, and fried the calamari in batches until they were cooked through and crispy. Calamari can get a little rubbery if overcooked, so I was careful to leave them in long enough to start browning, but not too long so they dried out. While they were frying, I made a honey-soy glaze for an Asian feel. I chopped ginger and scallion and sauteed them in olive oil. I then added mirin (rice vinegar), white soy sauce, and honey and let the mixture cook down to a thick glaze. Once the calamari was done, I tossed it in the glaze and served. Delicious!

Martha's Vineyard, Part I: Simply Grilling

I have been lucky enough to go to Martha's Vineyard every summer of my life. The island is a second home to me, and I cherish all of the time I get to spend there. This summer, I went there with my girlfriend and two friends for the weekend. Whenever I'm on the island, I like to take advantage of all of the extremely fresh and delicious seafood and produce.

A Simple, Market Fresh Meal

Sometimes the simplest meals are the best. I was walking through the farmers market, and picked up a gorgeous selection of farm fresh veggies. I bought green and yellow squash, red onions, and radishes, cut them up and tossed them with olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted them for 30 minutes. The result was a colorful, flavorful, and simple meal.

4th of July Grilling Extravaganza

4th of July always brings beach, fireworks, and grilling. In celebration of this fun summer holiday, I wanted to put together a grilling extravaganza. I made skewers of all sorts for a crowd of 13 people. To start the meal, my girlfriend made delicious deviled eggs. I would give the recipe, but it's a family secret and I've been forbidden from divulging it.

Smoky Salmon and the Cape May Grill

Few greater cooking techniques exist than grilling in the summer. The smell of charcoal burning, the dimming glow of a warm sun setting on the horizon, the delicious flavor of the way food cooks on the tines, everything about grilling is a wonderful experience. Living in the city, I tend to get grilling withdrawal during the summer when I'm stuck cooking indoors, so when I have a chance to use a grill, I really use it as much as possible.

Fish Tacos and Fried Plantains

A warm summer night called for a light and refreshing meal, so I came up with blackened hake tacos with lime-avocado spread and a sweet chili sour cream. I picked hake because it's a nice flaky white fish like cod that goes well with all different types of seasoning. To go along with this, I made a cucumber salad and fried plantains.

A visitor, a pregnancy, and halibut

 

 My sister was in NYC for the weekend, so we wanted to have a really good Sunday dinner. She lives in Colorado and is pregnant, so seeing her in the city was cause for celebration. I decided to buy some halibut. It's a really mild white fish that has a nice meatiness that other fish like cod lack. To go with the fish, I wanted to make contrasting sides. I decided on a white bean puree with chorizo for a warm flavor and a corn and zucchini salsa for a bright and sharp flavor.

 

I cut the fish into even pieces for me, my sister, and my girlfriend and rubbed salt and pepper on it. I then removed the hot Italian sausage from the casing and browned it in a saucepan. Once the meat was brown, I removed it from the pan and added some chopped garlic and chopped sage. Once the garlic began to brown, I poured in 2 cans of cannellini beans which I had opened and drained. I let that cook until the beans began to break up and used a hand blender to puree the mixture. Once the beans were smooth, I added the sausage back in and let the puree sit on low.

I then chopped up the zucchini, red pepper, red onion, garlic, jalapeno, and removed the kernels from the corn. I tossed all of this in olive oil, salt, and pepper and sauteed it in my hot cast iron pan until lightly cooked through but still crisp. I put lemon juice and chopped cilantro over the salsa and set aside.





I tossed the veggies in olive oil, salt, and pepper and sauteed it in my hot cast iron pan until lightly cooked through but still crisp. I put lemon juice and chopped cilantro over the salsa and set aside.

 Once the 2 sides were done, I seared the fish skin side first in the cast iron, cooking it for about 6-7 minuted aside until the flesh came apart easily. Once the fish was cooked, I put the bean puree on the plate, the fish on that, and then spooned the salsa on top. I added a little dollop of quark cheese on top with some cilantro and served.

The dish was superb. The warm puree and crisp, bright salsa worked perfectly with the fish, and the quark added a nice tangy flavor. We toasted water and celebrated a really great night in the city together.

*Disclaimer - I was just told by my sister that Halibut is actually a fish with a high mercury content, so it is not recommended for pregnant women. Now I know...

Father Son Cooking Class

This past weekend, my father went back to Trinity College to celebrate his 50th Reunion. Prior to the weekend, the alumni coordinator had inquired if he had any interest in giving a lecture or teaching a class about something he is passionate about. He enjoys cooking as much as I do, so he proposed a cooking class. Being that both of us went to Trinity, the class was a perfect opportunity for a father/son cooking combo.

The dish he decided to cook was a Mediterranean fish stew with an avocado and onion salad. He first learned of the stew when my sister ate it in Israel with rave reviews. He figured out how to make it using cod in place of a typically Mediterranean fish like Sea Bream.

Once we setup the kitchen for the class and the audience arrived, we began cooking the meal, talking our way through the dish step by step. To begin, we boiled water and made white rice to serve the stew over. While the rice was cooking, we chopped up 2 yellow onion and 8 cloves of garlic. We began the stew by sauteing onions with a little salt and pepper in a large pot. Once the onions were translucent, we added garlic, a teaspoon of saffron, and some crushed red pepper. Once the garlic was cooked through, we added 2 cans of whole peeled tomatoes (breaking them up with a spoon in the pot), and 2 containers of Kitchen Basics fish stock, and let it cook for about 15 minutes.

While the stew was cooking, we made our avocado and onion salad. We sliced up 6 avocados and 2 sweet vidalia onions, and then made a simple dijon vinaigrette using lemon juice, red wine vinegar, dijon, salt, and olive oil. We tossed the salad with the dressing and set aside.

Once the stew had cooked for a bit to expand the flavors, we added the cod (6lbs for 15 people), which we had cut into 2x2 pieces, and some chopped cilantro. The fish was cooked through in about 12 minutes, and we served the stew over the white rice alongside the salad.

The class went really well. The audience was very engaged and asked a lot of good questions, and they were impressed with the ease and efficiency of making the dish. My dad and I had a great time teaching, and we're hoping to do it again at another Trinity alumni event.

Breaking in the New Camera

After weeks of research, review reading, and polling, I finally purchased a new camera. I bought a Canon Rebel T3 DSLR, with the intention of increasing the quality and volume of pictures I take and most importantly, improving the documentation of dishes for my blog. After spending about an hour at B&H talking to one of the photo representatives, I made my purchase and rushed home to shop for food and get cooking. I wanted to make something that was as visually pleasing as it was delicious. For the protein, I picked salmon. I love the orange hue of salmon, and when contrasted with a crispy brown skin, the salmon is a truly beautiful fish to serve. To accompany the fish, I spent a long time spinning around in the produce section, looking for the most colorful veggies I could find. I picked a red pepper, jalapeno (I was tempted to get a habanero for the color, but my taste buds told me that was not a good idea...), radishes, and mint. The green, red, and white would be a great visual foil to the more earth toned fish. I also wanted something to serve the fish over, so I picked sweet yellow corn. The color is very bright and sunny, but wouldn't take away from the fish and the pepper salsa.

I got home, set the camera up to be ready to capture the meal, and started cooking. I made the salsa first so it could sit and the flavors would have time to expand as the fish and corn wouldn't take long to cook. I cut both peppers and the radishes in a fine julienne (thin slices), chopped some garlic (saving some for my corn), and cut the mint in a chiffonade (literally means ribbon in French). Once the peppers, radishes, garlic and mint were cut, I squeezed a lime over them, added a touch of salt and pepper and a spoonful of sugar for some sweetness and let it sit. Once the salsa was done, I cut up the shallot in a rough chop and heated some butter and olive oil in a small pan over medium heat. Once the oil and butter were hot, I added the garlic and shallot for about 2 minutes, and then added about a cup of frozen sweet yellow corn. I tossed the pan to coat the corn, and let the dish sit to brown a bit, tossing every few minutes. Once some of the corn was nice and browned, I put all of it in a food processor with some salt and pepper and pureed it, adding a little water to thin it out. (Afterwards, I realized I should have added some crushed red pepper to give the corn puree a little bite)

When I started cooking the corn, I put a large pan on medium high to heat for the fish. When I cook salmon, I like to sear the skin first and then flip the fish over to finish it. You can serve the fish skin-side up, and not only is the skin crispy and delicious, it makes for a visually pleasing presentation and adds more texture to the fish when you eat it. In order to do this, you need to get the pan very hot before you cook the fish, otherwise the skin will break off from the flesh and you'll have skin (usually burnt skin) stuck to the bottom of the pan. I also use olive oil and butter to cook it. The butter adds some nice flavor and gets the skin a little crispier than if you only use olive oil. While the pan was heating, I rubbed the fish with salt and pepper, and rubbed some olive oil over the flesh. Once the pan was hot, I cooked the skin for about 4-5 minutes until it was browned around the edges, being careful not to move the fish at all while it cooked so the skin made a clean sear. I flipped the fish to finish it for about 3-4 more minutes, put some corn puree on the plate, laid the fish (skin side up!) over the puree, and spooned some of the pepper salsa on top.

The dish was delicious, though the salsa could have used more heat and a little vinegar to contrast the sweetness of the fish and corn. All in all, the meal was a visual and gustatory success, and I was happy to begin the era of my new camera with an artistic take on a relatively simple menu.

Swimming Between Kale and Asparagus

I was in the mood for a very healthy and flavorful dinner. I had read a blog post about pasta with walnut and kale pesto, and I wanted to make my own version of the pesto but with a light fish instead of heavy pasta. I decided on tilapia, because it's a little heartier than cod, but still has a much lighter taste than salmon or trout. Along with the fish and pesto, I wanted some roasted spring vegetables, so I grabbed a bunch of asparagus and a bulb of fennel.


I made the pesto first so I could let it sit while I prepped the rest of the meal. I always try to make sauces first so they have plenty of time for the flavor to expand. For this pesto, I used a head of kale, basil, garlic, walnuts, lemon, parmesan, and olive oil. I chopped the garlic and cut the kale from the stems. I toasted the walnuts in a pan (about 5 minutes) and then a added some olive oil, the garlic and kale, and a squeeze of lemon and sauteed until the kale began to wilt. I added all of this to a blender along with the basil, some more lemon, salt, pepper, and olive oil. I blended until smooth and added some grated parmesan and made sure the nutiness and citrus were balanced and the pesto tasted right.

Once the pesto was done, I preheated the oven to 375 and prepared the fish. I wanted to bake the fish, so I cut up an onion in slices, put them in a baking dish with some balsamic vinegar and the fronds from fennel bulb. I coated the fish with salt, pepper, and olive oil and laid it on top of the fennel fronds, onion and balsamic. Once the fish was ready, I prepped the asparagus and fennel, cutting off the rough ends of the asparagus and cutting the fennel into thin strips. I tossed the veggies in olive oil, salt and pepper and put them on a baking dish. I put both the fish and the veggies in the oven and baked for 25 minutes.

Once the fish was cooked through (I checked the fish by seeing if it flaked with a fork) and the veggies were starting to brown, I took them out of the oven. For the presentation, I lined the asparagus and fennel in alternating lines on the plate. I then laid the fish on top and spooned the pesto on top.

The dish was really tasty. The pesto had the familiar garlic and basil taste, but the walnuts and kale gave it a very earthy and unique flavor, complimenting the light taste of the fish perfectly. The asparagus worked really well with the fennel, their flavors balancing well, and a bite with both veggies and the fish was a well balanced burst of flavor. Best of all, the dish was extremely healthy!

Trout with Very Confused Pasta

I recently went to the doctor and found out that my cholesterol is on the high side. He recommended I get rid of fatty foods and improve my overall diet. Always up for a challenge, I wanted to come up with a way to make an extremely healthy meal that was both visually and gustatorily pleasing. I chose trout for the protein as it is very high in healthy fats that increase your HDL cholesterol. For the “pasta”, I wanted something that looked like pasta but was anything but. I decided to use red chard and cut it into strips. Chard is one of my favorite greens, and it’s hearty enough to stand up to tomato sauce. For my “meatballs” I decided to try something totally new and made barley balls.
For the tomato sauce, I sauteed cherry tomatoes with some garlic, parsley, lemon, onion, tomato paste and red wine. I let it simmer until the tomatoes were falling apart and then set it aside.
To make the barley balls, I cooked barley in advance and let it cool. I then mixed it with egg, bread crumbs, salt, pepper, and some sauteed onion and garlic. I made sure the mix was thick enough to adhere during the cooking process, and constructed my barley balls. Once I had the balls, I put them in the freezer for 15 minutes to let them set. Once they were cold and solid, I heated canola oil (also very good for you) and browned the outsides of the barley balls. The result was a crispy on the outside, soft on the inside ball that had a heartiness similar to meatballs.
For the trout, I floured it with a little salt and pepper and then pan seared each side until golden. I used the crispy trout as the base, places a pile of chard “pasta” on top of that, added 2 barley “meatballs” and topped with the tomato sauce and some parm.
All together, the meal was reminiscent of a fine Italian pasta dish with a very healthy and unexpected twist. The barley balls turned out perfectly and were delicious to eat even on their own. Now that I’m being more conscious about what I’m eating, I’m looking forward to having more meals that are as fun and inventive as this one.