For anyone who's keeping track, I'm still at my Mom's house in NY. Her hip has healed nicely, and the doc gave her the okay today to lose the cane and start driving again. Woohoo! Matt is still back in Texas, where, today, movers packed up all our belongings and sent them off on their trans-Atlantic voyage. What, besides Matt and the dog, have I missed over the past few weeks? My cookbooks. Only my cookbooks. I need to seriously rethink the amount of crap I keep laying around. I should just get rid of it all and make room for more cookbooks, since they appear to be what I love most.
Because I'm hell-bent on ingesting as many bagels, Italian cookies, and slices of pizza as I can before I leave for Naples, I've been bloated and lazy and haven't felt like cooking, so I waited until the last minute to make this week's French Fridays with Dorie recipe:
Salmon with Basil Tapenade. (I recognize that it's ridiculous to cling to Italian cookies and pizza as if I'll never have them again when I'm in the process of moving to Italy, but they won't be
these cookies, and it won't be
this pizza. You know--the ones that taste like home.)
It's a good thing that this recipe was simple. I was partially tempted to make Dorie's recipe for tapenade, because it's the freshest, most delicious tapenade I've ever eaten. But then I remembered that my mom has no food processor (she actually criticized me for requesting one on my bridal registry, saying that I'd never use it. WRONG! Score one point for Stubborn Daughter Syndrome). Given my lethargy, there was no chance I'd be chopping up all those olives by hand. I bought a jar of tapenade and never looked back.
The instructions say to make pockets in the salmon and smear some tapenade/basil/lemon zest and juice mixture in the pockets. Personally, I found this step to be unnecessary, because then you thin out the remaining mixture with olive oil and pour it on top of the salmon. The layer in the middle didn't contribute much. Most of it squished out, so the main hit of flavor came from the dressing on top. My lazy bones will ignore that step in the future. As a sauce, the tapenade mixture paired beautifully with the salmon. Following Dorie's instructions and timing, the fish cooked perfectly. My mom announced, "I love good food." Sounds like a ringing endorsement to me.
Ha! I had a half jar of tapenade in the fridge, so there was no way I was making more. And I totally missed the stuffing part.
ReplyDeleteEnjoy your time at home - I think you lucked out not being there for packing up the containers :-)
hehe--lucked out, or planned it brilliantly? :-) it really is just how things worked out, but I like to tell Matt that it's payback for our move from Norfolk to Corpus Christi, in which I had to do the whole pack-out myself, with a screaming 8 month old who had nowhere to sleep or be put down, since the crib and everything had been boxed up. His day should have been a walk in the park in comparison. lol
DeleteEi, Glad your mom is doing well and happy that the two of you are able to spend some time together before you head to Europe. I totally understand about your cookbooks, but then I have a serious problem with cookbooks! I own about 600…give or take a few!
ReplyDeleteYour salmon looks delectable…so glad you and your mom enjoyed it!!
SIX HUNDRED?? You have your own bookstore! lol I'm going to be daydreaming about your collection.
DeleteHappy that all is well with your Mom, and even though the cookies and pizza won't be NEW YORK, you are
ReplyDeletegoing to love all the new goodies you come across. Besides, Mom can always send care packages if you
get really desperate. Great job on the salmon, I think the stuffing portion was not really necessary, with
the topping it turned out fabulous.
I think its wonderful that you were able to share one of the FFFwD dishes with your mom! My mom would have loved this project and would have followed my adventures closely. Good for you for getting out of the packing! I hope Naples is a wonderful experience for your family but I don't think the pizza or cookies will be the same:)
ReplyDeleteI just typed a long comment to you & then...my computer crashed! Anyway, I think you should enjoy as much as you can because the food is very different in Italy. I'm really looking forward to living vicariously through your culinary adventures!
ReplyDeleteAnd - I'm totally impressed that you're keeping up with FFWD will all you have going on!
Delicious looking salmon - it is wonderful that you could spend time with your mother and share this meal before heading off to new adventures! Naples sounds wonderful and exiting with so many culture and foods to discover (even if it is so very far away from home) - all the best to you and your family - cannot wait to read about your cooking experiences in Italy!
ReplyDeleteHave a good weekend and thank you for visiting my blog!
Happy to hear that your mom is on the mend. And I do exactly the same thing when I go home and usually come back a few pounds heavier from overindulging in all of my favorite foods. And if I had access to real bagels, there would be no stopping me.
ReplyDeleteSeems to be a common refrain regarding the need to actually stuff the salmon. I'll skip it the next time too and there WILL be a next time for this one. Oh yes. Great job!
ReplyDeleteI'm all for a lazyman's version!!! I bought the tapenade, too, but now I must make Dorie's after your recommendation! You're moving to Italy??? How exciting!!! Glad your mom is recovering well...
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear your Mom is on the mend. Sounds like the salmon was a hit - hooray!
ReplyDeleteThat's good news about your mother. Great looking dish!
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty impressed that you made this with all you have going on - plus access to real bagels and NY pizza would pretty much negate any of my cooking initiative too. Good luck with the move!
ReplyDeleteLovely! :) How fun that you are moving to Italy! Weren't you just in Spain this whole past year? Your salmon looks great!
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question about gardening... the first year I started with a few starter plants from the garden store and three tomato plants - putting most of my focus on the tomato plants and learned how to grow them. If you do tomatoes you will learn all about the type of soil you have and what changes you have to make to keep them thriving and happy and how often you need to water your soil, etc. Then this year, my husband and I just bought a whole bunch of seed packets and read up on germinating seeds (I have posts about it) and kind of hedged our bets with them so we would at least have a few veggies of each variety, etc and as they grew we did more research on how to thin things out and keep all the plants happy, etc - we are learning which plants are doing well and which arent doing as well and eliminating reasons why so we can change how we do things the next year. We have had a lot of success with squash, tomatoes, and beans this year :) Go through my earlier gardening posts for tips - I also have a pinterest board about the gardening.
I have the same addiction--cookbooks! I really don't have anymore room for any new addtions and yet my latest is 'Well-Preserved' by Bone. Great ideas for canning without making a huge project out of it.
ReplyDeleteYour salmon looks great and I agree on the stuffing part of it, I didn't bother.
Wow, you are off to Naples, how exciting!! I was in Pompei in '99, you'll probably want to tour the ruins, very cool!