Dinner is served

It's almost bedtime, but I wanted to share!

That right there is the lovely meal I prepared for B tonight. I have chosen to post about it because I know several of my readers are committed to a healthier 2007, so I wanted to share a recent convenience-cookery tale, and thought that pictorial evidence would help you envision yourselves as chefs!

As you know if you know me irl, I absolutely detest, loathe, abhor and am nauseated by the smell (let's be honest, the stench) of re-heated seafood of any kind, but particularly shrimp and salmon. Now, shrimp is sort of a treat, because it's not especially good for you, so we'll skip right over that (plus which, it's best eaten fresh fresh fresh, so it's a same-day thing and not so bad). However, salmon is a BIG favorite with the male half of the duo, so I try to make it a few times at least every other week. Since B has lost a lot of weight in the past year, due in part to healthier eating, and I'm the cook in this house, the pressure's on, right? But what to do about the frankly dictatorial stance I have on the re-heating? To date, it's been an imposed "You can eat all the fresh-cooked hot salmon you can fit in your maw tonight, my love, but whatever you can't consume must be eaten cold for the rest of the week" rule. But last week I had a sort of mini-brainstorm. Usual practice: marinate 4" squares of salmon (cut from the monster slabs that are sold at Costco) in a mixture of teriyaki sauce and garlic, with a splash of sesame oil, all well sealed up in a Ziploc baggie. "What if I don't cook them all at once," I thought, "but instead cook them on an as-needed basis?" So that's what I did, and it worked out GREAT. One or two pieces a night (because I must tell you only one of us is happy eating salmon every single night of the week -- but the one who is? Really is! So that works out perfectly!), with a handful of snow peas thrown into the same little non-stick pan with about 3 minutes to go, lid on for steaming, then remove the fish, toss in a tablespoon of crushed salted cashews and a sliver (literally, a sliiiiiverrrr) of butter to deglaze the teriyaki/garlic essence from the pan, and Voila! Dinner in 7 minutes, fresh fish every night, and for some reason, the fish didn't even get ucky, 5 days later!

Oh, the picture above? Got new fish yesterday, but couldn't find snow peas at Costco (and whatever you do, don't mistake snap peas for snow peas -- gah!!! Hot snap peas are gross!), so it's salmon on salad this week, equally yummy, and even easier than the snow peas! Greens, radicchio, dried cranberries, chopped almonds, a dash of goat cheese, and a lashing of balsamic vinaigrette. Yum!