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Thank God for long weekends.
For me, it means more time for making some delicious meals and drinking some delicious drinks.
Friday after work I walked down to Pike Place market to see what was looking good. Since Lyle (the hard core vegetarian) is out of town, I (the fish-eating pescatarian) have been dying to make some fish. I went straight for my favorite – smoked salmon.
For those of you who know anything about Pike Place market, you probably know about Pike Place Fish Market. It’s the corner stand with the guys in orange overalls, yelling and throwing fish around. (Real World Seattle anyone?)
They have some amazing smoked salmon. Not the slimy kind you’re thinking of that comes in thin strips and is usually thrown on a bagel with cream cheese. This smoked salmon is classy. They take filets of the fish and smoke the entire thing. So what you end up with is a thick piece of salmon that flakes when you cut in and tastes smokey and creamy.
I decided to stick to the standard – cream cheese and smoked salmon – but throw a little twist in.
Cucumber Cups with Horseradish Cream Cheese and Smoked Salmon:
Smoked Salmon
Cucumber, sliced in one inch slices
Cream Cheese, 4 tablespoons
Horseradish, 1 tablespoon if fresh, 2 tablespoons if creamy
Chives, chopped
Lemon Juice
Start by slicing the cucumbers and hollowing out the middles with a spoon. Then mix together the cream cheese, horseradish, lemon juice, and about 6 sprigs of chives. Add some salt and pepper and mix well.
Put a dollop of the cheese into each cucumber:
Slice up some salmon, however much you want. Top the cucumber cups with salmon and then add a few more chives and pepper.
Happy labor day!
We’re huuuge fans of Pho. If you haven’t tried it yet, your time has come.
Pho is a type of noodle soup that originated in Vietnam. The basic ingredients of the soup are thin rice noodles, broth, and a protein like beef, chicken, or tofu. Finishing touches to the soup usually involve some combination of Hoisin sauce, bean sprouts, jalapeños, lime juice, basil, and sriracha – the more toppings you can fit the better.
 Toppings There are Pho restaurants everywhere in Seattle so we’ve been getting our fill. We found Pho bouillon cubes in an Asian grocer in Pike Place Market and decided to try making some soup of our own. Without pho cubes you can make your own broth by flavoring up some beef broth with spices like cinnamon, star anise, ginger, and cardamom.
Thin Rice Noodles
Pho Bouillon Cubes, about one per two servings
Tofu, sliced
Red Onion, diced
Basil, Hoisin Sauce, Bean Sprouts, Sriracha, Lime
Tofu is best when you take time to marinate it in some soy sauce and oyster sauce before frying it in a little bit of oil. In the meantime, bring a few cups of water to a boil and throw in a pho cube and the diced red onion.
After the cube dissolves, add the noodles to the pot. They only take a few minutes to cook. Once they’re done, fill a big bowl with some noodles, broth, and tofu. Top each one with the rest of the toppings and EAT!
Greetings from the Emerald City! After a little hiatus, the Half Baked Cooking blog is back. We’ve relocated to Seattle and brought the blog with us. We’ve been exploring the city and seeing what the local foodies cook and eat. For our first cooking endeavor we decided to use cherries, since they are so big out here. Native to Washington are Rainier cherries. They are pinkish-yellow and are rare in most areas because they are so delicate and difficult to grow.
Anyway, we didn’t use Rainier cherries on this one. We went for the rich sweet taste of dark red cherries to complement the intensity of the bleu cheese.
This salad is really simple to make and has a visually appealing dark red color.
You’ll need:
Cherries (pitted)
Red onion, chopped
Pistachios
Baby Spinach
Bleu Cheese Crumbles
Balsamic Vinegar
Start off by heating up a pan and sauteeing the red onion for just a few minutes. In the meantime, start pitting the cherries. Cut a slit in each and spoon out the pit. Then stuff them each with bleu cheese and close them up as best as you can.
Shell the pistachios. Then start mixing up the dressing. We muddled a few cherries and mixed the juice with a splash of balsamic vinegar and olive oil.
Assemble the salad by putting down a bed of spinach and topping with the onions, pistachios and stuffed cherries. Drizzle with the cherry balsamic dressing and top with cracked black pepper.
Happy to be back and blogging! Enjoy!
- Nicole and Lyle
Somehow, after living in DC for four years, I have just discovered the fish market in Southwest. The place is amazing. Each stand is overflowing with live crabs, fresh shrimp, and every other type of seafood you can imagine. The people are all incredibly friendly and are more than willing to give out samples, especially if you can make it there on a weekday. If you’ve never been, you need to check it out. The market is near the Jefferson memorial…here is a map for specifics.
After tasting crab balls and fresh steamed shrimp, we decided to try something new. I’ve eaten red snapper before but I’ve never cooked a whole fish in my life. The task seems daunting but it’s actually ridiculously easy and so tasty. After buying the whole fish, we took it over to a cleaning stand (the guys there clean the fish and remove the scales for a few bucks), it makes the whole process so much easier.
Veracruz style, or Veracruzana, is a Mexican style of cooking that typically includes tomatoes, olives, and onions. It’s really flavorful and goes so well with snapper. Here’s the recipe we put together:
Whole Red Snapper
2 cans Whole Peeled Tomatoes
1 Onion, chopped
3 Garlic Cloves, chopped
1 cup Green Olives, chopped
A few tablespoons Capers
Parsley and Oregano
Cayenne Pepper
Get out a large saucepan, big enough to fit all of the ingredients and the fish. Heat oil over a flame and throw in the onions once the oil is nice and hot. Sautee onions until they are slightly translucent and then add the garlic. Cook for another minute before adding the tomatoes. To do this, squish each tomato through your fingers to break them up. Add a little of the liquid from the can as well.
Add the parsley and oregano and the cayenne pepper. Throw in some salt and pepper and let the sauce simmer for about 3 minutes. After the sauce has thickened a little, add the capers and olives (I know, cooking olives seems weird but it actually dulls their strong flavor a little bit). Simmer again for about 8 minutes. Then remove the sauce from the heat and refrigerate for about an hour, or you can leave it in the fridge for up to a day. Honestly, when people tell me to do something like this, I usually skip it. I hate cooking days in advance, I want to eat my creation immediately! So it’s understandable if you want to jump right into it without refrigerating the sauce…but I have to tell you the flavors meld together much more nicely if you let the sauce sit for a little while!
When you’re ready to cook the fish, heat the pan with the sauce up and add the whole fish right to it. Spoon some sauce over the fish and cook for 15 or so minutes. The fish should be flaky and white inside.
Bring the whole pan to the table and serve right from there. One pot meals are my absolute favorite and this one is especially flavorful and downright exciting to look at. Serve the fish with some simple pasta topped with olive oil and then use the Veracruz sauce as a delicious addition.
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