Cooking

The antidote to many things, cooking is the perfect activity on a cold November weekend. My usual approach is to make a recipe more or less as written the first time unless there are obvious flaws, like ingredients I don't like. I tried a couple of new things this weekend with mixed results. Our CSA bestowed many sweet potatoes this year and I am not a huge sweet potato fan unless someone else has deep fried them to crispy crunchiness and provided some sort of tasty dip. I was on my own with the sweet potatoes this weekend, so I researched the cookbook library. The next best thing to frying, which I don't do well, was cooking several pounds of SPs whisked through olive oil on cookie sheets in a 500 degree oven, with a corresponding pan of five red onions, cut into rings. The result was supposed to be golden puffed SPs with a complementary melted onion component. I should have been suspicious when the recipe specified that the onion rings should not touch each other more than necessary. That many onions (4 actually--I was already anticipating the problem) were more of a heap than a layer. Total cooking time was to be 25 minutes on a side and the first 25 minutes went pretty well, although there was no puffiness to be seen. I flipped everything and slid the pans back in the oven exactly as specified (flip SP pans top to middle, and back to front, leave onions on bottom rack). I set the time to 20 minutes and it should have been 10. When the timer went off, I pulled out a really burned mess. Unless the final five minutes is when the sweet potatoes separate from the carbon char and puff up into golden slices, this recipe was a failure. To add insult to injury, the house still smells faintly of burned sugar.

The other recipe was one I got out of Friday's newspaper and it was totally worth stealing the paper out of the lunchroom before the workday was quite over. I won't bore you with the details, but it is a soup that involves sherry, brandy (I used pear brandy--necessity being the mother of invention--"didn't we have anything cheaper?" asked my husband), 30 cloves of garlic, potatoes, gorgonzola and 2 cups of heavy cream. I served it with micro greens as a garnish and fresh wheat bread on the side. Oh My God.

Tonight we had the antidote, and this is an improvisation:

Drizzle a tablespoon of sesame oil in a non-stick 9x 13 pan. Place a 2 lb salmon fillet in the middle, skin side down. Surround the salmon with a bunch of lancinate kale, de-stemmed and shredded. Smear 2 teaspoons each of freshly grated ginger and garlic on the fish and drizzle Tamari over fish and greens. Cover with foil and bake at 350 for 20 minutes. While the fish is cooking, make white rice (sticky rice would be good, but I didn't have any). Uncover the fish and add 2 cups of fresh spinach, and salt and pepper. I am partial (okay, addicted) to Penzey's Roasted Szechuan pepper salt blend, but it is not essential. Re-cover and bake another 10 minutes. Remove from oven, flip fish and remove skin. Add 2 cups fresh arugula and cooked rice to whatever proportions look right to you. Mix everything together (fish will break up and rice will soak up pan juices). Serve with more Tamari at the table.

I am hoping this will help scour last night's meal from my arteries.