Saturday night dinner

Just an aside, I heard from Williams Sonoma today. Remember my confusion as to why Eat Well was always rinsing onions. They answered and said it makes them less pungent. I learned something new today.


Due to the snow storm our guests had to postpone until tomorrow. This will seem funny to those of you in the north, but some have not even seen a plow as of 8:00 PM tonight, even though we had about 2 “ by 10:00 AM. This was the amount predicted for the whole day, but we got more. So what did we eat tonight? We had another Bon Appetite dish called Salmon Salad with Fennel, Orange and Mint. If you don’t know what fennel is and your green grocer looks at you cross eyed, use the word Anise. What you get when you buy fennel bulbs in the US is both. The bulb is the fennel and the ferns on top are the anise when left to go to seed.  Bon Appetite says I am wrong, and that the grocers are wrong when they are labeling it anise. I am not going to argue with them, but I grew up in farm country.

Ingredients for Salmon Salad from Bon Appétit, January, 2010 p. 50

¼ c sugar

¼ c unseasoned, rice vinegar

2 whole star anise, Chinese spice not the same as anise

4c cold water

1-1# salmon fillet

2 navel oranges (I again used the blood oranges my friend sent for Christmas)

2 bulbs of fennel, about 4 c sliced

1 c fresh mint leaves

2T olive oil

I chose to make this recipe as I was really interested in the method for cooking the salmon. The salmon in the photo just looked so good. Also I love fennel.

Cooking the salmon.

Place sugar, vinegar, star anise (not the tops of the fennel bulb, but a Chinese herb) and 4 cups of water in a deep skillet that has a lid. Bring to a boil over high heat stirring until the sugar dissolves. If you are on a diet and don’t want to use sugar, use Splenda as it is one to one. You could also use Agave Nectar instead of sugar. Bring to a boil over high heat and place the salmon into the skillet. Cover and remove from the heat. Let stand for 10 minutes. Turn it over in the liquid, still off the heat, and let stand for 6 minutes. Remove from the liquid and flake in large chunks. Add to the following mixture:

While the salmon was cooking in the water, I cut up the oranges, sliced the fennel and took all the mint leaves off the stems. I put all this in a large bowl with the 2 T of olive oil. After we sat down, I said this needs salt and pepper. Rereading, I see the words at the end of the recipe say salt and pepper to taste.

This was a difficult meal for Jim to wrap his mind around. He had brought up a Herman Wente Reserve Chardonnay for dinner. First look at the dish, he said I am not serving this with onions. Jim, it is not onion, it is fennel and you like fennel. We sat down to dinner. First words from Jim were this salmon is very good, but I haven’t touched the other stuff. I answered that you should eat all the parts together, and it is good, but it needs salt and pepper. Finally he said, “This is good for fennel, spinach, and salmon, although I am having trouble wrapping my mind around the looks of the combination. “ I answered that was probably because it is mint, not spinach, like it is fennel and not onion. How someone can reach 65 years old with all the meals I have fixed and still be so clueless is beyond me.