Buffalo Salmon and Stephanie's Cornbread and a Quick Salad

Here's another salmon recipe since everyone has suddenly turned pescetarian (vegetarians who eat fish) on me! This buffalo salmon is so simple and quick, the only hard part is getting the panko breadcrumbs, Japanese crispy breadcrumbs, which you can make, but I get them at any Asian grocery store, (or probably Whole Foods international section).
As for the salmon itself, the rule of thumb is around 1/2 lb. of fish per person, in this recipe I used 2 lbs. (4 people) of fish and it worked great, but you could probably make as much as 3 lbs. with it. For a one or two servings, cut the recipe in half.

This is also really good cold, so you might want to make enough for leftovers. It keeps about 3 days in the fridge.

Buffalo Salmon
as adapted from Gourmet Magazine

Ingredients:
1/2 stick unsalted butter
1/3 cup hot sauce such as Frank's Redhot
1/3 cup panko breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
Salmon fillet(s) with skin (I used 2 lbs.)


Method:
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees with rack in upper third
2. Line baking pan with tin foil.
3. Melt butter with hot sauce and sprinkle of salt and pepper over medium heat.
4. Toss panko with oild in a bowl.
5. Put salmon, skin side down, on the baking tray, brush with sauce then sprinkle panko evenly over the fish. If there is extra sauce, you can keep it to pour on afterwards for more flavor.
6. Bake until the panko is golden, and cooked about 16-22 minutes.

Stephanie's Cornbread
as adapted from Starting Out

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups cornmeal (yellow or white, preferably stone-ground)
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/4 cup buttermilk, sour milk, or plain yogurt
1/4 cup melted butter or olive or canola oil
1 large egg
optional: 1 cup creamed corn makes it extra delicious

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees

2. Spray 8-inch round pan or cast iron skillet with nonstick spray.
3. Combine cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a bowl
4. In another bowl, stir buttermilk, butter, egg (and creamed corn, if using)


5. Add the flour mixture to the liquid mixture and combine
6. Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 25-30 minutes until golden brown around the edges, and puffed and cracked on top.

We also made a quick salad with the basic vinagrette from the other entry with red peppers and feta.

The finished product:

Honey Soy Glazed Salmon and Popovers

I've been craving salmon since Valentine's Day, when I decided against a soy-glazed fillet and opted instead for an aged goat cheese and pear tartine. Needless to say, I regretted it when my food came, and with it the overpowering scent of old socks mingled lightly with farts. But that could have just been my date...

Anyway, salmon it was, which also happens to be the only kind of fish I can cook (canned tuna does not, I think, count). Luckily for me, salmon is easy to prepare, and quick in the oven. It's arguably easier to cook than a cheeseburger, and is pretty inexpensive. At the grocery store, we bought 1.71 lbs. of whatever salmon they had, for $13. It's about 8 oz. (1/2 lb.) per person, but since there were just two of us, it is enough for about two days worth of dinner.

We found a good recipe for Oven-Roasted Salmon in Starting Out (a cookbook my mom got me before I went to college that has some great recipes and easy-to-follow instructions), with honey-soy glaze. While looking through some books, I found a recipe for bleu-cheese popovers that sounded excellent, but the smell of old feet still fresh in my mind, I found a plain popover recipe online instead. Then, we decided on a simple salad for a green vegetable.

The recipe for popovers we found on King Arthur Flour website, and has only 5 ingredients, and takes about 40 minutes, only about 5 of which are hands-on. I had thought one needs a special pan for popovers, but it turns out you can just use a regular muffin tin. The one we used has 12 large cups, and is nonstick, thanks to our early days in the apartment, making cupcakes regularly (another post entirely). Anyway, the popover recipe is on that website, and they explain it much better than I could. Because they took so long, we decided to make them first, which was fine, because the oven was preheated by the time we had to put the salmon in.


Oven Roasted Salmon (w/ Honey-Soy Glaze)
Ingredients:
Salmon (use as much or as little as you want)
Glaze-
2 Tbsp soy sauce
2 Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp Dijon mustard

Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees
2. Line a baking sheet with foil, making sure to make edges in the foil, so the glaze doesn't pour into the dish, making cleaning difficult
3. Rinse and paper towel dry salmon, then put it on the baking sheet.
4. Mix together ingredients for the glaze, and spoon it onto the salmon. You can rub it in, but you don't need to.
5. Bake for about 10 minutes, though keep an eye on it. After 10 minutes, take it out, and stick a fork in the fattest part. If there is a deep pink that's not uniform with the cooked fish on top, put it in for a few minutes. If its only a little deep pink, you can take it out. Remember that salmon keeps cooking for a few minutes after you take it out of the oven, so make sure it's a little less done than you'd want, when you take it out.
Then serve!

For the salad, we just bought a head of lettuce (for $3, which will last at least 3 meals for 2 people). I really like garlic in my dressing, and a lot of balsamic vinegar.

Balsamic Vinaigrette of Sorts
Ingredients:
1 clove garlic, minced, chopped, pressed, whatever
3 Tbsp Olive Oil
2 Tbsp Balsamic Vinegar
1 tbp honey
2 tbp lemon juice (reconstituted or fresh)
dash soy sauce
2 tbp Dijon Mustard

Mix that together with a fork. The proportions are all whatever I felt like making, but you can mess around with it if you like it sweeter or with more lemon. Watch out with the soy sauce, I added too much and it got too salty, so I added some honey to even it out.

Anyway, that was our dinner.