Roasted Red Peppers on the Grill

It was a lovely evening to grill out.  I’ve been waiting for a break in the spring rains to try my favorite recipe from Delicious Dishes, page 95, cooked on the gas grill with a new variation,  This time around, I used queso del caribe and a bit of smoked salmon and fresh rosemary on the luscious tomato-stuffed red bell peppers.

Roasted red peppers stuffed with tomato and cheese, from p. 95 of Delicious Dishes for Diabetics, cooking on the grill.

Lentils, prepared as on p. 164

Dinner is Served! Red Peppers Stuffed with Tomatoes, Queso and Smoked Salmon, Comfort Lentils, and Mediterranean Vegetables

It’s been a while since I cooked lentils, so I used the recipe on page164 to make a spicy side dish.  I just had regular green lentils, but they are very good this way.  As with several other dishes in the book, the main flavorings are onion, coriander and cumin seeds, crushed in a mortar, and chili pepper,  I also used a small clove of garlic, chopped fine.  I confess to cooking them a little too soft, so that they tended to mush up like refried beans when I spooned them out of the pot.  Mashed or not, they tasted great with the peppers and the Mediterranean vegetable mix I used to round out the meal.

The husband says he can’t decide between this evening’s version or the original with chevre as his preference so far.  He really liked the smoked salmon, as did I.  It just added to that grilled-outdoors flavor that’s really the point of using the barbeque.  I used a foil-lined pan this time, but I may get more adventurous and use one of those grill-top baskets or perforated pans next try.  I have a lot to learn about grilling vegetables, so it’s all going to be experimental cooking for a while to come.

I bought a bunch of fresh veggies on the weekend, and some Beano 😉 so coming up, we will be trying recipes for cauliflower, broccoli, eggplant (aubergine) and the spinach and rice torte.  I’m trying to take the focus off meat as the main dish of the meal and use it more as an occasional luxury food.  Food prices have gone up so much in the last few months, I’m looking forward to a good garden to feed us toward the end of summer.  Until then, I am practicing on store-bought produce and soon, the farmer’s markets as I find more Delicious Dishes to explore.

Sockeye to Me!

After watching Robin’s cooking segment for Chicago TV, I knew it was time to make his salmon fishcakes again.  I had some frozen salmon filet and thought I’d use that, when I happened upon fresh wild Alaskan sockeye in the local grocery store.  I snapped some up and brought it home where tonight it met its ultimate destiny.

In his cooking demo, Robin chopped up the salmon with a knife rather than tossing it in the food processor.  So I wielded my mighty cleaver and minced up my fish by hand.  Having prepared the recipe before made it go so much more quickly this time.  With TV magic, Robin had done the entire dish from raw fish to cooked dish in about two minutes.  Mine took maybe half an hour in real time, due to the fact that I had no magical elves to chop and measure ahead of time.

But oh, was it worth it!  At the end of the cooking time, we had fish cakes that actually tasted like real salmon, and the flavors of the dill and mustard came through just enough to brighten it, while the lemon juice made it less “fishy” tasting. They were just what I anticipated from the first time I read the recipe through.

The yogurt-dill-mustard sauce is far superior to the tartar sauce I used to have with fish.  This time around I was more generous with the mustard — I do love me some Dijon whole-seed mustard — and graced it with a few drops of lemon juice.  Perfect accent to the robust salmon flavor!

So here’s what I’ve learned so far about salmon fishcakes:  If you love the taste and texture of salmon, use wild sockeye if you can get it.  If, on the other hand, you are serving people who don’t like fish (like little kids who only eat chicken nuggets), go ahead and get the frozen keta salmon and they’ll never know they’ve eaten fish until after they ask you what made them so good.