Poached Salmon

Poaching involves cooking in liquid.  It is one of my favourite ways of cooking because there are a lot of variations, there is very little clean-up afterwards and it is great for those days when you don't want to eat out but you also don't want to spend a ton of time cooking.

This particular recipe is salmon poached in vegetable broth with nugget potatoes, garlic and spinach.  Normally when I poach fish I will just use water, and add something citrus like lemon juice or orange slices.  Cooking in liquid makes whatever you are cooking super juicy and everything you cook with it (like the potatoes and spinach) absorb the flavour of the garlic, juice, broth or whatever else you put in there.  Any kind of fish would be awesome with this recipe, and it doesn't have to be a huge filet, you can do the single serving filets as well.

Ingredients:

4 cups of liquid (I used vegetable brot, but you can use water as well)
Fish (This is a salmon filet, but any kind of fish would do)
Basil (We had some fresh basil from our garden, but you could use dried herbs as well, Dill is great with fish)
Salt and Pepper to taste
3 or 4 cloves of garlic 
15 Nugget Potatoes
2 handfuls of Spinach
2 TB Olive Oil

Directions:

1.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2.  Place fish in a large oven-safe pan.  Pour liquid over fish.

3.  Salt and Pepper to taste.  You want your liquid to be flavourful because it is going to be absorbed by everything in the pan.  If you are using water make sure to add something flavourful, such as lemon juice.

4.  Chop up garlic and cut nugget potatoes in half.  Place these in the broth.  Place spinach on top, making sure most of it is submerged in the liquid.  Drizzle oil on top and add more salt and pepper if desired.

5. Cook for 20 minutes and then stir the spinach so that the rest becomes submerged.  The spinach will float at first but once it has cooked awhile it will begin to wilt.  You want to make sure that it does not spend all 40 minutes of the cooking time above the surface of the liquid or it will get dry and crunchy. 

6.  Place back in oven for an additional 20 minutes making it 40 minutes total.  Check to make sure the liquid is bubbling at this point, if it is not you may want to consider turning your oven up to 425.

7.  Once the time is up take the dish out of the oven.  Poke the potatoes with a fork to make sure they are cooked through.  Also check the salmon, you will know that it is fully cooked when it flakes with a fork, as shown below.

Enjoy!

Homemade Corn Dogs

Homemade Corn Dogs (LOL)

 

I have to LOL at this because I still can't believe I made corn dogs.  We bought a deep fryer a few months back so we could make battered salmon but it has been sitting in the cupboard for quite a while now after only two uses.  It was shunned because deep frying is way more work than it is worth, and it kept spitting at me which is NOT OKAY!


I decided to take it out of retirement because my dad had a craving for corn dogs and I didn't want him to buy the preservative heavy ones from the store.  Don't worry, I definitely see the paradox in wanting to make "healthy" corn dogs.  Anything deep fried is definitely not good for you, but it could be worse!  I got the recipe from Bakingdom:

http://www.bakingdom.com/2011/06/homemade-corn-dogs.html



These were a lot of fun to make, and I quite liked them, having never had a corn dog before!

Ingredients:

1 cup Corn Meal
1 cup All-Purpose Flour
1/4 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Black Pepper
1/4 cup Sugar
1 TB Baking Powder
1 egg
3/4 cup Milk
1 to 2 TB Honey, depending on how sweet you want it, I used 1 TB
10 Hot Dogs of your choosing
10 - 20 Toothpicks, popsicle sticks, skewers (whatever you have available)

Directions:

1.  Heat your oil to 375 degrees.  You can do this in a large pot if you don't have a deep fryer.  Please be careful with the hot oil!  Prepare a plate or a baking sheet with paper towel in order to lay the corn dogs once they are cooked.

2.  In a medium bowl combine the corn meal, flour, salt, pepper, sugar and baking powder.  In a separate bowl combine the egg, milk and honey.  Make a well in the dry mixture and add the liquid mixture.  Mix until the batter is smooth.

3.  I cut each of my hot dogs in half to make smaller corn dogs, but you may want to keep them whole, completely your choice!  Dry off your dogs and insert the skewer into the cut part of each dog.  I used large wooden skewers which were cut in half.

4.  Dip your dog into the batter, making sure it is completely covered.  I found the easiest way to do this was to submerge it and gently spin.  This is why you want the hot dog to be dry because otherwise some of the batter will have trouble sticking.

5.   Lower the corn dog into the oil and repeat with up to two more dogs.  I only did two at a time because I found it too difficult to do three.  The corn dogs never ended up being perfectly cylindrical so they would always want to float on one side, making it more brown than the other.  This meant that I had to try and hold it with tongs under the oil on the uncooked side so it would look even.  I found this too difficult with more than two corn dogs in the oil at a time.

6.  The corn dogs take about 3-5 minutes to cook in the oil, once they are golden brown on both sides you can take them out and lay them on the paper towel.

I had extra batter when I was done so I put globs of it in the oil and made these weird little balls which I call Alien Donuts because they looked super weird.  I then rolled them in cinnamon sugar.  They were way too good.

Alien Donuts, not coming to a store near you, ever.

Enjoy!