The Good, the Bad and the Absolutely Marvelous

Because it's listed first in the title of this post, I feel obligated to present the good of this triumvirate of topics. Predictable, I know, Gentle Reader, but we all have to make certain concessions for the sake of convention.

So here's the good: Sunday night we enjoyed a feast of salmon, stir-fried vegetables and brown rice. Doesn't sound terribly impressive, does it, Gentle Reader? Well, let me explain why it gets the good nod.

The salmon was a portion of a big slab o' salmon we bought at Central Markup. These fresh, giant fillets were on sale for $6.99 a pound, and the fillet we selected was just over two pounds and was just gorgeous. I'm going to get three meals out of this slab 'o salmon, which makes me quite happy.

This beautiful portion of this beautiful slab 'o salmon I decided to use to try a new recipe I found recently while culling the stack of Cooking Light issues on the coffee table. I don't recall now in which issue I found the salmon with sweet chile sauce recipe, but I knew I'd have to try it because it calls for Sriracha, a sweet heat Thai sauce that I could drink straight from the bottle. I've used it to much gustatory delight in a stir fry I whip up from time to time, so I was thrilled to find another recipe with it.

Salmon With Sweet Chile Sauce4 6-oz. salmon fillets, skinned
1 t ground coriander
1/2 t salt
2 T honey
1 T fresh lime juice
2 t low-sodium soy sauce
1/2 to 1 t Sriracha
4 t thinly sliced green onions

1. Sprinkle the fish evenly with coriander and salt.
   
2. Combine the honey, juice, soy sauce, and Sriracha in a small bowl.
   
3. Coat a large nonstick skillet with cooking spray, then heat it over medium-high heat.
   
4. Add the fish to pan and cook 4 min. on each side or until the fish flakes easily.
   
5. Drizzle the sauce over the fish.
   
6. Sprinkle with green onions.

Nutritional Info
Calories: 262
Fat: 10.5 g
Sat fat: 2.5 g
Protein: 31.2 g
Carbs: 9.5 g
Fiber: 0.1 g
Cholesterol: 80 mg
Sodium: 460 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
Do you notice, Gentle Reader, that the recipe doesn't give specific directions for removing the salmon from the pan? I did. The lack of that specific direction had me wondering if I was supposed to drizzle the sauce over the salmon while it's still in the pan, while still in the pan with the heat on or once it's plated. What's a faudie to do without precise directions?

My sauce was not very saucy. That is to say, it wasn't of a drizzling viscosity. Drizzle to me bespeaks a viscosity somewhere close to pancake syrup or thicker. No, my sauce was thinner and soupier. So I dumped it into the pan with the salmon in it with the heat seat to Lo. Naturally, because I was using my higher-quality saute pan that retains heat well (love those copper bottoms!), the sauce immediately set to sizzlin'. And the smell! Oh! the smell was heavenly! Honey and lime wafting up my nostrils put me and my stomach in a very, very happy place.

And me and my stomach were not disappointed by the flavor of the finished fish. Very, very tasty! But I will say this: Next time I won't use as much salt in the rub, and I'll probably use more than just one teaspoon of Sriracha. Maybe a tablespoon. But, hey, I likes me some Sriracha.

As for the veggies, the sauce I used in the stir fry is the same I use when I make the Thai chicken stir fry. The veggies we enjoyed were julienned carrots, lots of broccoli (because the boys likes them some broccoli) and slices of green bell pepper. Yummy tummy for our tummies!

"So if this recipe is so yummy, why does it only rate a good from you?" you ask, Gentle Reader?

Well, it rates a good because of what happened right before and right after supper. Right before: The boy was setting his father's glass of ice water on the table and, as he is wont to do from time to time, spilled it all over the place--"all over the place" being the table upon which our two laptops, including the husband's brand new, flamingo pink XPS m1530--sit. I couldn't stop keeping a close watch over the cooking salmon and the stir-frying veggies to help, but the husband assured me all was good.

And I believed him until he went to wake his laptop from its hibernation--and the damn thing told him it couldn't find its internal hard drive. Yeah, big oopsie there. I wound up calling the XPS tech support line (yeah, XPS buyers get their own tech support line, making XPS systems totally worth their slightly higher price, although the husband's system was a refurb and ridiculously cheap). While working with tech support, I quickly discovered the problem: water infiltration. I pulled out the battery and came away with droplets of water in my hand. I removed the hard drive and came away with a few tiny droplets of water in my hand. Every time I closed the display and turned the system over, a few droplets emerged from beneath the keyboard.

Let's just say nothing delights me more after a fabulous fish feast than spending time on the phone with tech support trying to repair a brand new computer that's moist and malfunctioning. The indigestion I suffered the rest of the evening and throughout the night is why I give this salmon with sweet chile sauce recipe a good.

The Bad
As I mentioned several paragraphs back, I culled my stack of recent Cooking Light issues and rediscovered some recipes I'd marked for future use but then put on the coffee table and promptly forgot. When I culled the stack, I made sure to find the recipes right away on MyRecipes.com and bookmark them into the appropriate folders on my laptop and make a list of them so I can actually get around to making them. Pretty smart, non?

When I came upon the recipe for cranberry-oatmeal bars, I realized how many of the ingredients I had on hand and how much unclaimed free time I had ahead of me that afternoon. So, hey, why not try this one out right away?

Upon closer inspection of the printed recipe, I found some options for variations on the cranberry-oatmeal theme, including one for--my favorite!--dates. I also liked that this variation removed some of the sugar and replaced it with maple syrup. Excited, I started making the bars.

Maple-Date-Oatmeal BarsCrust
4.5 oz. (about 1 C) all-purpose flour
1 C quick-cooking oats
1/4 t salt
1/4 t baking soda
1/4 t ground cinnamon
6 T butter, melted
3 T orange juice

Filling
1 1/3 C (about 6 oz.) chopped pitted dates
3/4 C sour cream
2 T maple syrup
2 T brown sugar
2 T all-purpose flour
1 t vanilla extract
1/2 t orange zest
1 large egg white, lightly beaten

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Prep an 11 x 7–inch baking dish with cooking spray
   
2. To prepare the crust, combine the flour, oats, salt, soda and cinnamon in a medium bowl, stirring well with a whisk.
   
3. Drizzle the butter and juice over the flour mixture, stirring until moistened (mixture will be crumbly). Reserve 1/2 cup oat mixture.
   
4. Press the remaining oat mixture into the bottom of the baking dish.
   
5. To prepare filling, combine all its ingredients in another medium bowl, stirring well.
   
6. Spread the filling over the crust, then sprinkle the reserved oat mixture evenly over the filling.
   
7. Bake for 40 min. or until the edges are golden.
   
8. Let the bars cool completely in the pan on a wire rack.

Yield: 24 servings (serving size is one square)

Nutritional Info
Calories: 124
Fat: 4.6 g
Sat fat: 2.6 g
Protein: 1.7 g
Carbs: 19.8 g
Fiber: 1.1 g
Cholesterol: 13 mg
Na: 68 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
Just a tip, Gentle Reader: Never discover you only have a fraction of the sour cream you need in the middle of the process for which you need it. Got that?

All right, onto my futzings!

• I used fat-free sour cream. I thought it interesting that Cooking Light didn't call for reduced-fat or fat-free sour cream in the first place. Perhaps readers are just supposed to assume such information, but then again, the magazine's recipes are usually very specific about what type of ingredients to use.
  
• I used Splenda brown sugar blend in lieu of regular brown sugar.
  
• I don't own any maple syrup. That stuff's expensive! So I used my beloved Griffin's waffle syrup, which is one of the better things about having grown up in Okiemolah.
  
• As I have many times before to much success, I used an equal combination of white wheat flour and whole wheat flour.
  
• As I have many times before to much frustration, I used Promise fat-free butter. Yes, I know, Gentle Reader, the lack of fat screws me over every time, but...I'm pathological in my obsession with using this stuff. Maybe in my next incarnation I won't be so neurotic about these things. Maybe.
  
• Because I needed so little orange zest, I didn't zest one of the three giant oranges I have sitting on my counter. I was lazy and substituted a quarter-teaspoon of orange extract. Or was it a full half-teaspoon? Hell, I don't remember at this point.
  
• As I was pouring the filling onto the crust, I remembered that I hadn't add the two tablespoons of flour to it. D'oh!

Needless to say, Gentle Reader, I had issues pressing the crust into the pan. The stuff wasn't crumbly--it was gooey, thus it stuck to my hands despite them being coated in nonstick cooking spray. This problem was nothing new.

And perhaps I used the wrong pan since I wasn't sure if the recipe wanted me to use a Pyrex baking dish (which I thought was still dirty at the time) instead of an aluminum cake pan. I know a glass pan will not yield as good of browning as a metal pan will (something handy I learned while reviewing--and erasing--some old episodes of America's Test Kitchen recently), plus I have a new aluminum pan with a plastic snap-on cover (thanks, Erin, for the Williams-Sonoma gift card birthday gift!), which I figured would be really handy for keeping the bars fresh and moist as we ate them slowly.

I also found it odd that the recipe didn't have me bake the crust, even just for a few minutes, before putting the filing atop it. I have several oatmeal crust bar cookie recipes that require me to do just that. So I wasn't terribly surprised that the crust in places was still gooey after the 40 minutes of baking. Thank the FSM I coated the pan in baking nonstick cooking spray or else some of the bars never would have released from the pan!

Overall, I wasn't terribly impressed with the recipe. Don't get me wrong: The bars had a good flavor. But the sour cream-based filling was just...in the husband's words, had an odd mouth feel. Maybe if I'd used full-fat sour cream, the mouth feel wouldn't have been so...off. Would I try the recipe again with full-fat sour cream? Not on your life.

The Absolutely Marvelous
The husband and I celebrated 11 years of marriage last Saturday. We actually celebrated a day early by going to Rangoli together for lunch sans boy. Rangoli, as always, was delightful, but it especially was last Friday, for nothing beats a belly full of warm, wonderful Indian food on a cold, overcast day.

We decided to continue our Indian anniversary feast on the big day itself by preparing a murgh makhani (cashew chicken) recipe my sister-in-law had kindly shared with me and highly recommended--and one I'd actually marked in an older issue of Cooking Light that I'd been neglecting. While I'll admit right away I wasn't terribly keen on blendering up the marinade paste, I was anxious to taste the final result, so I sucked it up and got the job done.

Speaking of that marinade paste, that stuff was damn delicious right out of the blender.

Yeah, I know--looks kinda disgusting before blending.

And it doesn't look appetizing afterwards, but it's delish!

I probably could have eaten it cold (well, cool) as a chutney to accompany some idlis, medu vada or even some papadum. Because it was so tasty, I was a little nervous about finishing the recipe and adding more ingredients to the pot when it came time to cook the chicken and finish the dish. But I needn't have worried!

Indian Cashew Chicken2/3 C cashews, toasted
2/3 C fat-free Greek-style yogurt
1/4 C tomato paste
2 T white vinegar
1 1/4 t garam masala
1 t ground coriander
1 t grated peeled fresh ginger
1/4 t ground red pepper
2 garlic cloves, chopped
4 skinless, boneless chicken thighs, cut into bite-sized pieces (about 14 oz. total)
2 8-oz. skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces
2 3/4 C finely chopped onion (2 large)
2 green cardamom pods, lightly crushed
1 2" cinnamon stick
2 C fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
1 C tomato puree
1 t Hungarian sweet paprika
1/4 t salt
3 T half-and-half
Chopped fresh cilantro (optional)

1. Combine the first nine ingredients in a blender or food processor, then process until smooth.
   
2. Pour the nut mixture over the chicken in a large bowl, then cover and refrigerate 3 hours or overnight.
   
3. Coat a large Dutch oven with cooking spray and heat over medium-low heat.
   
4. Add the onion, cardamom and cinnamon stick to the pan, then cover and cook 10 min. or until the onion is golden, stirring often.
   
5. Add the chicken mixture to the pan and cook 10 min., stirring frequently.
   
6. Stir in the broth, tomato puree, paprika and salt, scraping the pan to loosen any browned bits.
   
7. Cook the curry 1 hour or until it's thick.
   
8. Stir in the half-and-half and cook 1 min., stirring occasionally.
   
9. Turn off the heat, then discard the cinnamon stick. Garnish with fresh cilantro, if desired.

Yield: 6 servings (one serving is about 1 cup)

Nutritional Info
Calories: 340
Fat: 13.6 g
Sat fat: 3.4 g
Protein: 36.7 g
Carbs: 18.7 g
Fiber: 3.8 g
Cholesterol: 91 mg
Sodium: 435 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
Not too many changes with this one--which is highly unusual, I know.

• I wasn't going to buy a big carton of fat-free half-and-half for this recipe, so I'd initially planned to omit it. Then I remembered that often half-and-half is used in place of heavy whipping cream, which I do have (even if it is a little old). But here's the funny thing, Gentle Reader: I forgot to add it after I was satisfied the curry was thick enough. I've done this before and found the flavor was not affected, and this time the same is true.
  
• For the boy's sake, I didn't put in any cilantro. I'm a good mom, aren't I? (Don't answer that. And don't die laughing either.)
  
• Central Markup was all out of Hungarian sweet paprika, so I used the regular paprika I had on hand. I doubt it made much of a difference.
  
• I didn't cover the onions to cook them for 10 minutes. I don't understand that step. Just cook the damn things until they're golden. Sheesh.
  
• I didn't cover and cook the curry for an hour. I'd say in 25 minutes, the curry was nice and thick and ready to be scooped up with a piece of naan.

This recipe is perfect if you've wanted to make your own Indian food but haven't been sure if you'll be able to replicate your favorite chicken tikka masala dish at your favorite Indian restaurant. Because here's the thing, Gentle Reader: I've found many restaurants do a makhani recipe as their tikka masala dish. The recipes are pretty similar, I've found.

So what are you waiting for, Gentle Reader? Get your butt and gear and get some yummy Indian food in your belly! Heaven to murgh-atroyd, it's absolutely marvelous!