Fish Friday: Maple Ginger Oven Baked Salmon

Diet easy dinner maple salmon fish recipe
There is a chef in the world of chefs whom I admire greatly. Thanks to @MitchTonks ' books I learnt enough about cooking fish so that I have no fear going out there and experiment on my own.

This guy can teach anything, give me a side of salmon and Tonks' "Fish Easy" and I'll cure it, the salmon not the book.

I learnt, for example that fish continues cooking once off the grill or off the oven and that if you ever have a fish larger than 1lb, you shouldn't try to wedge it in a pan as oven is the best method for cooking a large fish.

When it came to prepare a couple of salmon slices, I was ready, off they went in the oven but not before getting

The glaze treatment:

Home cooking is not only what you can do, it's often  depends on what you have in the pantry. Maple syrup isn't part of everyday essential but keeping a bottle indoors is very useful, for desserts but also for savouries and brilliant when it comes to glazes.

To balance things up a sweet glaze will need a kick. In this recipe chilli and ginger provide the necessary heat. Lime and soya will give the acidity required to cut through the fatty taste of the salmon.

Have a go and let me know

Ingredients

2 Salmon fillets     
4tbsp of maple syrup      
2tbsp of soy sauce     
1/2 lime juice and zest
1 clove of garlic
1 inch of ginger
chilli flakes to taste (replace with powder if necessary but make sure it has a kick)

Method

When cooking fish in the oven, it's "best to start by preheating the oven to maximum. Add a few glugs of good olive oil to a heavy roasting pan." advises Tonks.

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl, place the fillets in a dish.
Pour the marinade on the fish
Place the fillets in the roasting pan, careful at this stage it will be hot.
Lower the temperature to 230C/mark8 and cook for 10 to 15 minutes
if you have the time you could marinate the salmon in the glaze first.








 

Give-Away #29 : Abra-Ca-Debora 6 packs of Delicious Pancakes

This give-away is now closed & the winner is Sarah #13

There is something about Shrove-Tuesday which I find really appealing. It's a no pressure type of festival and this year it will be even more so with the help of Abra-Ca-Debora "a cook with the magic touch and who has lots of kitchen tricks up her sleeve".
 
Though it's not very complicated to prepare pancakes from scratch, no one will deny that it's even easier to open a packet of ready made ones, of course, only if they were to be as good as the ones you could rustle up yourself, and Abra-Ca-Debora's are....... 
All you need to do is to think about which topping you are going to use with your Abra-ca-Debora pancakes. Mine will definitely be caramelised bananas.

You could win 6 packs of delicious ready-made pancakes as follows:
2 packs of

and...2 pack of
There is more, 2 packs of these small portions lovelies for which there are lots of recipes on Abra-Ca-Debora's site

 
The deadline is 4th February 12.00 so that you'll have your prize in plenty of time for Tuesday 17th February - Happy Shrove Tuesday -

And now for the rules. Good luck.
For one entry: Leave a comment with your favourite pancake topping
For a second entry: Follow me on Twitter @solangeweb, and leave a comment on this blog to let me know. If you are already following on twitter, please, leave a comment so that your second entry is recorded.

And last but not least, the small prints:
Each entry will be verified.
This giveaway is open to UK residents over 18 only. A single winner will be chosen by a randomiser and the prize will be sent directly by Abra-Ca-Debora


Chestnut & Quinoa Stuffed Butternut Squash

Butternut Squash Chestnut Quinoa vegan recipe vegetarian prized recipe M&S
 
Update : Proud - this post won the Spice Trail Challenge themed my body is a temple -see round up here loads more healthy recipes.

#No Meat Monday or Meat Free Monday are initiatives part of a movement going back to early 2000 which aims at gently limiting our meat consumption on a regular basis. It's also a way of introducing vegetarian recipes in our diet or for vegetarian an opportunity to be exposed and explore different ingredients.
 
This recipe makes use of chestnuts, quinoa and pomegranate seeds. Three delicious ingredients which are often overlooked as they are unusual. What I call "curious ingredients"
 
Personally, I love chestnuts. A little bit annoying  that they make a brief appearance  at Christmas time only. I'd like to see more of them on menus. Of course, there is a "little" inconvenient: they are difficult to prepare. But where there is a will... there is a call for vacuum-packed chestnuts.
 
Quinoa which I associate with Gwyneth Paltrow's because there was a lot of nauseating  hype  around the tiny nutty tasting grain when she promoted her cook-book. For that totally irrational reason and for a while, I refused to try out quinoa, a silly thing to do as it's really full of flavour. This pulse is slightly expensive but it's really worth a try.
 
Pomegranate a favourite in Middle-Eastern cuisine always peps up recipes. Once the fruit is opened the seeds can be used in salads or as snacks. Which leads me to this recipe found in Morrison's magazine and adapted.

It originally uses 2 butternut squashes which is quite a lot, one only was plenty for 2 people but I kept all the other ingredients the same so it's packed with flavours. You might be left with extra stuffing, note that it's delicious on its own, warm it up the next day, that's lunch taken care of. 
 
Chestnuts 'n Quinoa Stuffed Butternut Squash
Ingredients
  • 1 medium butternut squash, halved (see last paragraph of the post)
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
  • 200g ready-prepared vacuum-packed chestnuts, roughly chopped
  • 2 tbsp fresh sage, chopped
  • 1 tsp ground cumin
  • ½ tsp ground cinnamon
  • 2 tbsp cranberry sauce
  • 125g quinoa
  • 2 tbsp shelled pistachios, roughly chopped
  • 75g pomegranate seeds
  • Fresh coriander leaves

  •  
    Method
    1. Heat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan/Gas 6. Scoop the seeds out of the squash and score the flesh. Place cut side up on a baking tray, drizzle with half the oil and season. Cook for 40-45 minutes.
    2. Heat the rest of the oil in a frying pan and cook the onion until softened. Stir in the garlic and chestnuts, cook for a minute then add the sage, cumin, cinnamon and cranberry sauce and cook for another 30 seconds.
    3. Put the quinoa into a pan and cover with water. Bring to the boil then simmer for 15 minutes. Drain and stir into the onion mix with the nuts and all but 1 tbsp of the seeds.
    4. Once the squash are done, scoop out the flesh leaving just the shell. Chop the flesh and add to the quinoa mixture, then spoon back into the shells and bake for 10 minutes. To serve, scatter with the remaining seeds and coriander.
    As this recipe is really popular with Pebble Soup's readers, I am sharing it with my favourite bloggers' challenge
    This month the theme is challenge is Temple Food… as in my body is a temple. I think this recipe will fit right in.

    7/1/15

    It felt like a page of my book of beliefs was being  violently torn out. A book which advocates tolerance, freedom of thoughts and speech in our democratic societies. There are no words to describe the murders at Charlie Hebdo yesterday.

    But this morning there was this


     
    and I knew that the words will appear and that millions of people will  rewriting the page.
    si

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