Weeknight Cooking:
Salmon with dill carrots and cabbage

The salmon of the year award goes out to that one special salmon recipe that seemed to transcend all the rest of the many attempts throughout the year.  This year's has as much to do with the compliment sides as the salmon itself.  Either way, there is no better fish to cook – salmon is fairly easy to make  perfectly because of its tough strap of skin which tends to protect from any overheating of the meat itself. The inherent taste that salmon holds is as good as it gets.  This recipe calls for four 6 oz skin-on

salmon fillets – to be cooked either by pan method or, as I did this time, oven cook at 425 for somewhere around 20 minutes – but the side portion is what makes this meal.  I cut my salmon in
fairly thin fillets this time around and topped them with thinly cut portobella mushrooms because I had them on hand and wanted to see if seasoned mushrooms would compliment salmon or not. They did very nicely.  As the salmon is cooking, brew up a large pot of boiling water and add 4 sliced

carrots and 6 cups of thinly sliced cabbage. Cook until tender, drain, add butter, salt and some fresh chopped dill.  Meanwhile, for the dipping sauce, stir together 1/4 cup sour cream, 1 tbsp. of whole grain mustard and a pinch of red wine vinegar if desired.  The salmon, covered by light seasoning –

in this case diced mushrooms as well – dipped into the sour cream sauce then scooped along with cabbage salad is a near perfect compliment of textures and seasoning.

Weeknight Cooking:
Ricotta, Ham and Scallion Tart

So easy, so fast, and potentially so diverse in ingredients, the simple tart is a nice find for the expanding recipe box.  In essence, a tart recipe includes a crust and a filling of egg, cheese and cream.

For any one ingredient that this particular recipe calls for, I could easily see swapping it for something that suits the cook's taste (scallions, for example, could become asparagus without an ounce of trouble). This one calls for a fluted 9-inch tart pan, greased, to be lined with a refrigerated tube of pizza crust.  The pizza crust is massaged into the creases of the pan and rolled up over the ends as high as wanted, but remembering that the exposed crust above the pan will darken the quickest (I eventually placed aluminum foil over the edges so not to blacken).  Whisk 1/4 cup ricotta cheese, 1/4 cup heavy cream and an egg together; mince at least two scallions (optional, other stalk greens); add ricotta mix along

with parsley and a pinch of dill.  Meanwhile prepare diced ham however convenient.  I like to leave ham thickly diced and brown it well, sometimes with a touch of brown sugar, or even a splash of orange for zest.  Add the ham to the ricotta cheese mixture, lay into the prepared pizza crust pan and

set into 425 oven for 20 minutes, depending, again, on the color of the crust.  What really steals the show in this recipe are two things: the pizza crust in a pan becomes very fluffy and reminds you of the same sort of texture as deep dish pizza.  The other is the good ham suspended in all that ricotta cheese.  If thought of as something like pizza, then, this tart recipe could easily seen as a sausage tart, or pepperoni tart...or maybe no meat at all, but instead seasoned eggplant, zucchini, whatever. As long as there is the crust, the cheese, the egg, the cream, all should be well after 20 minutes.