Food: Salmon for one & food blog review Sallie’s Baking Addiction

Food: Salmon for one & food blog review Sallie’s Baking Addiction

I love browsing through cookbooks (I buy the ones that can double as picturebooks.  I love food photographs!).  For cooking though, I used to have this awesome CD that I chose the ingredients I had and viola, I could surf a bunch of recipes.  Problem is everytime I updated my computer, I’d have to update the CD and I gave up getting them.  Planned obsolescence is a pain.

So lately when I search for recipe, I find if I use cookbook indexes, I get distracted once I start looking at pictures.  Nowadays, the fastest way to find a recipe is google search with the ingredients which leads me to some cool food blogs. I often simplify a recipe because I am sticking to the ingredients I have on hand rather than running out to get what’s missing.

Today my search for “Salmon” brought up Easy Healthy Dinner: Garlic Honey Ginger Glazed Salmon with Broccoli on Sally’s Baking Addiction which she said was inspired by Honey-Soy Glazed Salmon With Spinach and Peppers on Real Simple. The Real Simple recipe page is just the recipe, nothing else — well, except for a bunch of links at the bottom to other articles.  The Real Simple recipe is easy to follow, only 9 ingredients, mix the ingredients and broil the salmon while you quick fry the spinach and pepper finishing everything in 20 minutes.

Sally’s Baking Addiction recipe page is much more chatty and then she gets down to business. She has simplified the recipe to 6 ingredients, marinate the salmon then broil it while you make the broccoli and you should be done in 35 minutes or less — from the looks of things probably close to the 20 minutes of Real Simple.

What I like about Sally is after she describes her how to with great pics, she finishes with the printable recipe at the bottom, shows the calorie count (and a link to a calorie counter) as well as make ahead and health tips.  She posted the recipe in 2015 and the comments run from 2015 to now (2017) and she is still answering.  And what I really like is since she loves baking, going to her front page, she has a yummy apple cinnamon rolls photo with recipe.

Ok so for my cooking adventure

So basically this is Sally’s recipe sans the broccoli (which I didn’t have) downsized for one person.  I put mine on angel hair pasta instead.

  • 1 Salmon fillet
  • 1t dried ginger  (hers would be 1/2 t freshly grated ginger but I didn’t have fresh.)
  • 2T Honey
  • 3T Soy Sauce  (Sallie says low salt.  Low salt is better and healthier but I had a bunch of leftover soy sauce packets from chinese takeout so had squeezed them into a flask.  I doubt they are low salt.  I hate using them directly on my food — too salty — so I save them for cooking)
  • A handful of Angelhair pasta (what?  I just shake out how much I need.  Hungry days it’s more. Diet days is less.  Never really measure it.  Just call it enough for one person)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Start the water boiling for the pasta.

Okay to start, I didn’t have fresh ginger.  However, I’m a fan of ginger tea.  Triple Leaf has a ginger tea that is just dried ginger, no other ingredients, which I love.  Everyday I plop a bag of ginger tea in with English Breakfast tea to wake me up. The tea is hard to find.  Lately the only place I can find it at is Cost Plus across from Best Buy on Broadway (Tucson). Fresh ginger is better and sometimes the 99cent Only Store has small bags of fresh ginger for $1.

The tea bag comes to 1t dried ginger so I cut it open and poured into the mixing bowl. Now dried is actually more in volume than fresh but I wasn’t going to take the time to marinade so I figured more was ok. It’s a little spicier marinade than Sallie’s.

Stir the honey, ginger and soy sauce together.  That’s the sauce.

Since I was not going to marinade, I decided to cook the fish en papillote so it would cook in the sauce for flavor.  Basically I made a cup from aluminum foil, rested the salmon in the middle and poured the sauce over the fish.  Sealed the aluminum foil over the salmon and sauce so nothing leaks and pop it in the oven. Set the timer for 20-25 minutes (depends on how thick your fillet is).

When the water is boiling, drop the angelhair pasta into the water.  I didn’t have any fresh veggies, so I dropped a little frozen mixed vegetables in. Fresh is way better but frozen will do in a pinch — don’t overcook the frozen though — gets mushy fast.  If you’re using fresh, broccoli, snow peas or just about anything that goes into a stirfry is good. Cook until angelhair is done, then rinse and drain it.

When the oven dings, I opened the top of the packet to let the salmon get a little crispy on the edges.   Ideally, I give the salmon 5 more minutes. (If you don’t like crisp, leave the packet closed. The salmon will be more moist.) Turn the oven off, leaving the salmon in a few minutes to cool down a little while I finish the pasta.  Leave the oven door open if you’re using a regular size open so it doesn’t keep cooking the salmon. You also don’t want the sauce to evaporate too much as you’re going to need it. The pasta will just take a minute at this point anyways.

Pour the pasta into a bowl.  I reseal the salmon to take it out of the oven (hopefully to reduce spillage — today no spills!)

Carefully taking the salmon out, I reopen the aluminum pocket, pour the sauce into the pasta bowl, holding the salmon back. (I have a little countertop oven I got at Habitat for Humanity thrift store for $7.  I have a regular oven but for small baking, I like the little oven so I don’t use so much electricity.  Also makes it easier when I am taking out small packages like this.).

Toss the angel pasta (and veggies such as they are) in the sauce and then toss the salmon on top.  It came out surprisingly yummy.

References:

Easy Healthy Dinner: Garlic Honey Ginger Glazed Salmon with Broccoli
Sally’s Baking Addiction

Honey-Soy Glazed Salmon With Spinach and Peppers
Real Simple

Photos:

Cooking photos by M. Nakazato LaFreniere (me)

 

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