2012 Whole Living Healthy Detox: Week 2

Well, week 2 is over, but it was much easier than week 1.  We made quite a few tasty meals.  We started  the week off with a family Christmas party - we brought baked salmon with chimichurri sauce.  We also revamped one of our favorites, lemon pepper shrimp, to be detox-friendly (and MUCH healthier).  Typically, this dish consists of whole wheat orzo and broccoli sauteed with garlic, topped with shrimp in a lemony, peppery, garlicky, buttery sauce.  We left out the orzo and we left out the butter, making the shrimp with only the lemon, pepper, garlic, and a bit of olive oil, so there wasn't much of a sauce.  We were very pleased with the results!

Throughout the week, we also ate our Dark Days meal of beans and cabbage, and I improved upon my favorite smoothie from last week, the Carrot Mango Smoothie, by adding some strawberries to it as well.  We used up the only soup in the freezer that we can eat, a veggie-filled base for Soup au Pistou, to which we added white beans and a cube of basil puree to give it flavor.  One day for lunch at work, I had half a bag of frozen edamame for lunch, which surprisingly filled me up a lot!

I also managed to squeeze in another recipe from Plenty, one of the two featured cookbooks for January.  The recipe is for Saffron Cauliflower, shown up above, which we ate as a side with salmon.  Because you cook the cauliflower, onions, and golden raisins in the oven, covered, the saffron flavor steams into them.  If you really like saffron (I find it overrated, but that's just me) you will probably like this dish.  I would have preferred if the cauliflower mix was left open to roast and crisp up a little, but it was an OK dish.  I probably won't make it again.

This week is week 3, the final week of the detox.  It's going to take all my willpower not to go straight back to sugar and coffee and bacon!  Wish me luck!

Salmon with Red Pepper and Hazelnut Salsa

As you probably already guessed, this detox is tough.  There is such a limited amount of things that I am permitted to eat.  Salmon is one, and even with chimichurri sauce (OMG, I love it) I was starting to get bored of it really quickly.  I also want to be able to participate, at least a little bit, in the featured cookbook thing for the month - we're doing Ottolenghi and Plenty together, two books I've been dying to cook from, and there are only a select few recipes I can make from them while doing this detox.  As it turns out, I had this salmon recipe flagged already, and I was excited to be able to try it.  I knew when we started mixing together the salsa ingredients that it was going to be a huge hit.

Honestly, I could eat this salsa every day, on anything.  It is so good.  It sticks to your expectations about what a salsa should be while totally blowing them away.  I am obsessed with it and I can't wait to have it again.  This is the way salmon was meant to be eaten.  I had my leftovers for lunch the next day, but Ken ate that second serving right after finishing the first, and I was tempted to do the same.  (I'm glad I prolonged my gratification by saving it.)  As a huge bonus, this was really simple and easy to make, so I expect it to become a staple in our house.

A few notes on the prep... mainly reminders to myself :)  Roast the hazelnuts and the peppers at the same time.  Cook the salmon opposite of the recipe directions, so that you get a crispy skin.  Make the salsa the day before if possible (oh, and double it while you're at it!) and this will come together in a flash.

Salmon Packets

For 4th of July weekend, we went to this sweet party on the beach and had salmon in grill packets. Oh wait, no... that was Giada, not us, and we just watched it on TV. But it looked really good, so we planned to make it this weekend down the shore. (You can find the recipe here.) After we went shopping on Thursday night and bought frozen salmon, I found out that my mom was having some family over and I wasn't allowed to cook while she was cooking. I somehow managed to convince her that our menu of salmon packets with grilled asparagus was genius, despite the fact that she hates salmon, and is allergic to asparagus (it makes her sneeze). I also convinced her that we needed "real" salmon (as opposed to the frozen salmon that I had).

Ken agreed to help me with this, which was great since I now was making 4 times as many salmon packets as I had planned. We opened the salmon to get started, and saw that it still had the skin on. We didn't think this would work well in packets, but also couldn't figure out how to fillet it. Luckily, my dad (who also had no idea how to fillet) helped Ken out and they managed to get the fish in packet-size skinless pieces. I didn't actually touch any salmon. Yuck.

We brushed each piece of salmon with olive oil and placed each on a piece of foil, and then I added all the ingredients - salt, pepper, rosemary, lemon slices, lemon juice, wine, and just a few capers since we don't really like them. (My distaste for capers stems from a cooking disaster that occured a few years ago and made me have no desire to cook until now.)

Then, we folded up the packets. This was difficult because there was quite a bit of liquid in each and it wanted to escape. We put them in a pan in the fridge until our guests arrived and we were ready to throw them on the grill.

My mom cooked some chicken first, then told us it was our turn to grill our salmon. We put it on the grill and came back in ten minutes to check on it. We opened a packet and... yuck. It smelled like wine and was definitely not cooked. My mom had turned the grill off just before she turned it over to us and since it was still hot, we didn't notice. Oops! No problem though, we just turned it back on and cooked them for the ten minutes (again).


Once we finally got them cooked, everyone was hungry and attacked! I don't have any finished pictures, since they went so quickly. The finished product looked a lot like these pictures, just the cooked color of salmon instead. Luckily, everyone said it was great!

The filleting didn't go all that smoothly since we had no fillet knife or knowledge whatsoever, so we had some salmon left on the skin. We grilled it today with just olive oil, salt and pepper on it, and it was delicious. Salmon skin crisps up very nicely. It mostly came off the skin, but it was still good. I added a few pieces of salmon to my salad as well, which was delicious.

Almond Chive Salmon with Lemon Dill Green Beans

I just got myself a present, a brand new Cuisinart food processor, so I absolutely had to use it over the weekend. I had bookmarked a recipe for Almond Chive Salmon that called for a food processor and decided it would be delicious with some Lemon Dill Green Beans.

It is always a challenge for me to do more than one thing at a time! So, I began by chopping the parsley and making the bread crumb mixture. I used whole wheat bread, of course, instead of white bread. I made the mixture in my food processor as directed and I was thrilled with it! I love my food processor. I plan to take advantage of it frequently.

Here's a tip for those of you who do not like to clean: whenever I bake fish (or something similar) I put down aluminum foil on my pan. That way, you can just crumple it up and toss it in the trash and you have one less thing to wash!

I steamed the green beans, which was also the first time I ever used the steamer pot thing! The recipe said 5-7 minutes, so I turned the heat off after 5 and left them for another 2 minutes. I like cooked veggies to be crunchy, and they turned out wonderful. When they were done, I mixed them with the vinaigrette and it was delicious. (I just had to stick my finger in and taste a little because it smelled so good!)

Because I cook for two and most recipes are made for 4, I halved the crust mixture for the salmon. I still had too much. I followed the recipe for the lemon dill vinaigrette, but I used fewer green beans than the recipe called for. I am now noticing that the salmon recipe suggests using different herbs besides parsley, so I think if I make this again I will use dill for both for more consistency. I might also cook the salmon for a shorter time.

Unfortunately I timed things poorly. My green beans were ready about 5 minutes before the salmon, which doesn't sound like a long time, but was enough to cool them down a little more than I would have liked. Next time, I should get the salmon in before mixing the vinaigrette. I might also cook the salmon for a minute or two less, because I felt that it came out a little on the dry side, and it would have been yummy if I squeezed some lemon over it as well. But it was delicious, and I would definitely have it again! I might try it with asparagus instead of green beans, as the recipe suggests. I was a little hesitant about not having a carb-y side, but the dish was filling enough as-is.