Yes, it's hot. No, no, it's not with chili powder. It's warm. Yay! Of course, you can eat it cold. It's a personal preference. Or, if you're me, there's no wrong way to make a salad unless you give yourself food poisoning. So, break boundaries! =D This salad sort of ended up tasting like pasta, even though there's not a single bit of noodle in here. So, on we go!
Ingredients
1 Cut of salmon (1 filet or so)
2 Handfuls of greens (Although three would have been better, now that I think of it)
2 small to medium sized tomatoes
1 Red Onion
1 White Onion
1 Green Onion
1/2 cup of ice tea (from concentrate)
1 Table spoon of black pepper
Butter and/or margarine
1. OK, so first, we cook ourselves the salmon. I didn't do anything fancy because I knew the taste was going to be in the veggies. So I cooked it until it was crisp, using margarine. (Although I used margarine because the butter here is terrible.)
2. Next, once that is on its way, slice roughly the onions and tomatoes. You'll have a lot of veggies, and I used margarine once again, but as I like to say, "Butter is better!" So use what you like to cook the veggies in. There's a lot of juice in this, obviously, so you want to let them cook until some of the juice has steamed off. So leave this for now and go on to step 3.
3. Wash your lettuce. It doesn't like being dirty, and just because IGA puts a gentle spray on the stuff to make it look better doesn't mean that it's clean. If you have a salad spinner, I highly recommend them. The world needs more salad spinners. And less sporks. (Man, those things are terrible.) Also, while the salad looks tepid in this picture, its European market fresh. Now, whether that means that the grocer had been sneezing on it, or whether it's still screaming its hidden vegetable sounds after just being ripped out of some European farmer's garden, we'll never know. That why we wash our salad. End of story.
4. Your Salmon should be ready by now for sure, so take it out and set it aside on a plate. As for the veggies, they should be getting at the point where if you ate a piece of onion out of the pan, you wouldn't gack. Instead, they should taste semi-sweet. Cook until this happens. Mine looked like this:
5. Now, the fun part. (Or the part where you go, "What was Brennan thinking?" Whichever.) Since I am often without any sort of proper ingredients (aka. by time I figure out what I need, it's usually too late to go to the store. I'm slow like that.) I usually find myself adding weird things. So, join me! Join the Revolution! Or, you know, leave this part out. I guess.
Anyways, at this point, add half a cup of ice tea to your veggies in the pan. This will make something that is already naturally sweet a little sweeter, and add semi-glaze to the veggies which doubles as a dressing. That and a refreshing drink on a hot day. No, no, just kidding. But all joking aside, let the vegetables simmer for about 5-7 minutes. This should be enough for the liquid to turn more syrupy than liquid. Keep the burner going until you have the consistency you want. Once you do, turn the heat off and let it sit, so that the liquid gets a little more solid.
6. I added about a spoonful of pepper and stirred it all up once it looked ready. Unless you hate pepper I recommend this step.
7. Now, at this point, you have two choices, you can a) Cool the mixture until it's more salad-esque and then do the final step, or b) just do what I did and said, "Heck, I'm hungry, it smells good, like I'm waiting." So take your salad and salmon, mix it up, and then add the sauce and vegetables mixture. The final product should look like this:
Doesn't it look rockin'? Well, I thought it did. Regardless, it tastes very good. =) You now have a meal that serves one person (a big portion) or a side dish for about five.
Well, today I had a failed trip to the bookstore, and I met a friend there, which made it a little nicer. I have also discovered some Italian biscotti without any chocolate on it in the grocery store, and I am LOVING it. Very good.
7 comments:
Brennan, your really pushing the cooking envelope, and It just so happens that I'm drining Ice Tea right now...scary any way maybe you should publish a cook book.
you seriously put iced tea in that?
:s i am also drinking iced tea but i makes me not want to
OK, ok, hey now, hey now.
First order of business, I ate it and lived. So, that rules out that it wasn't edible.
Secondly, as weird as it sounds, the food was good. So, don't be hatin' what you ain't...uh..ate-in'.
Thirdly, I knowingly mess around in the kitchen. I'm sure you're well aware that I do that sort of thing. And when it doesn't turn out good, don't worry, I wont tell you about it. I'll just clutch my stomach in pain and all that.
Fourthly, there are PLENTY of things today used in recipes which, in my mind, boggle...
...my....mind. Right. Anyways, there are lots of food recipes that call for weird things, AND, I would argue, many of the things weirder than I would do. Aka. Putting chocolate or cocoa in chili. (People says it tastes great, but doesn't it seem strange? Meat dish with candy additive/candy itself normally reserved for cookies?) Or people who put olives on their pizza and think it's a good idea. Or that mexican spicy chocolate chicken dish who's name I can't remember now. So, case in point, there are lots of weird food dishes and spices used.
Fifthly, it's what the food and drink at hand DOES for you in the kitchen. Granted, I would prefer to drink my iced tea rather than use it in a recipe normally, but hey, I'm short on ingredients and money, but it's either that or use something else to make it taste sweeter, which was the effect I was looking for. So, use what you have, and if it works, good, and if it doesn't, well, heck, I probably wont tell you about it. ;) I didn't want to use sugar plain because I didn't want the onions to...well, you know, there's lots of reasons. It's a mystery, really.
There are plenty of things which I have ruined which have tasted terrible. (Ask anyone in my family.) But this doesn't mean that some of the weird things that come out aren't good. They just aren't Betty Crocker Standards. (Heaven forbid. This would crumble the 'Soccer Mom Empire' as we know it.) All of my food recipes I'm posting look strange, which they should, since random is beyond the type of ingredients I normally have on hand, and also because I generally tend to experiment, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing. It just means I'm telling you about what I'm doing, and I thought you may find it humourous or worth reading/thinking about. So look on in envy or horror, but I'm not lying to you when I say it fits the bill of a meal. It does. Try it. ;)
Well Brennan, I'm on your side. While I don't have the adventurous spirit to improvise in the kitchen (come to think of it...I don't have an adventurous spirit AT ALL!) I have a great respect for those who do and can (at least occasionally) pull it off. So..."salmon a la iced tea" away as long as you don't blow anything/anyone up!
YAY! Graham! I haven't heard from you in forever! I miss you! Not to mention I have someone on MY SIDE now! YEAH! What about that! YEAH!
OK, I've been eating too much sugar this afternoon. I need to go do something constructive.
Hey i'm a coccoa in chili person...thye Myans did it so can i...now keeping taht in mind cocoa has not untill recently been a thing for sweets it is often a savory in it's countries of origin...iced tea powder...i hate to say...dose not has such a history;)
Oh PUHLEEZE.
Like I would use ice tea powder. I used from concentrate. (If you'll notice in the recipe.)
More to the point, I disagree that historical sinifigance of chocolate has anything to do with whether or not it's a good idea to put in chili. If it works, it's a good idea. Whether or not historically is was used as whatever, well, heck, the Myans aren't coming to my kitchen any time soon, so I better make what I like. ;)
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