Salmon Florentine from Ellie

I came home from my last class of the week and decided to pick out a few recipes to make this weekend. I had been flipping through one of the many cookbooks Mom got me for Christmas, So Easy from Ellie Krieger (if you don't know who she is, she's great. She a nutritionist who comes up with DELICIOUS, but healthy recipes) and saw a picture of some seriously tasty looking salmon. My brother bought salmon the last time he went grocery shopping and hadn't used it yet. (He does that- buys various meats and leaves them in the fridge for a long time) So I thought I'd take care of that.

I went through the recipe quickly, wrote down what ingredients I needed to buy and did the same for the other few recipes I was going to make. I thought this recipe would be a breeze- it seemed simple. And surely it would have been if I had a grasp on the concept that things sometimes take longer than the recipe says. And if I hadn't forgotten to buy shallots. But Mom said I can substitute with onion and a little bit of garlic. She's a life-saver. Moral of the story: read through your ingredient list carefully.

Here is the general concept of this recipe...

Heat olive oil in a skillet. Add shallots until they soften. Add garlic. Add defrosted frozen spinach, chopped sun-dried tomato, red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper. Let cool. Stir in part-skim ricotta cheese. Put the mixture on top of the salmon fillet. Cook in the oven. Eat.

After the called-for 15 minutes in the oven, plus a handful more, I scooped all the spinach topping off the salmon and onto the side because the middle of the fish just didn't seem to be cooking. After I did that, though, it still took a while for the salmon to cook. I even bumped the temperature up a little bit. In the end, though, it took about 30 minutes for the salmon to cook, but it was quite delicious. Definitely worth trying again. I'd also throw in more ricotta and sun-dried tomatoes. Moral of the story: it's okay if something takes longer to cook than the recipe calls for.

Salmon Florentine

Recipe... (and nutritional info)

I was planning to serve this with another of Ellie's recipes- Parmesan fries. They looked and sounded so great, so I put the ingredients on my shopping list. But when I got home and got cooking, I realized that logistically it was just not going to work. I had after-dinner plans and the fries were going to take too long and needed a higher temperature than the fish, so I opted for Mom's roasted asparagus recipe instead. Convenient, because she gave me a bunch of asparagus out of the blue and it needed to be used. Moral of the story: read through your recipe carefully before you start, not just the ingredients.

Another little trick I learned from Mom: cut or snap off the ends of the asparagus that you can't use anyhow. It's typically sold by the pound, so then you're paying for something you can't use. Silly. Mom may not know this, but I apply these tricks to other things in my life... like ginger. I just lopped off the amount I needed because what's the sense in buying the whole thing?

Mom's Roasted Asparagus

Recipe...

Preheat oven to 400℉. Snap off the end of one asparagus where it naturally breaks. Line up the tips of all your asparagus on a cutting board and chop the ends off with a knife. Arrange asparagus in a single layer on a cookie sheet. Spray with vegetable spray. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake 8-12 minutes (depending on the size of your asparagus).

Meanwhile, melt 2 Tbsp. butter in a saucepan, about 3 minutes, until just starting to brown. Take off the heat and add 2 tsp. low sodium soy sauce an d1 tsp. balsamic vinegar. Drizzle over asparagus and enjoy!