Fish Dish: Baked Salmon
There are a few dinners that are just better with wine. The dishes almost beg for a pairing, and the sipping helps savor the dish. Pizza and a nice medium-bodied red wine - our go-to is Zinfandel. Tacos and Pinot Noir. Fish baked or grilled with a well balanced (fruit and acid) white wine. Maybe it’s the acidity that helps cut the fat in the food, the combination embodies mouth-wateringly savory. Maybe it’s because we’re in wine country and it just makes sense. Maybe it makes the evening feel more celebratory and less like a Tuesday.
Either way, we enjoyed a nice piece of salmon, flavored with cilantro (substituted for the dill in the following recipe) from our garden, lemon, garlic and butter. And served it with roasted red potatoes, and fresh green beans with a little butter, salt and lemon. Back-deck kinda eating. It was good. And so, we share the following recipe inspiration for baked salmon and say a socially-distant cheers!
We used this recipe from Tastes Better From Scratch. She offers lots of good tips, and three flavor options. We went with the Lemon & Dill and substituted cilantro for dill.
Kale Chips
From our home garden to the table - kale chips. With recipe.
When we started this business, Francisco was adamant about the logo. It had to be green. We are wine growers and plants that are healthy and strong are green. Green is our color.
The greenery is also calming, re-assuring, and exciting. This year we’ve been able to extend that to our home garden. Our latest green harvest - kale. Now, if you’d told me a few months ago that I’d be writing my first food post on the new blog (in a previous life I was food blogger) on kale, I would’ve laughed. I’m not kale’s biggest fan. I get it, kale is a super food. It’s also a chore to eat raw.
And then we had fresh kale greens in the garden. We had kale seeds on-hand this winter, and Francisco sewed some along with the other greens, first planted indoors in March and then transplanted outdoors in April. We didn’t know how good we had it, and let these leaves get pretty large before our first harvest. Their wavy, green leaves have been lovely in the garden and we let them hang on longer than needed before we finally harvested.
Harvest we did. Before being turned into something wonderfully delicious:
Toasted and transformed - the leaves made a delicious, fought-over, pre-dinner snack. Below is the recipe. Enjoy and cheers!
Toasted Kale Chips
Ingredients
Bunch of kale
Olive oil
Kosher salt
Directions
Preheat your oven to 350 deg. Line a cookie sheet (or two depending on how much kale you have) with parchment paper.
With a knife, cut away the greens from the thick stems. Then roughly slice them into 2 inch pieces. And place them in a large bowl (with room for tossing).
Drizzle the kale with olive oil. Do this with a light hand as a little goes a long way. Use about 1 tablespoon of oil if you have enough kale to spread out evenly in one layer on a cookie sheet. Sprinkle liberally with salt.
Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes, until the leaves are crisp to the touch. Toss in a bowl and don’t forget to taste some before sharing with others (they’ll be gone by the time the bowl comes back around to you).
From Our Table to Yours
Note - this post was originally published 04.12.2015
I love nights when culinary inspiration strikes our kitchen and my mood lends itself to a great pairing. Tonight's wine: Rudd Mt. Veeder Sauvignon Blanc 2012. If you ever have an opportunity to enjoy this wine, take it. It is spectacular and not your every-day Sauvignon Blanc. The pairing: Salvadorean Pupusas with Pickled Cabbage. Yum.
This takes a little time, but is well worth the effort for this little satisfying meal. So pop the cork, pour yourself a glass, and make the beans ahead of time. We prefer pinto beans. Rinse the beans, and boil them for a couple hours until tender. Don't forget to add a little salt. (Can be done the day before and stored in the refridgerator)
Tonight I started with the Pickled Cabbage Salad. I used 1/4 the ingredients for our dinner for two, and this recipe from Smitten Kitchen.
Pupusas - I used a reduced version of this recipe: Fried the beans, made a mixture of corn meal and water, and lightly fried the pupusas in canola oil. No cheese, no onion, no masa. Delicious.
Salut!
Rain Drops
Note - this post was originally published 1/30/2014.
It rained. .. a little. January is usually the wettest month of the year. This year we are in a governor-declared drought emergency.
In the image above, Napa and Sonoma Counties (North Bay) are in extreme drought. There’s only one more drought level higher. But it rained, just enough to get the roads wet and slippery and hang the mountains and valleys in the clouds.
My husband was out taping vines despite the consistent rain drops. We tape the new vines to the trellis (the tape is green in the photos below) to train the vines to grow straight and encourage more fruit production. We also tape older vines to the wires of the trellis to support them, so when they bear fruit the vines can hold up their own weight.
I had the opportunity to take a trip up Spring Mountain, which straddles Sonoma and Napa counties as part of the Mayacama range. I brought my camera, hoping I might get up above the clouds far enough to take a nice photo for you, but no luck. I could barely see where my car was parked. As I came back down the mountain, I did see seven deer and three turkeys. Only a little water and life is slowly returning.
The cool cloudy weather inspired warm comforting soup for dinner:
“Broccoli and Potato Soup
1 Tbs unsalted butter
2 Tbs olive oil
½ white onion, chopped
1 large clove of garlic, minced
1 large carrot, peeled and sliced into coins
1 bay leaf
3 Russet potatoes, peeled, washed, and chopped
2 cups broccoli florets
4 cups vegetable broth (I used boiling water and added two boullion cubes to the soup)
Over medium-high heat, melt the butter and oil together in a large pot. Add onions, garlic, and carrot. Stir to mix with oil, but then allow to cook 4 minutes over medium heat – want the onions to start to become translucent, not burn. Add bay leaf, potatoes, broccoli, and broth. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat and simmer covered for 15 minutes. That’s it!
Adapated from this recipe I found online.”