Miso-Glazed Salmon

I am one of the umami lovers out there…the fifth flavor that includes sweet, salty, bitter, and sour. All you have to do is mention a California Roll and I can taste it…and then want to have it haha. Dorie tells us the word is sometimes translated from Japanese as “delicious” and a taste that keeps you coming back for more..I would agree!

I knew my family would love this as we love the umami flavor and salmon. I didn’t have the miso paste so I went to our local Japanese store and found it.

The marinade is made up of the miso paste, honey, lemon, juice, and soy sauce. I let my salmon marinate for about 3 hours before cooking. It turned out so moist and delicious. I was expecting the flavor to be bold, but I would say it was more of a background favor to the salmon. I served it with baby greens and the salad dressing from our last recipe! 😃

Cream Cheese and Toast Tartlets

I was rushing to get this one in before we head out for some traveling. It was 90 degrees here…hello fall 😳. In a few days I will really get to experience fall with weather in the 40’s…I am not sure my California self will be able to handle that haha. We Californians don’t have a lot of clothes for that cold of weather. It is never that cold here unless you are in the mountains.

Anyway, not really a baking day here but at least most of this did not require much heat…only the crust which we have made many times…and somehow I still forgot to turn down the temperature this time. Got a little brown but I am not thinking anyone will mind.

The filling is a cream cheese, heavy cream, gelatin, cinnamon and sugar concoction. It is then topped off with the “toast” part of the recipe. Odd I thought but after creating it…seems ingenious.

The crunch portion is made by sautéing very small cubes of bread in butter and then caramelized with sugar. The mixture is then tossed with some cocoa and cinnamon to create these little nuggets of chocolate crunch. I was confused with Dorie’s instructions to finely chop the cubes into pumpkin seed size…my cubes were already very small so I kept them as is. Not sure if they should have been more like a crumb texture. I shall see when I read other posts.

This dessert was an utter surprise to all of us. It appears quite unassuming, but packs a punch. Everyone loved this…including me and I don’t really enjoy this kind of dessert…I know, weird but true 😂. No one could figure out what the topping was…nuts, cereal??…didn’t even come close to thinking toast. We all really enjoyed the cinnamon and cocoa flavors…they were subtle but there…and really such a delight.

This is a recipe I would make again and probably in a large tart form so I could bring it to a gathering. It was a winner and a keeper!

Chicken and Salad Milanese Style

I thought I was being so smart…

In our intro Dorie tells us, in culinary terms “Milanese” refers to the chicken being breaded and sautéed…and the key is in the chicken being pounded as thin as possible. Since pounding chicken is not something I regularly do, I thought to ask the butcher at our local store if he could do it for me. He said, of course! Wow…how easy would that make things right?!! He told me it would take a few minutes so to continue on doing my shopping. I could literally hear him pounding the chicken and I was so proud of myself for thinking of this..I mean I was already thinking what else I could make! I finished my shopping, picked up my chicken and brought it home for dinner that night.

Unfortunately, all that pounding I heard was not so effective 😩. I went to bread my chicken and found out it wasn’t quite as thin as Dorie suggested and I didn’t have time to remedy the situation. Ugh. So my chicken is thicker than I would have liked, cooked darker than I would have liked, and cut into pieces to make sure it was cooked though. Lesson learned…I will do my own pounding from now on 😂😂

Other than my chicken being too thick it was easy to make.

The salad was an interesting mix of veggies…celery with leaves, English cucumber, bell pepper, basil, and baby greens.

The dressing, simple: olive oil, lemon juice, balsamic, salt and pepper….reminded us all of dressing we had while in Spain and Italy! I couldn’t find white balsamic so I used the regular.

We all enjoyed this meal…commenting on the kick the basil gave the salad and how much we liked this simple dressing..the lemon really made everything taste so fresh. This was a great summer meal and another winner.

Petite Apple Croustades

So the words out of my husbands mouth were “Award Winning“…I was like, whaat?…and then I said, I am going to quote you on that haha.

He said this recipe was so gourmet and could be on any dessert menu, so good job to Dorie!

These are mini “purse” pastry’s made from phyllo dough and an apple caramel mixture baked inside. They may be “award winning” but I was actually thinking they were quite tedious in the making. I added an extra Apple to the mix and still only got 3 out of the recipe…and frankly by the third I was thinking, good thing I only had 3.

The issue that was so time consuming was the butter and sugar on each strip and then placing it in the muffin tin. Each one took 6 strips..so just making the 3, I buttered/sugared and placed 18 strips of phyllo…which isn’t the easiest to work with..it is quite delicate and tears very easily.

It wasn’t so bad making the few that I did, but I was thinking I couldn’t imagine making these for a dinner party…although they would be amazing! Maybe I would streamline the strips and make them wider so you need less of them in each tin 👍

All in all…a winner!