Question
Jen Sterling
If you had to create ONE no-fuss dish that would satisfy most/all people (allergies, preferences, etc.) w/o skimping on flavor, what would that be?
Answer
So, my one go-to dish is a salmon dish that involves cherry tomatoes, lots of garlic, olive oil, uh, salt, and well, that's it. So season your piece of salmon, get a nice cast iron pan, rip roaring hot. I, I've got a, uh, I've got a nice one that I use, uh, specifically for this dish because I make it so often. It's this nice 14 inch nice hard sto pan. I get rip roaring hot on the stove. I pour in a good glug of olive oil in there. And then I throw in some very, uh, a lot of chopped garlic. I throw in a whole pint, maybe even a little bit more of cherry tomatoes. Then I blister them on the stove top in that oil just until those skins begin to burst just a little bit. And then take a piece of salmon, put it right on top, and I take the whole thing and I put it in my Resy toaster oven. Any of you who have joined me before know that I am a big fan of toaster oven. This is the appliance that I use the most in my house, despite having this gorgeous stove. And I have a sous vide oven back here. And yeah, life is really good. And I use the $110 toaster oven more than anything else. Why? Well, because it heats up very fast. Uh, it's very controlled. It's a small environment, so you're not trying, you, you're not gonna end up with, with a whole lot of heat zones or variation in it. Uh, it's pretty energy efficient because you're only heating up a small space. I can see it. It's just easy. I mean, all in, it's very convenient. Is it the most sexy thing in my kitchen? No. Does it work? Does the food come out great? There you go. So about 10 minutes later, you put it in under the broiler, and about 10 minutes later you've got this crispy salmon from on top. It's perfectly cooked, uh, from the steam and the moisture from below, and sort of protects that moisture within the salmon that olive oil and the tomato juice has. Well, it's gotten all sorts of friendly and sort of reduced down into this nice emulsion that garlic is cooked fully, taking on almost that sort of rustic scent of roasted garlic. And so you have salmon, you have this perfectly cooked piece of fish. You have this perfectly wonderful sauce served in the dish that it was cooked in. It's kind of the fajita effect when you bring it to the table, cuz it just looks awesome and it's sizzling and it's, you know, it's not quite dramatic, but it certainly gets people's attention with their appetite and certainly sets the expectation that delicious has been delivered. So that is my one go-to dish. I serve that alongside some, some rice, whatever. Um, and they have pretty much full meal with the salad on the side. That is my one go-to. I don't know if that hits all of the boxes for all of the people on this, uh, event today. I know it doesn't, uh, for our vegan friends that are joining us, but that sauce certainly does, uh, and is absolutely delicious. Served over a rice paf, a multi-grain, uh, paf, throw in some beans to it, which, uh, the starch of the beans helps to, uh, emulsify the tomato juice and the, um, the olive oil there. So it's a nice sort of rice and beans with a Mediterranean flair to it, if you will throw in some cilantro, some mint, some parsley chopped up. Nice little tuft of that on top, so it acts sort of as a salad and slightly wilts into the dish as you eat it. Yep. That was good eating. It was good Eating all would serve that to anyone.
