Chapter Six: Let’s eat more dinner with Renaer!

Just as time, care, and stamina are required to consume the feast served at Renaer’s home by Gerta Salibuck, a sustained effort is needed to prepare it. Grumpy to be denied my preferred, soothingly-long stretches of kitchentime lately (real life and responsibilities insist on intruding!), I adapt. And divide the feast into more manageable chunks. Here is the main course. My non-Waterdhavian version of it anyway. Please enjoy!

Roast Spicy Salmon

Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

680g/1.5 lb salmon fillet, pin bones removed, scaled, skin on (or off, if you do not like the fishy and slightly gelatinous delight that is cooked salmon skin. I will try to understand – I usually eat my share and the pieces discarded by my family too. So I am used to this not being a universally acknowledged pleasure)

3 large garlic cloves, minced

15ml/1tbsp gochujang (or, if you like less heat, substitute miso paste)

15ml/1tbsp fish sauce

30ml/2tbsp olive oil

15ml/1tbsp sweet chili sauce

Method:

1. Pat salmon dry and place, skin down, in a large roasting dish or casserole pan (22x30cm/9×13 inch).
2. Mix all of the other ingredients together in a small bowl until well combined. Slather this mixture all over and around and under your salmon slab. Marinate in the fridge for 1-2 hours.
3. When ready to cook, center a rack in the oven and pre-heat the oven to 425F/220C.
4. Place the pan with salmon and marinade in the oven, uncovered, and roast for 10-15 minutes. I start taking the fish’s temperature after 10 minutes. In my once-again-ailing oven, it took 20 minutes to come to 125F/52C. And then I gave it another couple of minutes under the broiler. Per USDA recommendations, salmon should be cooked to an interior temperature of 145F/63C. Per Kenji López-Alt, salmon is most tender and flaky at 125F/52C. I will leave you to make your own doneness decisions.
5. Rest the fish for 10 minutes. Sprinkle with chopped chives and serve.

Notes: As with any roast salmon recipe, this is delicious eaten cold the next day. On salads, on top of rice, on a sandwich, or just on its own.

Lentils with roasted vegetables and blue cheese

This is from a recipe in Yotam Ottolenghi’s cookbook Plenty (Castelluccio lentils with tomatoes and Gorgonzola). I cannot think of a single dish from this cookbook that I made and did not love. I am sure that this lentil recipe too is perfection as written. If you can source all of the ingredients called for. Technically, I have never made it exactly as in the book because I have never been able to buy Castelluccio lentils. But I think that the dish is still lovely and worth making. Just with a few tweaks as needed. Such as using the mystery lentils that I found in an unlabeled (but pretty!) glass jar in my pantry. I think that they were Puy because they did not disintegrate into a sludgy mass in the pot. But I really cannot be sure…

Also, I was low on tomatoes. My family devoured half of my supply before I got going on cooking this dish. But I did have half each of a red and an orange pepper. So I bulked up my meager tomato stock with these, turning this into a multi-vegetable salad. 

Finally, I had a Danish blue cheese in the fridge. Previously obtained for crumbling over a green salad. The more creamy Gorgonzola (especially if you can get Gorgonzola Dolce with its sweet, unctuously melty qualities) would make this dish more special. 

Ingredients:

Handful of cherry tomatoes or 3-5 plum tomatoes

1/2 sweet orange pepper

1/2 sweet red pepper

8 thyme sprigs

15ml/1tbsp olive oil

30ml/2tbsp balsamic vinegar

Salt

1 small red onion, or 1/2 large red onion in my case, thinly sliced

15ml/1tbsp red wine vinegar

5g/1tsp sea salt

265g/1 1/3 cup Puy lentils

45ml/3tbsp olive oil

1 large clove garlic, crushed

Black pepper to taste

1 small bunch/3tbsp chopped parsley

1 small bunch/3tbsp chopped chives

1 small bunch/3tbsp chopped dill

85g/30z gorgonzola dolce or other blue cheese, crumbled

Method:

1. Make the oven-dried vegetables. Preheat the oven to 275F/135C. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Quarter the tomatoes and place on the baking sheet, skin side down. Chop the peppers into 1cm/1/2 inch cubes and add to the pan. Place the thyme sprigs over the vegetables, drizzle the pan with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and season to taste with salt. Roast for 1.5 hours until slightly shriveled and dry. Discard the thyme sprigs.
2. Place the sliced red onion in a non-reactive bowl. Add the red wine vinegar and sea salt. Mix well and allow to marinate to tame the onion’s sharpness and soften its texture.
3. Bring a medium pot of water to a rolling boil. Add the lentils. There should be enough water to cover the lentils by 3cm/1.25 inch. Cook for 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally. When the lentils are tender but not mushy, drain in a sieve and place the cooked grain in a large bowl.
4. While the lentils are still warm, mix in sliced onion, olive oil, garlic, and black pepper. Leave to cool. Once cool, stir in chopped herbs. Adjust seasoning as needed (I did not add any more salt or pepper, but I did give it another splash each of olive oil and red wine vinegar).
5. To serve, pile up the lentils on a large platter or bowl, layering in the blue cheese and roasted vegetables gently as you go. Leave enough crumbles of cheese and colorful morsels of vegetables to strew attractively over the top. Drizzle with the cooking juices from the roast vegetables if you have any. Otherwise, drizzle with olive oil. Serve slightly warm, room temperature, or cold.

Notes: Left over lentil salad keeps very well in the fridge for 3-5 days.