Peas 'n Carrots
by Laura
This week's farm share presented a wondrous
bounty! Lettuce, mixed salad greens, collard greens, beets, carrots,
garlic scapes, and one of my favorite veggies, sugar snap peas. They're
only in season for a little while each summer, and good enough to eat
raw (we sampled a few this way on Thursday, which is farm share pickup
day). I decided to cook them very simply with the carrots and garlic
scapes as a side dish for tonight's dinner.
For the main course, we thawed a convenient salmon fillet from Trader Joe's and Elliot made his favorite mustard glaze for it. Some jasmine rice and a small salad rounded out a tasty and fast dinner -- ready about 40 minutes after we started prep work, and the longest step was waiting for the rice to finish cooking in our rice maker.
Salmon with Mustard Glaze
- 1 large salmon fillet (12-16 oz.)
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 2 Tbsp. good dijon mustard
- 1 Tbsp. fresh grated ginger (or 1 tsp. powdered ginger)
Preheat oven to 350. Combine sugar, mustard, ginger to make a glaze. Place salmon fillet in a foil-lined greased baking dish and cover with glaze. Bake, loosely covered, for 15 minutes. Uncover and bake an additional 5-10 minutes or until fish flakes easily with a fork (don't overcook it!).
Peas n' Carrots ('n Scapes)
- 1 cup sugar snap peas, "strings" pulled out
- 3 small carrots, chopped
- 3 garlic scapes, chopped
- 1 Tbsp. butter
- 1 Tbsp. olive oil
- 1 Tbsp. breadcrumbs
- salt and pepper to taste
Heat butter and oil over medium heat. Add scapes, carrots, peas (in that order), sauteing each for a minute or two before adding next ingredient. Be careful, moisture in the fresh veggies may cause some popping in the fat. Season with salt and pepper When carrots and scapes feel tender but not mushy and peas are still crisp, add breadcrumbs and toss until brown. Serve immediately.
The veggies were definitely my favorite part of the meal. The mild butter sauce allowed their fresh taste to come through, while the toasty flavor of the breadcrumbs added depth and richness, soaking up a bit of butter. I stole the breadcrumbs trick from this recipe at stephencooks.com, a sumptuous food blog in which the recipes are often a bit too decadent or difficult for me.
The salmon glaze is very strongly flavored, so I find myself needing to eat each bite with a little rice to calm it down. If you're not as big of a mustard fan as we are (we love it -- that salad contained raw baby mustard greens!), you could use half dijon, half honey mustard, perhaps. The idea of a sweet glaze with a bit of kick would be preserved.
