What’s Cooking?

I know, most of you are probably dealing with turkey leftovers. But here are a few recipes I tried recently that were definitely keepers.

Since The Pontiff doesn’t eat meat or poultry, our Thanksgiving dinner was salmon. This year I tried a new recipe. I was thinking about maybe cooking it in some puff pastry, but of course, the trick is to get both the pastry and the fish properly cooked. I solved the problem by trying this recipe for Salmon with Puff Pastry and Pesto. Instead of cooking the fish inside the puff pastry, you cook them separately and just serve it with the salmon laid on top of the puff pastry. It was very simple (I used frozen puff pastry), and very delicious.

Something else I tried recently was another sauce for the butternut squash ravioli I bought at Costco (the second half of the package). I asked the Pontiff if I should use the same sauce as last time (butter-sage-walnuts), and he said “That was pretty rich”. Does that mean “no”? Well, not exactly, because he said it was really good. I asked if I should just make it without the walnuts, and got another somewhat noncommital answer. I asked if a light cream sauce would be better? This got a much better response, so I did some Internet searching. When I found this recipe for Butternut Squash Ravioli with Whiskey Sage Cream Sauce, I knew I’d found a winner. I just followed the instructions for the sauce, since I already had the ravioli. I didn’t have any shallots on hand, so I just used onion, but only a couple of tablespoons. When the whiskey hit the butter in the saucepan and I got a whiff of the aroma, I thought I’d swoon in ecstacy. Somebody should bottle that scent. I topped it with some freshly grated Parmesan. Yum.

Another recipe I tried was the Meyer Lemon and Fresh Cranberry Scones I found on Smitten Kitchen recently (adapted from Epicurious). I used fresh cranberries, of course, and they were really good. But like the recipe says, they’re better fresh. I only baked a few, and put most of the unbaked ones into the freezer for later.

It’s been a good food week.