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FRIDAY FISH: Sweet Chili Salmon with Black Bean Pasta Salad + Ideas About How to Make it Into a Dinner Party

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No Sweet Chili Thai sauce here, you create these flavors with chili powder and brown sugar.

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Coming up on the 16th anniversary of my blog (May, 2024- YAY!), I know and maybe you know, too, there are mostly original recipes here. I also know there’s nothing new under heaven, so it’s your guess how many of my dishes first existed elsewhere. I often, though not always, don’t want to know if someone else has come up with it before me. I’m happy in la la land, thinking I made it up, imagining I have a little creative bone of some sort in my body–and I do. But this doesn’t stop me from happily cooking or especially baking dishes others have perfected before me. (Why reinvent every wheel?) Both of the recipes featured in today’s FRIDAY FISH are happily-credited adaptations from other fine cook-writers (see recipe headnotes–which is where you should see credit to other cooks and writers or books) and luscious they are together. I wanted a different flavoring for salmon and thought, “Chili.” Author Andie Mitchell had already figured it out and thank you to her! I also knew my May, 2023 Black Bean Pasta Salad would be the perfect companion for a southwestern-flavored fish. When I needed a black bean salad for 50 last spring for my friend Sylvie’s high school graduation, blogger Cookie and Kate had a solid, flavor-full basic idea I only needed to embroider and enlarge. Together, the two recipes are all you want for dinner…and the salad leftovers could be lunch for a couple of days. Double win. Should you, however, want more, I include ideas for appetizers, wine, and dessert for a dinner party or special occasion. (See just below the recipes.)

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The Ever-Changing Salad

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Today, in Colorado Springs, we have a high of 68 degrees F (20 C) with (praise God) rain. It’s by no means the end of summer, but is for sure the harbinger of fall. Our jeans and fleeces never get put away as they do in Chicago or Minneapolis because we never know if we’ll have that bizarre August snow or just the run of the mill welcome and chilly summer evening when we sip a little stronger something out at the fire pit watching the stars. (Remember watching the stars?)

This time of the year, we’re so happy with our Palisades peaches, Rocky Ford cantelope and watermelon, Pueblo or Hatch chiles, jalapeños, home grown tomatoes, fresh herbs, and Olathe sweet corn that sometimes we celebrate our soon-to-end warm weather by making dinner out of just those ingredients. A few additions like salt and pepper, arugula, Sherry vinegar, goat or mozzarella cheese, and maybe a little oil make the meal just what it ought to be. One night there’s a version starring ruby red watermelon and the next day it’s Halloween-orange cantelope instead; sometimes a berry of some sort gets thrown in. I call it, “The Ever-Changing Salad,” not because it must change, but only because by nature, it just does. And we’re so glad of that.

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Colorado Springs Omelet

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Here in Colorado and perhaps even elsewhere in the U.S., there’s no diner breakfast more famous than the Denver Omelet — except maybe biscuits and gravy. You know how the Denver Omelet goes — lots of browned onions, green peppers, diced ham and some ooey-gooey orange cheese. It should be cooked firm and golden brown unlike the pale and buttery French omelets. And while I’m totally fond of a Denver omelet or a French omelet (mushrooms, please), for that matter, I have for quite a while enjoyed a different sort of southwestern egg breakfast here in my kitchen in Colorado Springs. My tender little elegant omelet is whisked with salsa rather than cream or water. It’s cooked slowly and gently in a covered skillet rather than at breakneck speed with constant whisking in an open pan à la française (like the French). Occasionally I turn the burner off toward the end, but leave the covered pan on it for another minute or two to slowly finish cooking my omelet. Good trick to have up your sleeve for any eggs (and some other things, too) you make to avoid an overcooked fry-up.

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FRIDAY FISH: Southwestern Fish Salad

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Caesar Salad travels to Colorado and goes fishing!

Once, in a cooking class, I mentioned I loved “fish salads.” Crickets. Blank faces. “You mean tuna fish?” Well, sure…but not exactly or not totally. Back up. Let’s talk how we’re always hoping to eat healthy. Ok? There’s little healthier than vegetables–right? And second on the list, if you’re not a vegetarian or vegan, might be fish? Sure. When we put those two top-tier food groups together, what do we get? We get over-the-top wholesome, fit, hearty fare. I’ve always adored cooking fish IN vegetables because number 1: it’s so easy to overcook fish (and in a pan of vegetables, it’s harder); number 2: we’re back to the two top-tier food groups; and, number 3: fish is just so tasty cooked in, say, a light tomato-garlic-fennel-sweet pepper sauté.

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Salmon Salad with Broccolini, Kale, and Avocado Mayonnaise

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Last Friday, I taught a class called, DESIGN YOUR OWN WHOLE MEAL SALAD, at First Congregational Church of Colorado Springs.  This active church sponsors an excellent Health Ministry with lots of great wellness-promoting features including cooking classes that run from March – October. (If you’d like a copy of the booklet from the class, leave  a note in the comments or email me/message me on fb.)

The class consisted of a couple of favorite salads, Salmon Caprese with Asparagus… (shown below in a bit neater variation than my very quick to fix and eat photo above… along with lots of tips, talk, and helps about making salads a weekly mainstay in your house)…

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and Israeli Couscous Salad, right below here in all its attendant glory. I do love this salad!  Both of them, if the truth be known.  I’d like to have nickel for every time I’ve made either one, but especially the couscous. Continue reading →