I learned how to do cedar planking in class the other day so I figured I would give it a shot at home. I talked to my Chef and asked him all the tips and things I should expect and I was off! This is version 1.0 of this and I will be doing this another time before I make this in Ohio for a catering gig during Thanksgiving (yup, it’s a big one).

I don’t make it out to home improvement stores very often so I headed over to one of the big box style lumber yards or whatever the hell they’re called and bought some pieces of cedar. They looked at me a little funny when I asked them to cut the pieces of wood to about 8 inches because they were untreated fence posts.  The person who was cutting the wood asked me what it was for and I said it was for cooking…..another strange look. Anyway, I get the last laugh!!!!

Ingredients:

• Untreated cedar planks…..soaked in water for a while (don’t ask how long, I’m still working on that)……then rubbed with a little oil before cooking
• Sockeye salmon
• Rub for salmon….smoked paprika, oregano, salt, pepper, cumin
• Mini-Dutch potatoes
• Parsley Salt
• White Wine
• Water
• Black Pepper
• Persimmon
• Mushrooms, minced
• Parsley, minced
• White wine vinegar
• Shallots, minced
• Clarified butter

Procedure:

Salmon

1. Rub salmon with spices…..rub it…..yeah
2. Heat oven to 300F
3. Place salmon on planks after you have rubbed planks with olive oil
4. Cook until done
5. Baste with a little clarified butter for that nice shiny appearance

Potatoes

1. Place potatoes in a shallow roasting pan with 50% water and 50% wine…….This is where most of you will tell me I’m out of mine mind…..this is where I’ll tell you, “try it”.
2. Place potatoes in oven at 300F
3. Cook potatoes until they are tender….this one takes a while….so use the smaller potatoes as shown
4. Finish with parsley salt

Persimmon

1. Slice tops of persimmon and scoop out seeds
2. In a small pan place shallots, clarified butter, and white wine vinegar on medium heat
3. Deglaze with white wine
4. Add minced parsley, salt, and pepper
5. Remove from heat once liquid is almost gone and place in a small bowl lined with paper towels
6. Stuff persimmon with mushroom mixture
7. Place on baking sheet and cook until done……..you can blanch and remove the skin (it’s what I will do next time)

Enjoy,

Eric

I was excited to find that my local market has started stocking Full Circle all natural, wild caught, US fish in its freezer section.  I live on the Gulf Coast and can get fresh Gulf seafood but these are not indigenous fishcicles.  So I have decided to share this culinary voyage with you.  I won’t be providing recipes per se but instructions on how I fixed each Fish Dish.

Fish Dish: cedar planked salmon with maple-bourbon glaze, steamed veggies over brown rice.

Cooking on a cedar plank is an ancient Native American technique that transcends well to the modern world.  You can place the plank on an open fire, gas grill or as I did in a 350 oven.  Soaking the plank in water for a while is required; follow the directions on the plank you buy.

The glaze was insanely easy.  I stirred a tablespoon of Maker’s Mark Bourbon into two tablespoons Grade A maple syrup (not pancake syrup, the real stuff).  I seasoned the salmon with salt and pepper and placed it onto the plank and the plank into the oven for 1o minutes.  I then brushed the glaze on the salmon and back into the oven for 5 more minutes.  I simply steamed the veggies and pre-cooked brown rice until hot (the microwave does this well) and seasoned them with salt and pepper.  I poured the leftover glaze over everything.  The maple-bourbon glaze is addictive.

Yesterday was our friend Adam’s birthday, which required a pirate theme and a parrot named Eli that we affixed to the birthday boy’s chair. My sister stopped by Vine American party store, and managed to find some chocolate gold coins, jolly rogers and assorted pirate accouterments for the dinner table.

The menu continued the theme with Walk the Plank-Roasted Salmon, which we roasted in the oven on a cedar plank. The cedar imparts a smoky sweetness to the fish, and is heavenly with a honey-mustard-rosemary glaze. Happy Birthday, Matey!

The other night I made another finance-efficient dinner that tasted outstanding; Cedar Plank Grilled Salmon with Soba Noodles, Roasted Orange Pepper, Pea Pods, and Shitake-Green Onion Salsa. Simple, well-balanced, healthy, organic, and delish!

I got the salmon at Isaacson & Stein Fish Company. It was wild caught at $9.95 per pound. Between my wife and I we only needed 3/4 of a pound, so the fish cost $6 even for both of us. I’ll take fresh wild caught over farmed any day of the week! Grilling it on a Cedar Plank, cost of $1.00, really adds a nice smoky wood flavor to salmon. The beauty of cedar plank grilling is that because the wood needs to be soaked in water for a couple of hours prior to grilling, the fish gets steamed while it’s grilled keeping it nice and moist.

The pepper cost me 37 cents at Stanley’s. Roasting peppers let’s the sugars come out resulting in a sweeter, softer pepper flavor. Since I roasted it on my grill I also got a bit of smokiness to it as well. While at Stanley’s I also got 4 bunches of green onions for $1.00. I only used a half bunch for this dish. The pea pods were also from Stanley’s and cost me 57 cents. You can buy soba noodles from almost any grocery store and shouldn’t cost more than a couple of bucks for 3 servings.

Shitakes can be expensive when purchased fresh, up to $5-6 a container. I do sometimes use fresh shitakes, but for this dish I used some dried ones we had in our pantry that cost $1.o0 for dozen. I only used 4, soaking them in hot water for a couple of hours. Save the water afterwords. It absorbs some of the shitake flavor and makes a great stock for later use.

When you add it all up the entire dish for 2 people only cost $10.34, or $5.17 per person. OK, I also added some Thai Basil to the Salmon when grilling, but I got that from my back porch garden. I also probably used a few pennies worth of Extra Virgin Olive Oil, salt, and pepper. Still, it’s less than five and a half bucks per person. What restaurant can give you a dish of this quality for that price? NONE! Cook at home, cook fresh, cook organic!

I had a nice Easter weekend.  Got a lot of work done on portraits, various freelance projects, and business “housekeeping.”  Tons of cooking, spent time with family, hiked, cleaned, laundry, shopped, yogaed, wrote…

Friday I worked on finishing up last weekend’s senior shoot.

Todd with motorcycle

Todd in studio

Moving on…I did a TON of cleaning and cooking on Friday.  Vacuumed, dusted, organized, sanitized.  Managed to make these lovely and healthy Chocolate Sour Cream Cupcakes for Nathan.  I changed the recipe a bit, using Stevia in place of sugars and fat free sour cream, as it was all I had on hand.  He loved the dark chocolate taste.  For dinner I made him Ham and Veggie Stromboli, and I had yummy Turkey Chorizo with a corn tortilla, steamed broccoli, and salad. 

Chocolate Sour Cream Cupcake

Saturday morning was a lifting session at the Y.  Kinda tough, I was tired (as usual) but perked up a little thanks to Lipton’s Green Tea To Go Energize.  After that was errands…stopped at Target for some miscellany and ran into a friend who said my husband had just been there, and he was buying me stuff.  Sweet!  Menards was after Target, where I actually found Nathan!  We walked around for awhile and I got some garden stuff.  Watch for upcomming blog posts about my vegetable planting adventures… 

Saturday afternoon I finished more busywork and some client emails and projects.  Later we went to my sister’s new house and spent some time with sister Eva, nephew Mason, BIL Adam, and my dad who was helping install the new washer/dryer.

Mason's Easter present...bath soap playdough!

Dr. Mason putting on my bandaid

Finding treasures underneath the old sink...

Where's the love?

Saturday ended with Pepperoni, Zucchini, and Cheese Strata for Nathan, and Fiber Gourmet Fettuccine with fresh mushrooms, Amy’s Organic Pasta Sauce, Boca Crumbles, and lotsa garlic and extra tomatoes for me.  Steamed squash and green salad.  After dinner I made some muffins for the week.  Still perfecting the recipe, but they are SUPER healthy.  (I am fusing these two recipes:  Fruited Brown Rice Muffins and Pumpkin Wild Rice Muffins.)

Later was a batch of my new favorite oats!  65g oats mix (oat bran, Irish oats, steel cut oats, rolled oats), 1 1/2 cup water, 55g frozen cranberries, 170g canned sugar-free apple pie filling, dashes of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, Stevia, vanilla extract, maple extract.  Mini crock pot for 3 hours.  YES.

Sunday…morning started tough.  I did not feel good but took the day in slowly after crying about it for a bit.  I came downstairs to my awesome Easter basket, containing my favorites.  Mighty Maple PB and the cute mascot, a new pair of Toe Sox, Post-It notes, and an awesome smelling soy candle.  Nathan’s basket contained candy, tums for after the candy, and cedar planks for the grill.

Clare's Easter basket

Nathan's Easter basket

Baby buds

The back side of Barn's Bluff, Mississippi River

Nathan and I

We made it to the top, only to find a wildfire!

Charred.

On the South Trail, Nathan and Bandit

South Trail, northwest view

Cedar Plank Salmon

Grilled baby zucchini foil packet

Chive Roasted Red Potatoes

Sunday ended with yoga by my new soy candlelight.  Eoin Finn’s Power Yoga for Happiness.

Easter Yoga

 Ugh, Monday came way too fast…I wanted to do so much more this weekend!  Since I bought the wrong zipper for my bolster project, I couldn’t tackle that…not like I had the time anyways. 

What did ya’ll do for Easter weekend?  

When you have a big bag of apples, you have to come up with good recipes for them and this is a combination of elements of some of my favorites.  Truth-be-told, the Artic Char I used today is a nice substitute over salmon, but I couldn’t find the fresh wild caught I wanted and this was fresh so that’s what I got.  Farm raised always works too…  I’ll bet you are wondering what the secret seasoning is, well, it’s a varriation of so many of the other ones you’ll see in these apple recipes so feel free to browse and experiment.

2-3 apples
1 plank of cedar or apple wood soaked in water
1-2 fliets of salmon
french cut (longwise) stringbeans
seasoning
small onion
garlic clove
sliced almonds
rosemary
oil
apple cider
molassas
cast iron skillet
sauce pan
baking plank

preheat oven to 350
slice 1-2 apples
place sliced apples on the plank and lightly dust with seasoning
rub fleshside of salmon with seasoning and place on the apples on the plank, place a layer of apples over the top of the fish
place pank in oven with good ventilation and allow to bake for 10 to 15 minutes
julienne the onion and garlic, reserve about 1/8
julienne the remaining apples
sear the sliced apples, onion and garlic lightly in oil in skillet
add almonds, rosemary and a small amount of oil and allow to contiue to brown
reduce heat and add the stringbeans
finely dice the remaining the onion and garlic
cover and allow the stringbeans to cook over very low heat with the apples and nuts
check the fish, if close to flaking drizzle a very light coating of the molassas and continue to cook for another 5 minutes or until done
drizzle the stringbeans with a slight bit of the molassas
remove the fish on the planks, remove the top apples and place in a sauce pan
plate the fish, remove the bottom apples and place in sauce pan
begin to reduce the apples in the sauce pan
add some molassas, any additional diced onion and garlic
cook over high heat and reseason as necessary
plate the string beans
drizzle the apple / onion mixture from sauce pan over the fish
serve with fresh rosemary

Perhaps you saw the Cedar Plank Grilled Salmon with Orange-Muscat Beurre Blanc recipe I posted last week.  Man, that was good eating.  “Wow, Scott!” I said to myself.  “How can you possibly make this dish any better?”  I think I’ve found a solution: a delicate halo of piped blue cheese mashed potatoes, gently caressing the salmon fillet as it develops just the slightest smoky crust. 

The potato recipe is quite simple.  Bake (or microwave) whole russet potatoes, about 1 potato for every 2 servings.  When they are fork tender, run them through your potato ricer.  This step is optional, but it’s the only way to guarantee lightness and fluffiness.  Mix in some butter, heavy cream, salt, white pepper and blue cheese.  Then, load the whole mixture into a pastry bag with an extra-large tip and pipe the potatoes around the salmon, directly on individual cedar planks.  Grill until the salmon is done, then serve directly on the planks.  Your guests will love it!

After grilling fresh Coho salmon fillets over cedar planks, its hard to enjoy salmon prepared any other way.  My building’s facilities manager, Bruce, generously shared his catch from a recent trip to Alaska.  This recipe combines the rustic, smoky flavor of the cedar planks with the subtle, sweet butteryness of the beurre blanc.  Its a great combo, as I hope you will soon discover.

Total kitchen time: 1 hr
Makes: 4 1lb fillets

Shopping list:

• 4 1lb. salmon fillets (with skin is fine, without is fine also)
• 2 large (or 4 small) cedar planks for grilling
• 2 tsp. fennel seeds, lightly crushed
• olive oil, kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 shallot, finely diced
• 2 tbsp. orange-muscat vinegar (honestly, any white wine vinegar will work, this one just adds a little flavor and a lot of adjectives.  Available at Trader Joe’s.)
• 1 stick unsalted butter, cut into teaspoons
• fine sea salt and freshly ground white pepper, to taste

1. Soak the cedar planks, completely submerged, in cold water for at least 1 hour.  Preheat your grill over medium-high heat before grilling.
2. For the beurre blanc, heat a small saucepan over medium heat.  Add the diced shallot and about 1 tsp. of olive oil and cook until the shallot smells great, about 3 minutes.  If it looks like the shallot is starting to brown, reduce the heat.
3. Add the white wine vinegar (in this case, orange muscat vinegar) and stir to deglaze the pan.  Continue to cook until the vinegar has reduced by half, about 5 minutes.
4. Remove the pan from the heat and 2 teaspoons of butter.  Continually whisk the butter until it is completely melted.  If the butter starts to foam, place the bottom of the pan on a cold surface (like a stone countertop) to cool it.  Add the remaining butter, 2 teaspoons at a time, whisking continually.  If the butter refuses to melt, hold the pan over very low heat for a few seconds and then remove. 
5. Once all the butter is incorporated, taste the sauce and adjust with a fine-grain salt and freshly ground white pepper.  You can use black pepper if you want, but white pepper will make the sauce look prettier.
6. Prepare the salmon fillets by patting them dry and coating with salt, pepper and fennel seeds on the flesh side.  Rub the fillets on all sides with olive oil. 
   
7. Make sure your grill has been preheated over medium-high heat.  Arrange the cedar planks on your grill and place the fillets, skin side down (if they have skin) on the cedar planks.  Close the lid and grill for 15-20 minutes, or until the fish is fully cooked.  The planks will give off a lot of smoke which adds to the excellent flavor.  However, if your planks should catch fire, simply spray them with a small amount of water (I recommend San Pellegrino ) until the flames dissipate. 
8. When the salmon is cooked to your preferred doneness (let’s face it, either it’s undercooked, done, or overcooked), use a long spatula or a chef’s knife to remove them from the planks.  Top with a spoonfull of the beurre blanc and serve!

Look for more cedar plank recipes this summer.  I’m now a big fan of this cooking method and it deserves some further exploration.  Do you have any favorite wood cooking recipes?  Leave ‘em in the comments below.