Salmon is of course a staple cuisine of the Pacific Northwest and there are literally hundreds of different ways to prepare it, most of them quite tasty. Recently, I decided to cook up some salmon a la ex-con Martha Stewart, who has become my new kitchen Guru at long last for her simple, healthy recipes despite her criminal history.

The recipe called for lemon zest, roasted pine nuts, and raisins to be put into a bowl ad covered with boiling water. To make the lemon zest, either thinly slice one entire lemon or grate one lemon peel. In the photo of this particular recipe, the lemon zest was sliced into slivers. While I was preparing the combination, I substituted the raisins for cranraisins and added in the zest of an orange- both choices proved to be delightful.

As Carrie Bradshaw would say, meanwhile, across the kitchen, I prepared the salmon fillets with salt and pepper and cut them in half. I then roasted them for roughly ten minutes at 450 degrees until they were “opaque throughout”.

The next step called for adding fresh parsley (which was taken out of the herb garden), and olive to the lemon zest mixture after draining the water from the mixture in order to make what Martha and presumably cooks across this great country of ours term as lemon relish.

I then divided some baby spinach carefully onto each plate, topped the spinach with the salmon and then covered the salmon with the lemon relish. I hate to say it, but the results were absolutely great and I received compliments on the meal, which was both healthy and delicious as are many of Martha Stewart’s recipes.

Since I started teaching myself to cook recently, I’ve discovered that it takes patience to learn the timing for cooking the meats to the right temperature, that it’s necessary to read the entire recipe from start to finish before you begin, and that the better quality ingredients you have on hand, the better the food will turn out. While this recipe was much simpler than many recipes out there, it looked and tasted like it would have been more difficult to prepare. It definitely took a little longer than pre-packaged macaroni and cheese, but I think the entire prep time (including zesting the lemon) took about 25 minutes, which isn’t altogether that much more time and if I can cook it, so can anyone else.

Pic from flckr