October 6, 2014 New Recipe: Salmon filet on Spaghetti with a Fresh Tomato sauce with steamed asparagus

As summer matures the flavors of produce, I have noticed that we have begun cooking simpler meals and enjoying them as much or more than dinners with complex dishes.

Yesterday Suzette gathered some of yellow and red tomatoes from our garden and some of the colorful heirloom tomatoes we bought at the Farmers’ Market a week ago that had softened and cooked them into a colorful tomato sauce in olive oil, butter with minced onion and a few cloves of garlic.

Suzette boiled a handful of spaghetti until soft, steamed about fifteen stalks of asparagus, and tossed two frozen salmon filets into the heated tomato sauce to poach them.

Pretty soon she had made a lovely new recipe: poached salmon on spaghetti garnished with fresh tomato sauce, steamed asparagus and grated Iberico cheese (Costco).  The combination of layers of green asparagus on the red and yellow tomato sauce on pink salmon on white spaghetti was lovely. 

Suzette fetched a bottle of Famille Bougrier 2012 Douce France Vouvray (an Alfio Mariconi selection from Total Wine $7.99?) from the basement.  The slightly lemony sweet (“Douce”) Chenin Blanc wine from Vouvray (Appellation Vouvray Controllee in France's Loire Valley) went well with the slightly tart tomato sauce.  

The flavor of salmon with the tomato sauce and spaghetti reminded me of the Wine country recipe of Grilled Salmon roulades with tomato strips we sometimes prepare; but the use of poached salmon rather than rolled grilled salmon filets made the salmon and grilled flavors less dominant in this dish, while garnishing the entire dish with a tomato sauce made the lovely tomato sauce with its expansive mature slightly tart tomato flavor components more dominant.   

Rather than drink a California Sauvignon Blanc, as we usually do with the grilled salmon, the Chenin Blanc from Vouvray with its slightly lemony, sweet flavor was a better complement to the dish’s dominant slightly tart tomato flavors.  I usually do not like the slightly sweeter Douce variety of Vouvray but in this case it worked well.

I ate a small wedge of Iberico cheese after dinner and loved its creamy buttery flavor. 

Queso Iberico

Queso Iberico is a Spanish cheese made from a mixture of cow's, sheep's, and goat’s milk. The ratio of blend used in the making this hard cheese is constantly altered according to seasonal availability.

The distinctive piquant taste of this white cheese ranges from nutty to fruity. It has a rich, buttery texture that goes well when served as a snack cheese, a grating cheese or a grilling cheese. The aging time for this Manchego lookalike can vary from a couple of months to a year.

·         Made from cow's, goat's and sheep's milk

·         Country of origin: Spain

·         Type: hard

·         Fat content: 45%

·         Texture: firm

·         Rind: natural

·         Color: white

We wanted to eat some more of the lovely fig and rhubarb/strawberry compote cobbler Suzette had made last night for dessert, so I made us bowls of heated cobbler alongside scoops of Mocha Almond Fudge ice cream to extend that sweet and complex slightly tart flavor combination a bit longer.  

    

Bon Appétit