Food tips

It's King salmon season and I couldn't be happier. King, also known as Chinook is the most precious and luscious salmon around. It’s very high in healthy fats and has an amazingly creamy texture. I was offered the opportunity to try fish from Daily Fresh Fish  so naturally I chose King salmon. DailyFreshFish is a company that delivers seafood overnight. There's no warehousing or middle man and no time for it to linger in a case at the market. It goes from the dock to the shore and then directly to you. The only way to get fresher seafood would be to either catch it yourself or go to dock and get it from a fisherman.  The company offers a wide range of seafood, and is certified with The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) sustainable seafood certification program, which verifies that the seafood is sustainable. They also use seafood guides from the Seafood Watch  from the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the NOAA FishWatch  to select sustainable fisheries and farms. Even t...

With Summer comes sweet juicy stone fruit like peaches and nectarines. Which is exactly what was in the second batch of fruit I received as part of the Canbassador program from SweetPreservation.com .  In addition to making a cobbler and a tomato peach salad, I made peach ginger butter. Fruit butter is very similar to jam, but it has a creamy consistency that seems amost buttery even though it’s completely dairy free. Fruit butters are easier to make than jam since they don’t set the same way. You cook the fruit to the right texture rather than setting with pectin.  Since this was my first time making it, I had lots to learn. For one thing, you don’t need to remove the skins. I did, but this was not necessary since they get pureed into the mixture. I added some vanilla, cinnamon and cloves in a sachet. This was also probably unnecessary. Because of the ginger flavor you can’t really detect the other spices. I used mostly all peaches and one nectarine.  The main ...

I don’t know when I stopped making salad every night, but it happened. That’s not to say I don’t eat salad anymore, I probably eat it more often than ever, I just eat it as a main dish instead. At least several times a week for lunch and at least once a week for dinner, I serve a main dish salad. What makes it a main dish? I’d say protein. And tofu is a perfect plant-based protein for salads.  A few weeks ago I attended an event hosted by House Foods organic tofu. Chef Melissa King did the cooking and also a cooking demo. I picked up a lot of good ideas. I loved her take on a Caprese salad and I’ve made my own versions of it several times. In one version I made a small bite style appetizer by placing diced tomatoes and tofu on large basil leaves and dressed them with coarse salt and extra virgin olive oil. In another, I was captivated by another recipe I found for Tomato-Peach Salad with Tofu Cream . But I wanted the salad to be a main dish, rather than a starter so I made some ch...