Blogocentric Formulations

Day 11: "Chef" Jeff's Favorite Recipe

*Written as part of the "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS" 

Day 11 Prompt: Do you cook? Share with us one of your favorite recipes to prepare. Did you invent it yourself? An old family creation? If you don't cook, remind all of us why we shouldn't let you near a stove.

I do cook! I'm not great at it, but as I mentioned in my earlier entry, "Day 8: Amazing At One Thing or Pretty Good At Lots of Things" , I do have a knack for quite a few things, and cooking is one of them. I may not know how to perfectly sear a sea scallop or how to make a delicious and visually-appealing Beef Wellington, but I do know how to follow recipe directions and make sure it turns out okay. I'm not super-great with improvisation where I just make something tasty out of whatever I can find in the pantry... but if you give me a recipe and all the ingredients, I can assemble them pretty well.

My wife's favorite dish that I cook is spicy salmon with mango salsa. It's actually a very easy recipe with only two parts and - ironically - requires no real measurements:

THE SALMON
Works best with individual portion-sized salmon fillets.
Brush the fillets with olive oil.
Season the fillets to taste with salt, pepper, chili powder, and cayenne pepper.
Bake in the oven until cooked through (usually about 20-25 minutes @ 425 degrees).

THE MANGO SALSA
Diced mango (1 mango makes enough to salsa for 3-4 fillets).
Diced strawberries (roughly equal to the amount of mango used).
Chopped green onions.
A few dashes of lime juice.
Salt and pepper to taste.
A few dashes of chili powder and cayenne pepper.
Mix all the ingredients together and chill if you have time.

COMBINING IT
Now the most important part... put the mango salsa on top of the salmon and enjoy!

What I love about this recipe is that it's really simple. Including the protein and seasoning, you only need ten ingredients for both parts of the recipe, and five or six of those ingredients are stuff you should already have handy if you cook regularly. When I want to make this for my wife, it's often just a matter of picking up some fresh salmon, mango, strawberries, and green onion.

I originally found this recipe on a website, but I've made minor adjustments to it over the years. I now use lime juice instead of lemon juice in the original recipe (both work, but I just prefer the taste of lime), and the original recipe didn't call for cayenne and chili powder in the actual mango salsa, but I think adding just a dash of those same ingredients to the mango salsa adds a little harmony between the two different parts of this dish. Whenever possible, I'll also prepare the mango salsa in advance and let it sit in the fridge for a couple hours (up to overnight) whenever possible because - even though the original recipe claims you can make the mango salsa while the salmon cooks - I think the contrast between a hot, cooked fish and a chilled mango salsa make the dish way more flavorful than a room-temperature mango salsa. Plus, as anyone who makes salsa can attest, letting it sit and marinate for a little while only enhances the flavor.

What I like most about this recipe, though, is not just its simplicity but the fact that it's not terribly precise. There's no need to break out the teaspoons and measuring cups... everything is a matter of personal preference. My personal taste, for example, is to lightly sprinkle the chili powder and cayenne pepper on the salmon... almost like dusting the top of a mug of hot chocolate with cocoa powder; just enough to cover the surface area. My wife, on the other hand, likes hers a little more seasoned, which requires some heavy duty shaking of the spice jars and covering hers with a blanket of cayenne and chili powder.

The other great thing about this recipe is that since you're making individual fillets, you can customize each person's order. If your dining companions have diverse preferences in terms of the amount of heat, you can custom-make each fillet for them. When I'm home and make it for my parents, for example, I'll make my dad (who does not do well with a lot of spice), a fillet that has only salt and pepper on it, because the mild amount of cayenne and chili powder in the mango salsa itself is enough for him. And then I can make moderately-spiced fillets for my mom and myself, and a heavily-spiced one for my wife.

This is a really great recipe for anyone who enjoys a dish with complex flavors but doesn't want to go to the time and expense of a really complicated preparation. It's an easy recipe, takes less than 15-20 minutes to prepare, less than 30 minutes to cook (plus salsa chilling time if you so choose), and you end up with a really bright, vibrant dish that's a little hot, a little cold, a little spicy, a little sweet... it's really, really good!