Single Girl Salmon

Last weekend, I threw my Seemon a surprise cocktail party.

To many, such an event for a few intimate friends would entail canapés: perhaps nested quail's eggs, or crostini with goat's cheese, a purchased dip, and some mini-mealed classics set upon defrosted and deflated puff pastry. There is nothing wrong with that approach, and my approach indeed was reproachable. I set out to the store three times to procure the makings of:

-THREE homemade dips (one involving an entire roast chicken)

-Greek-style (ie, let's add some brined cheese please) roasted peppers nestled into endive boats

-A rare tenderloin marinated in chianti classico, fruity olive oil, and a million herbs costing effectively a million dollars)

-Three racks of infantile lamb with ribs resembling post-dentist lollypops

-Two kinds of homemade pizza (an entire intended for the vegetarian, blast her)

-A cherry pie, the birthday boy's favorite. He had to settle for a mixture of forest fruits since the British don't have an Oregon, and why did he have to want a pie requiring tapioca, which does not exist in this country?

Seemon's real surprise was that I'd made a banquet for everyone he'd ever met, not everyone invited. Below, a smattering of the recipes I relied on for 'Cocktail party? Why not just make it a meal!' 2010.

Buffalo Chicken Dip, specially for the wing-wanting birthday boy:

http://bunsinmyoven.com/2010/01/25/buffalo-chicken-dip/

Artichoke Dip:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Baked-Artichoke-Dip-104684

From the original recipe, I added spinach, swapped fresh garlic for ewww garlic powder, added French Onion soup mix DO NOT JUDGE (thanks, Mom), and used Grana Padano instead of Romano (English people do not believe in the former). Either I'm a genius, or Buffalo Chicken Dip is weird, because this was by far the favorite.

Adorable racks of lamb:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Roasted-Rack-of-Lamb-with-Spring-Succotash-and-Wilted-Spinach-237838

Serve as if lollypops– how literally tongue-in-cheek, and how two-years-ago trendy. But if Seemon could get the last two years of his life back, he would, so it follows. I toasted and bashed cumin seeds for a scent eastern promise. Originally, I was going to serve each rib with a dollop of hummus, but Seemon mutinied. Instead, we reduced a bit of the tenderloin marinade to make a drizzle. Obviously, I only payed attention to the lamb factor of the below recipe.

Pizza and Tenderloin:

Get yourself The River Café Classic Italian Cookbook as soon as possible for the BEST pizza dough recipe I've ever made. I'm quite sure there's a blog coming up about that. As well as a ridiculously easy tenderloin recipe, that I only blundered because I need to get my knives sharpened and cannot currently cut in carpaccio dimensions.

Back to single girl salmon, apologies apologies. Though not a huge eater himself, Seemon friends feedees- as in people who seek feeders like myself. But while the next morn held nary a leftover in sight, I was left with a few ingredients I had found the time or permission to incorporate. Those pizzas crafted from River Café dough were meant to be half vegetarian, half pescetarian: I wanted one with blue cheese, artichokes caramelized onions, scallions, and toasted pecans, while the other was meant to shoulder goat's cheese, smoked salmon, and homemade pesto.

The bastard only let me make one pizza, which was half-hazardly topped with the labor-intensive pesto, one half of the goat's cheese, and a make-do medley of antipasto.

All week I've been sneaking last Saturday's spoils into our dinner specials. A pasta bore still more antipasto, Goat's cheese swirled into a beet risotto, and the dismissed dough ached beneath a weight of meat and cheese. But there was the hefty matter of two smoked salmon packets, which were to expire within minutes. I made midweek muffins with a pretty pink draping, and a weekend brunch of eggs and albatross, and yet I STILL had 240g left. Enter this entry.

What began a romantic meal of pappardele with smoked salmon, Riverford Organic mushrooms, sour cream, and dill was ultimately consumed as single girl salmon. The title comes from a chapter of Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone (ed. J. Ferrar-Adler, New York, 2007), a delightful collection of stories predominately from singletons. One man revels in seasoning refried beans to only his own tastes, Jonathan Ames gets quite quirky with eggs, and Amanda Hesser reports on this dish's namesake. Ever since, when I make myself a Marks & Spark's farm-raised filet to serve over salad, I chuckle at the apparent obviousness of my choice. Salmon: a little bit of indulgence, a lot of omega 3, and known to women the world over as their go-to entrée.

Seemon was at a pub with clients, and I should have known he was not coming home when I detected a slur at 4:30pm. Charming. When we spoke at 6:30pm and he was hours from return, I promised to make him a meal at his beckon call should his hour be reasonable. But why not practice on myself first, and just see how the noodles tangle in their sumptuous sauce, how the flavor of reduced marsala pairs with woody mushrooms and nearly rude fish, and how dill brightens a dish suspended between winter and spring?

And so I did, and instead of cursing my wayward boyfriend for abandoning me on a Monday night, I relished every chardonnay-spiked moment of crafting and consuming my single girl salmon.

On hand, I had salmon, half a box of pappardelle, and 2/3 of a sour cream container, so whatever recipe I used I was going to bastardize it and thus assuage my guilt. My template: Smoked Salmon Pasta Verde from Epicurious.com, Bon Appétit, April 2004. I'm giving you my version here- don't skip the mushrooms, they offer an umami of a slightly different frequency than that of the fish, and they both taste the better for it.

Single Girl Salmon Pappardelle

1/2 cup dry white wine

1/2 cup Marsala wine

1 cube fish stock dissolved in 1/2 cup boiling water

1/2 cup sour cream

a box of strongly flavored mushrooms, rubbed, sliced and halved

1 T butter

1 T olive oil

4 oz (half a proper pack) dried pappardelle

1/2 cup chopped dill

4 oz (half a large pack) smoked salmon, cut crosswise into 1/4-inch strips

1/2 cup thinly sliced green onions (about 5)

1/2 cup chopped dill

Boil wines and stock in a medium saucepan until reduced to 1/2 cup, about 8 minutes.

Melt butter with oil in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add mushrooms, and cook until they have released their juices and re-absorbed them. Add your reduction to the pan.

Put sour cream in a medium bowl and add one T of mushroom mixture- you must temper the cream. I tried adding a T of cream straight to the acid mushroom sauté, just to see if I would be in curdle town, and wow was I indeed. You don't need to go to cooking school to realize that tempering can really save your ass. So please keep adding mixture to cream a few Ts at a time, until the two are nearly entirely combined in your cream pot. I finally allow you to return the result to the pan.

Meanwhile, cook pasta in large pot of boiling salted water until almost tender but still firm to bite, stirring regularly because pappardelle particularly likes itself. Drain but do not rinse, and return to pot. Add mushroom sauce to thoroughly coat, then sprinkle in salmon and half the dill for a stirring. Gild with green onions and dill, and serve with green salad, plenty of Chard, and a side of smugness: some man just wishes he could be eating THIS with you.

Actually, Seemon did not wish that at all. He had the nerve to skip SBS in lieu of a post-pub, near midnight McDonald's injection, even though his sad serving awaited him in our fridge, garnish and all.

Read More http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Smoked-Salmon-Pasta-Verde-109383#ixzz0j0mPdqtf