Wasabi Salmon

One thing you will learn about me in this blog is that I am a lazy chef...I like to save time because a lot of days, it's 8 pm before I get around to cooking dinner. This leads me to pay a premium for pre-chopped veggies, etc. at the store. Sure the difference between whole mushrooms and the cleaned/sliced ones are only 20 cents, but the time it saves me!!!

Last night I had a meeting with a financial planner and didn't get home until about 7:45 pm. I had bought some salmon yesterday at the store and decided to try out a new Cooking Light recipe...only I got lazy and completely revised it. I started out with their Wasabi salmon recipe and ended up with this...

D'Ann's version of Wasabi Salmon

A couple of shakes of low-sodium soy sauce (roughly 2 TBS)

1/2 tsp of sesame oil

About 2 TBS of wasabi cream sauce

3 (6 oz) skinless salmon fillets - approx. 1 inch thick

Mix everything but the salmon in a bowl and then spread on salmon and let sit for a few minutes. Heat a non-stick skillet with cooking spray over medium-high heat. Add fish; cook 3 minutes. Turn fish over. Reduce heat to medium; cook 8 minutes or until fish is done.

Ideally, I would have served this with jasmine rice and snow peas or something, but I didn't have any vegetables that sounded good in the house, so I just served it over some white rice with a little salt/pepper and finely chopped green onions. It was really delicious :)

I finally cooked! And remembered to take a picture!

One of the reasons I tried to start cooking more is that we eat out SO much...it's not too friendly on the budget. So, in honor of eating out, I thought I would try to whip up a recipe that's reminiscent of one of my favorite restaurant dishes - Chicken Madeira from The Cheesecake Factory. I found the recipe on a message board, but could not trace the original source. This was the first time I tried, and would do things a little differently next time - a little less Madeira wine (probably cut it down to 2 cups) and then dust the chicken breasts with a little flour before browning. All in all, though, it's a good recipe and a pretty good copy cat for The Cheesecake Factory's dish!

"CHEESECAKE FACTORY" Chicken Madeira

Chicken:

1 TBS Olive oil

4 boneless, skinless chicken breast fillets

8 asparagus spears

4 mozzerella cheese slices

Sauce:

2 TBS Olive oil

2 cups sliced fresh mushrooms (I used the pre-cut baby bellas)

3 cups Madeira wine (I used the cheapest bottle possible)

2 cups beef stock

1 TBS butter

1/4 tsp Ground black pepper

Heat up 1 TBS olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Cover each chicken breast with plastic wrap and use a mallet to flatten the chicken to about 1/4 inch thick. Sprinkle each fillet with salt and pepper.

Saute the chicken fillets for 4-6 minutes per side, or until the cihcken has browned just a bit and is cooked throughout. Remove chicken filets from the pan and keep warm. Don't clean the pan!

With the heat still on medium, add two TBS of olive oil to the skilet. Add the sliced mushrooms and saute for about 2 minutes. Add Madeira wine, beef stock, butter and pepper. Bring the sauce to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for about 20 minutes or until the stock has reduced to about 1/4 of its original volume. When the sauce is done it will have thickened and turned a dark brown color.

As the sauce is simmering, steam your asparagus. The asparagus should be slightly tender when done, not mushy. Set oven to broil. Prepare the dish by arranging the cooked chicken on a baking pan. Cross two asparagus spears over each fillet, then cover each with a slice of mozzarella cheese. Broil the fillets for 3-4 minutes or until light brown spots begin to appear on the cheese. To serve, arrange two chicken breasts on each plate, then spoon 3-4 TBS of madeira sauce over the chicken.,

My Client Appreciation Party

Last night I had my first annual client appreciation party for my real estate clients. I LOVE to host parties!! I invited all of my past clients (buyers, sellers and renters) to a private wine tasting at Church Street Cellars in Vienna. Invitations were done by Barb Heider at Inkworthy and were a Sweet Pea Designs formal invite. Each guest received a card to use on the Enomatics machine (more on this later!) and a cute fall wine bottle stopper from BeauCoup. In addition, a couple of my good friends helped me put together 3 gift baskets as door prizes - a fiesta basket, a wine basket and a movie night basket. My personal fave was the fiesta basket, which contained tortilla chips, 3 gourmet salsas, rita mix, Patron tequila, 2 handmade glass rita glasses from World market, cocktail napkins, margarita salt and a CD of spanish guitar music. It was fun putting these together and I think it encouraged people to stick around for awhile in hopes of being the lucky winner of a basket.

All of the guests were served champagne when they arrived, and given their Enomatics card. If you aren't familiar with these machines, basically you have the opportunity to taste different wines by choosing 1, 2.5 or 5 oz. pours from the machine. Each machine has 8 wines and there are 4 machines. This is a great way to taste a really pricey bottle of wine that you might not otherwise try! Then we poured four other varieties - a Cabernet, Pinot Noir, Chardonney, and a Sauvignon Blanc. Church Street Cellars also did an array of heavy apps for us - Pork Tenderloin with Mango/Black Bean Salsa, various cheeses, Pear Bruschetta, Spinach Balls & Bacon Wrapped Scallops. I wish I would have taken a picture of the food because it was really pretty, but I forgot that I had my camera for awhile.

All in all, I think it was a successful event. Approximately 20 guests and I think everyone had a good time. By the end of the night, one of the guests broke the store record for how long he could leave his hand in the wine chiller....I had a feeling that was going to happen....a freezing open container of swirling water is just too tempting for most boys I know!

First Post...Sweet!

Okay, so I came up with the idea for this blog about a week ago, when I was checking out some other cooking blogs. I thought, "Gee! I just got really into cooking lately and love to entertain, so what a fun blog to write!" Problem is, since I got that idea, I haven't cooked once! It has been pretty sad at our house lately...eating out every night, ordering pizza, etc. November is the end of the fiscal year with Amir's job and I'm really busy trying to put together things for my annual client appreciation party and the JLNV Enchanted Forest Fundraiser. Also, we've got a friend visiting this weekend from Lafayette, LA, so I've been trying to straighten up the house. Mix in a little Christmas shopping and I'm swamped. I am such a horrible housewife :)

Anyhow...just wanted to say hi and let you know that everything should be back to normal next week. I will post some pictures from my party tonight because I am SUPER excited about it. Church Street Cellars in Vienna is hosting and it will be a wine tasting. I do love wine. And Mark and his wife, Barb (who did my formal invites) have been fantastic. Enjoy this rainy day...I'll be cooking again soon!