What We Had For Dinner Last Night

This is a quick post for a quick dinner. My original plan was to make a type of Salad Nicoise: cold, steamed veggies, eggs and potatoes with cold tuna. It was a little cool outside when dinner time came around, so I decided to cook up some salmon, instead. Then I veered further offtrack and made a mayo/tamari/garlic dipping sauce…and, well….as often happens with me, dinner completely mutated into something else.

So: In the morning, I boiled 2 potatoes and 2 eggs together. I took the eggs out of the cooking water after 10 min. and ran cold water over them until they were cooled off. Then I set them in the fridge. I continued to cook the potatoes (jackets on) until they were tender, then gave them the same treatment as the eggs. In the meantime, in my large wok-steamer, I steamed the green beans for 5 min and the leeks (trimmed, but whole) for about 10. Then I set them on a plate to cool. Afterward, I put everything into the fridge to get it chilled.

I mixed up about 1 C mayo with 2 Tb. tamari (soy sauce) and, using the garlic press, added a very, very tiny clove of garlic. Then I let that sit in the fridge with everything else to let the flavors marry.

Come dinner time, I heated the oven to 325°, salted and peppered the salmon, and got a frying pan hot on the stove with a little olive oil in it. I cooked the fish flesh-side down first for less than a minute, then flipped it over to skin-side down for 30 sec. more. Then I put the whole pan into the oven for 10 min. more. In the meantime, I arranged the platter: cut the eggs and potatoes in quarters, split the leeks in half, drained and sliced some jarred roasted red peppers, and put it altogether. I drizzled a little extra virgin olive oil over the veggies, sprinkled some French sea salt over all – and WOW, what a GREAT DINNER! No leftovers. None.