Salmon with Dijon-Dill Sauce

We were rummaging through the freezer and found some salmon steaks that we thought we'd finished. As it was already late and we were ridiculously hungry, we came up with this deliciously light meal that didn't take more than 10 minutes to put together.

We had some extra tomatoes that needed to be eaten so we made a small salad to go with the salmon. Our final touch was to fry up some mushrooms and drizzle the bed of veggies in our balsamic dressing. The bite of the salad dressing and the Dijon-dill sauce complemented each other perfectly so we could attack everything at once when we finally sat down to eat!

Ingredients:
2 Salmon Steaks
2 Handfulls of fresh baby spinach
1 Tomato - sliced
1 small hand full of mushrooms
1 Knob of butter
1 tbsp of Dill Weed
1/3 cup of Sour Cream
3 tbsp of Dijon Mustard
2 tsp of lemon juice
1 clove of garlic - minced
salt
pepper

For the sauce:
Mix the dill, mustard, salt, pepper, lemon juice and garlic into the sour cream.

For the salmon:
Brush melted butter onto salmon and fry until cooked through. Meanwhile, in a separate pan, fry mushrooms in butter until softened. Spread the spinach on the plate and top with the tomatoes and mushrooms and drizzle with balsamic dressing. Place the salmon on top and cover liberally with the sauce and enjoy!

Lemon-Shrimp Pasta

While browsing through tastespotting (or maybe foodgawker) we saw a recipe with garlic shrimp and orzo pasta. It looked really tasty and after cleaning out the freezer, we found that there was 3 bags of shrimp stashed away from months ago so we gave it our own spin.

I'm not sure who originally posted the recipe but we used it as a starter for our own. The original didn't have any veggies and we had several lemons sitting in the fridge so we made our best attempt at customizing this recipe.

Ingredients:

1 - 1 + 1/2 cups of Orzo pasta depending on how hungry you are
2 tsp diced garlic
2 big handfuls of baby spinach, washed
an assortment of mushrooms, cleaned (we had 3 or 4 different kinds)
lemon juice
3 tbsp butter
peeled and deveined shrimp
olive oil
parsley

1. Bring a pot of water to boil, salt it and add pasta (should take about 10 minutes to cook)
2. In a frying pan, add 1 tbsp butter, 1 tsp garlic and saute the mushrooms until they soften a bit. Then add spinach until wilted
3. Meanwhile, in another pan, melt remaining butter and add remaining garlic. Add shrimp, squeeze 1/2 of a lemon's worth of juice on top. Cook shrimp 1-2 minutes per side
4. Pasta should be done, drain, mix in a little olive oil, mix in veggies and shrimp. Add as much parsley as you like to make it prettier.
   

Sausage and Spinach Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms

The pictures don't serve this recipe any justice. It tastes amazing. The mushrooms even taste all meaty. We've tried putting all different kinds of things into stuffed mushrooms before and it all tastes REALLY good. I don't know if you could make these taste badly. They could double as an appetizer but are perfect as a full meal. The best part is that they're really fast to make and can be pretty cheap if you use whatever you have on hand to stuff the mushrooms.

(Serves 2)

6 large flat mushrooms (we used Portobello)

Lots of spinach

2-3 Italian sausages

Half a bunch of asparagus

1 tomato

Mozzarella cheese

Olive oil

Garlic

You can put whatever you want into stuffing the mushrooms but this is just what we had on hand. Use smaller mushrooms and serve as a delicious appetizer.

1. Brush mushrooms with a little olive oil and chopped garlic. Place under broiler for a minute or two just to soften and flavour the mushrooms a little. Take out of oven and place aside.
2. Cut up sausage and fry up in a pan until cooked. You shouldn’t need to add any oil or butter because of all the fat in the sausages. Once sausages are cooked, add asparagus cut into 1.5 inch sections and stir fry until tender. Add as much spinach as you want, and cook until wilted.
3. Spoon the sausage, asparagus and spinach on top of the mushrooms, add a slice of tomato and then put some mozzarella cheese on top.
4. Put under broiler until cheese starts to bubble