Garlic Butter Salmon with Teriyaki-Glazed Green Beans

You’ll find more free recipes – and excerpts of my books – at SusanMallery.com!

The hero of my latest book, ONLY MINE, Finn Andersson is a sexy, rugged small airplane pilot from Alaska. When ONLY MINE hit #10 on the New York Times bestsellers list, my friend Marilyn of Marilyn’s Romance Reviews suggested I should celebrate with an Alaskan salmon dinner. What a perfect idea!

Marilyn sent me a recipe for barbecue sauce for salmon, but I wasn’t in the mood for a tomato-based sauce. She also sent me a link to this recipe for Taku Glacier Lodge Salmon Baste. That recipe looked delicious, but I didn’t have any brown sugar on hand. Plus, it was a recipe for 8 salmon fillets, which means I would have to do math to cut the recipe down for me and my husband.

I decided to use the two recipes from Marilyn as inspiration for my own salmon basting sauce. This Garlic Butter Salmon is, if I do say so myself, incredibly delicious! I paired it with Teriyaki-Glazed Green Beans. All in all, a terrific way to celebrate the #10 spot on the New York Times list. Life is good!

Recipe: Garlic Butter Salmon

2 salmon fillets, 1 pound total
¼ C butter
4 cloves garlic
1 t soy sauce
1 t granulated sugar

Cut the butter into chunks and put in a small microwave-safe bowl with the garlic, soy sauce, and sugar. Microwave at 50% power for 30 seconds. Stir well until all the butter is melted.

Preheat the grill. (I use an indoor grill.) Create an aluminum foil boat for each salmon fillet. Brush the bottom of the foil with the butter mixture. Place the salmon on the foil boats and baste with butter. Grill for about ten minutes, basting every two minutes, until salmon flakes easily with a fork.

Recipe: Teriyaki-Glazed Green Beans

1 lb fresh green beans
1 T sesame seeds
1 T sesame oil
1/3 C teriyaki sauce

Place the greens in a large sauté pan with about half a cup of water. Cover. Cook over medium heat until the water is mostly gone, about 5 minutes. While the green beans are cooking, toast the sesame seeds in a small, dry sauté pan. Be careful, the seeds will burn easily.

Uncover the beans. Add the sesame oil to the pan and toss to coat. Cook another 2 minutes. Add the teriyaki sauce and toss to coat. Put on a plate and then sprinkle the beans with the sesame seeds.

Spicy Manchurian Cauliflower

You can download a printable version of this recipe at www.susanmallery.com/recipes.php!

As you might have heard by now, I’m on a diet. I made a very public New Year’s Resolution to lose 20 pounds by March 31, and with the support of my Facebook friends and readers who email me, I’m more than halfway to my goal. Yay, me.

But I’m getting kind of bored. I’ve been eating a lot of very bland food. Steamed chicken breast, steamed broccoli, steamed cabbage… Salad without dressing. Chicken without skin. Cheese without fat.

Food without flavor.

No, I’m exaggerating. It hasn’t been that bad. But I did feel like I needed to wake up my tongue this week with something different. I decided a taste trip to the East was just the answer. The Manchurian Cauliflower is my version of a spicy cauliflower dish from an Indian restaurant I visited pre-diet. The “real” stuff has some sort of breaded coating and is deep fried. This version is a lot lighter but still has a lot of flavor.

Recipe: Spicy Manchurian Cauliflower

1 head of cauliflower, broken into florets
2 t ground coriander
1 ½ t ground cumin
1 t pepper
½ t ground cardamom
½ t ground cloves
½ t ground cinnamon
¼ t salt
2 t vegetable oil, divided
6 cloves of garlic, minced
¾ C ketchup
1/8 – ½ t cayenne pepper
1 green onion, sliced

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Put the cauliflower in a large Ziploc with 1 t oil. Shake to coat. Add coriander through salt to the bag. Shake to coat. Put cauliflower in a single layer on a large, ungreased baking sheet. Roast for 20 minutes, flipping once.

Meanwhile, heat the remaining oil in a small saucepan. Add the garlic and sauté until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the ketchup and cayenne pepper to taste.

Mix the cauliflower with the ketchup mixture, then return to the baking sheet. Roast for another 20 minutes, flipping once. Put in a bowl and toss green onion slices on top.

Thai-ish Cashew Beef with Garlic Brown Rice

One of the fun things about cooking is that there are many ways to cook just about everything. So if you see a recipe that looks good but you don’t have all the ingredients on hand, you can come up with creative alternatives.

That’s just what I did when I got this month’s Taste of Home magazine in the mail. They had a feature on Thai food, but I couldn’t find one of the ingredients for Cashew Curried Beef at the store. (You can see their recipe by clicking the link. You have to join their website, but it’s free!)

I couldn’t find red curry paste. Now, if I had a better work ethic when it came to cooking, I probably could’ve tracked it down. I could’ve asked someone who worked there, or I could’ve tried another store. I’m a hard-working writer, but I’m a lazy cook.

So I modified the recipe and came up with Thai-ish Cashew Beef with Garlic Brown Rice. I used stewing beef, which was too gristly, but other than that, this was delicious.

Thai-ish Cashew Beef

Marinade:
2 T Thai sweet red chili sauce

2 T Creamy peanut butter
2 T Soy sauce
1 can Coconut milk
¼ t Cayenne pepper

1 lb. Beef, sliced in ¼-inch strips
2-3 t Peanut oil, divided
2 Carrots, sliced into matchsticks
½ Red bell pepper, sliced
½ Green bell pepper, sliced
1 Small onion, sliced
½ C Salted cashews

Mix the marinade ingredients, adding more cayenne if you like spicy food. Pour half the marinade over the beef in a non-reactive bowl. (I feel so smart for saying “non-reactive” like I know what I’m talking about!) Allow to marinate for at least a couple of hours. Reserve the other half of the marinade.

Drain the beef.

Heat 1 teaspoon of peanut oil over medium-high heat in a wok or a deep skillet. Brown the beef, trying not to stir too often. It’s difficult to resist the temptation to stir, but the beef will brown better if you let it be. Remove the beef to a large bowl. Add a little more oil to the pan and cook the vegetables until the carrots are crisp-tender, just a couple minutes. Put them in the bowl with the beef. Then pan-roast the cashews for about 30 seconds in a little more oil, just until they become fragrant. Put them in the bowl with the beef mixture. Toss and serve over Garlic Brown Rice.

Garlic Brown Rice

1 T Vegetable oil
2-3 Garlic cloves, sliced thin
1 C Brown rice
2 ½ C Water

Heat the vegetable in a heavy-bottomed pan over medium heat. Sauté the garlic slices for about 30 seconds, then add the rice and water. Raise to a boil. Once boiling, lower the heat and cover the pan. Simmer until all the water is gone, about 50 minutes.

Voilá! Doesn’t it look pretty?