Salmon Curry with Vegetables

This gets full marks in all the important categories: tasty, quick, frugal, healthy, and sustainable. The only hurdle, for people unfamiliar with canned salmon, is the horrific sight that confronts you when you open the can. There is slimy skin, there is mysterious orange oil floating on top of a grey liquid that smells of cheap cat food, and there are bones that look like they'd be more comfortable in a natural history museum. But persevere! Canned salmon is generally (always?) wild caught from sustainable fisheries, it's full of healthy fats, and those creepy bones are soft enough to eat. Just crush them between your fingers and throw them into the mix. They're a great source of calcium. The omega-3-full orange oil should get used too, so don't pour off the liquid. It mixes right into the curry sauce.

Salmon Curry with Vegetables
serves three or four

4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon minced ginger
1 tablespoon oil
2 tsp curry powder

1 15-oz can coconut milk

1 tablespoon fish sauce (or more to taste)
1 tablespoon lime juice (or more to taste)
2 tsp sugar

1 bunch asparagus, trimmed and chopped (2 or 3 cups)
one red pepper, chopped

one bunch of scallions, chopped
1 7-oz can red salmon (skin chopped up, bones squished into bonemush, flesh gently flaked)

Heat your largest frying pan. Fry the garlic and ginger in the oil. Once it's soft and fragrant, add the curry powder and let it toast in the oil for a few minutes, until it's a little darker. Stir in the coconut milk, fish sauce, lime juice, and sugar.

Let it reduce a little bit while you prep the vegetables. Once you're practically ready to eat, heat the sauce to a wild boil, and toss in the asparagus. Once it's heated through, toss in the red pepper. Once that's hot, stir in the salmon and scallions. Serve with rice.

Going Out For Lunch! Or, Fish Cakes

Step One: Give up eating meat for Lent (fish is okay).

Step Two: Find yourself (with spouse and child) downtown at lunchtime, chilly and peckish.

Step Three: Try to find a place that is open, has some food that includes a pescatarian option, and is willing and able to cook and sell this food.

Step Four: Give up on Step Three. For extra credit, avoid familial squabbles!

Step Five: Take the bus home and make fish cakes for lunch.

Easy Fish Cakes
1/2 lb mild white fish, cooked and flaked
1/3 cup panko
2 teaspoons fish sauce
1 egg
1/4 tsp garlic powder

Combine, form into small cakes, and fry in a little oil until golden brown. Eat with leftover sauteed greens, avocado slices, and peanut sauce. Vow to never again eat restaurant food.

Noisy Village Dumplings

Cleo likes to listen to audio books when she's sick. Well, she likes to listen to one audio book: Astrid Lindgren's The Children of Noisy Village. After listening to the whole two-hour book as many times as she's had a cold this winter (so, so many times), I suggested a few other options.

No. Noisy Village or nothing. So, by now, I could probably recite the whole thing from memory. Let's see... "My name is Lisa, and I am nine years old. I am a girl, which you can tell by my name." I could go on. I will not. It's a sweet story, about six Swedish children growing up in the countryside and their antics and accomplishments.

In one chapter, there's a dramatic snow storm, through which the children must walk home from school. They struggle through the snow, get rescued in a horse-drawn sleigh, and go home for hot beef broth and dumplings. This inspired Cleo's first book-induced food craving. She requested it for dinner, with great enthusiasm and shining eyes, and (with the help of the internet, the freezer and the pantry) we were eating it a couple hours later.

I guess Swedish dumplings are usually potato-based, but I was limited to flour-and-egg dumplings, so I tracked down and adapted this recipe. I doubt there's anything Swedish about it, but it was delicious, frugal, easy, and a great parent-child kitchen project (especially if you use a plastic pizza wheel to cut the dough). They're like thick, chewy, tender noodles. I have no idea how they are the next day, since we inhaled them.

Flat Dumplings for Soup
serves two or three

1.25 cups white whole wheat flour, plus extra for rolling out
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
4 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons water

In a big bowl, beat together eggs, oil, water, and salt. Add the flour and mix to make a sticky dough. Chill one hour (next time, I'm skipping this step, just in the interests of research). Put a large pot of salted water on to boil. Meanwhile, sprinkle a large cutting board with flour. Dust the dough with flour, and divide it in two. Using half the dough at a time, gently spread/stretch/roll the dough out on the cutting board to about 1/8" thick. Cut the dough into little pieces-- ours were about 1/4" by an inch or two. Variations in size seemingly had no effect on quality, so put down your ruler and go nuts with the pizza wheel. Gently slide the dumplings off the board and into the boiling water, and cover. Boil 8-10 minutes, then scoop out the finished dumplings. Repeat with the other half of the dough. I held the finished dumplings in ice water until the soup was ready for them, and that worked well. Next time, I might skip that step (again, research/laziness).