Leftover breakfast

Every culture has its own version of fried rice, a recipe that is made up on nothing but leftovers. The Italians have frittatas. We had a bunch of left overs from the previous two nights, so this was the perfect thing to do for breakfast. I made two types of frittata. One had the left over roasted vegetables, and the other had salmon, potato, and cilantro.

S'mores

After dinner, Midori made s'mores for the first time.
I think she really liked them.

Family reunion dinner 2

Pretty much everyone had a hand in preparing the next family reunion dinner. The menu included grilled vegetables (zucchini, eggplant, red peppers, and portabella mushrooms), teriyaki chicken, tri-tips with a korean style marinade, sushi and musubi, and potato patties made from roasted potatoes that were left over from the previous night.

Here are my aunties Susan and Pauline and my sister Laura showing off the key ingredient for musubi, Spam. Most people outside of Hawaii think this stuff is pretty gross, but I like it.
Below, Auntie Susan expertly assembles the musubi.
Here's a picture of the potato patties that I whipped up. This was an improvised dish that made use of a bunch of left over ingredients that we had sitting around. I diced up the roasted potatoes from the night before and combined them with left over roasted corn, minced onion, garlic, scallion, mayo, egg, and flour. I would have liked to grill them. The mixture probably would have fallen through the grates, though, so Auntie Nora fried them up.
Here are a few pictures of the final spread.

Family reunion dinner 1

My grandmother is getting on in years, so my dad's sisters have made it a point to come up and visit her each of the last few summers. This year, my brother, sister, and niece came out at the same time, so we were able to have a mini family reunion. Wild salmon is in season and really cheap, so I went a little overboard on the salmon purchase. We already had a big fillet of salmon and some lamb left over from the previous night, but when we went to the store and saw whole wild salmon for $6/lb, I had to get one. This fish weighs 6.5 lbs.
I stuffed the whole salmon with fennel, lemon, garlic, thyme, butter, salt and pepper. When you're cooking a whole fish this size on the grill, be sure to truss it so everything doesn't fall out. The strings will also make it easier to flip the fish. Also, make sure that you scale the fish before tying it up. I remembered this step after tying the fish, and it was significantly more difficult to work around the strings.

For the fillet of salmon, I decided to paint it with a honey mustard, citrus, and thyme glaze and cook it on a cedar plank. If you can incorporate a trip to the lumber yard and power tools into your food prep, that's probably a good thing.

Here are some pictures of the cooking and the finished products.


I also made a relish for the salmon that was made of roasted corn, avocado, tomatoes, red onions, garlic, cilantro, and lime. Basically, it was guacamole that hadn't been mashed up.
The menu was rounded grilled corn and Greek salad and roasted potatoes that my sister made. Midori was a big fan of the corn, which is unusually good this season.

Back home

I spent the first week of August back in Poulsbo and was either in the kitchen or at the grill most of the time. In my book, that's a pretty good vacation. My second night back, Sarah and Joe came over for dinner and we made garlic and rosemary lamb skewers with a cabernet sauce, wild salmon with a spice rub that Sarah whipped up, chickpea salad, and grilled vegetable ratatouille (with some fresh vegetables from Grant's garden).

Gazpacho

I love good tomatoes. It's hard to get good tomatoes where I grew up in Washington state, but, fortunately, you can get some great tomatoes in Boston. It was a hot day, and the first batch of heirloom tomatoes had just arrived at the store, so I decided to make gazpacho with seared scallops for dinner. Here's the finished product.

The recipe comes from a Bobby Flay cookbook. It includes all of the veggies pictured above, diced really small. Use only half of the onion, and put half of the tomatoes and one cucumber in a blender with 6 slices of good white bread and a couple of cups of tomato juice. Add the diced vegetables to the puree along with olive oil (a couple tablespoons), red wine vinegar (~1/4 cup), lime juice (2 limes), and salt and pepper to taste. I thought that this recipe was a bit heavy on the onions, so I would do one of two things next time: use half the amount of onions or soak the onions to take the bite out. Soaking the onions involves changing the water and squeezing moisture out of the onions about every 10 minutes. I also would have pureed more of the vegetables since I like a smoother gazpacho.
I served the Gazpacho with a Kim Crawford sauvignon blanc, which is a really great summer wine. Here's Andre, getting ready to dig in.