Salmon can make a delicious dinner any time of the year, but it’s exceptionally good during the season of Lent, when some Christians chose not to eat meat. Not only is salmon good for you, Arlene’s recipe includes a tangy Dijon mustard glaze and crunchy pecan coating. Yum!
Included with this fish dinner are pear blue cheese salad with apricot dressing, homemade apple crisp, and Italian sauteed broccoli.
Baked Pecan Dijon Salmon
This is a great way to dress up ordinary salmon into something delicious!
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup butter, melted
- 3 Tbsp Dijon mustard
- 1 1/2 Tbsp honey
- 1/4 cup dry bread crumbs
- 1/4 cup finely chopped pecans
- 4 tsp chopped fresh parsley
- 4 salmon fillets (4 oz, each)
- salt and pepper, to taste
- 1 lemon, for garnish
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
- In a small bowl, stir together butter, mustard and honey. Set aside. In another bowl, mix together bread crumbs, pecans and parsley.
- Brush each salmon fillet lightly with honey mustard mixture and sprinkle tops of fillets with breadcrumb mixture.
- Bake salmon 12 to 15 minutes in preheated oven, or until it flakes easily with a fork. Season with salt and pepper and garnish with a wedge of lemon. Makes 4 servings. Enjoy!
Blue Cheese and Pear Salad
Classic flavors come together in this elegant salad.
Ingredients
- 1 bunch arugula
- 1 small head Bibb lettuce
- 2 fresh ripe pears, sliced
- Salt and pepper, to taste
- 1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese
- 2 Tbsp apricot preserves
- 1 Tbsp white wine vinegar
- 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
Instructions
- Wash and thoroughly clean greens. Pat dry and keep refrigerated until serving time.
- In a serving bowl, place greens, sliced pears, and blue cheese. Toss lightly. Salt and pepper to taste.
- In a small bowl whisk together apricot preserves, vinegar and olive oil to a smooth dressing. Pour over salad and serve immediately. Makes 4 to 6 servings. Enjoy!
Apple Crisp
A classic dessert that is delicious served warm with ice cream on top!
Ingredients
- 5 cups peeled and sliced apples
- 1 cup cooked oatmeal
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 cup melted butter
- 2/3 cup flour
- 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
- Place apples into an 8-inch square pan. In a bowl, combine oatmeal, brown sugar, melted butter, flour and walnuts. Mix until crumbly. Sprinkle on top of apples.
- Bake in preheated oven for 30 to 45 minutes until apples are tender. Makes 6 servings. Enjoy!
Italian Sauteed Broccoli
A great side dish for all kinds of meals.
Ingredients
- 1 lb fresh broccoli
- 3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
- 1 tsp balsamic vinegar or lemon juice
- Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
Instructions
- Cut broccoli into individual florets and peel away any tough skin. Boil in enough salted water to cover, until tender but firm. Drain.
- Heat oil in a skillet over moderate heat and saute garlic until light brown. Add broccoli and saute for 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Season with vinegar, salt and pepper. Makes 4 to 6 servings. Enjoy!
Transcript
- Well, hello, and welcome to “At Home” today. We’re so glad you dropped in to visit us. I’m always glad when you’re here, and it just wouldn’t be the same without you. Honest, that’s the truth. You know, we have flowers in the front of our house and this has been a great year for the roses. And some of these roses that we have in the front of our house were planted by my father at his house many years before he passed away. And when the house was sold, Paul and I decided we would like to have those roses in our yard. So we have, one of them’s a real big climbing rose. It blooms once a year and it goes everywhere. And then we’ve added some roses to the assortment that we got from dad. And I just love a rose for many reasons. But they were so pretty this morning when we were coming in, Paul and I said, “Paul, let’s take some roses. I wanna talk about the rose today.” They come in all different colors. The yellow rose of Texas, we all know about that. They have a black rose now. But there’s something so delicate about this pink rose. And I just kept looking at the center of it. And here’s one that’s just budding out. It’s not in full bloom. And one is in full bloom. But I thought about this, you know how it’s so tightly wound in there, and this is kind of like life? These little petals are the first years and the second years. And this is the rest of the life that we have to live. And the best thing to do with a rose when it starts to, to these petals is just to kinda pull them off so it doesn’t disturb the look of the rest of the rose. And I kept thinking about these are all, this is layers of life, layers of life. They unfold. Sometimes, they’re perfect. Like this one isn’t exactly perfect, but it’s still there and it adds to the whole look of the rose. That’s the way life is. Things that we encounter everyday, things that happen to us, it is a conglomeration of life. And at the center of this life, and at the center of your life, I hope there’s a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ because he makes life worth living. Well, today, we’re gonna do a salmon dinner, and a beautiful apple crisp for dessert, an unusual salad with pears, and some delicious Italian broccoli. We’re gonna get started, but first, here’s today’s At Home Hint. We’ll be right back. Here’s today’s At Home Hint. Make a light substitute for sour cream by processing cottage cheese in the blender. Flavor with chives or other herbs if you desire. If you’ve got a helpful hint, we’d like you to share with us. Send your hint to At Home Hints, Cornerstone TeleVision, Wall, PA 15148-1499. Well, we’re gonna start today’s program because we’re preparing a whole meal, but I did it according to what takes the longest to prepare and what takes the shortest time to prepare. The first will be the apple crisp because it’s gonna bake in the oven. And what we’ve taken is five cups of apples. And we slice them, peel them and slice them. And to keep them nice, from turning brown, what you wanna do is just put some lemon in some water and set them in that, and that works really good. That keeps them from turning really brown and ugly ’cause you want them to look nice. So kinda distribute them evenly. This is an eight-inch square dish. We didn’t put any butter or anything, didn’t spray it ’cause when these cook up, you won’t have a hard time them out, okay? So okay, there’s that. Now we’re gonna make a crisp topping for this. And we’re going to take, this is a cup of uncooked oatmeal. Start with that. One cup, I’m sorry, 1/2 cup of brown sugar. All right. 1/3 of a cup of flour. Now what you’re, basically, what you’re doing is making a crumb topping, all right? And let’s see, we’re gonna add some walnuts. Now you can add as much as you want. This is about 1/2 a cup. And basically, what you need to do is just mix this up to distribute it evenly and get any big chunks maybe of the brown sugar or whatever ’cause this makes a crumb. This is a basic crumb topping. This works on an apple pie. This works on blueberry. I mean, you can put this basically on anything really. Maybe I would not use the oatmeal. I would just use the other ingredients if I were doing it on a pie, okay? So we’re just gonna mix it up like that. Now we’re gonna add some melted butter. And people say, “Well, can I use margarine?” You know how I feel about margarine. Be better to use less butter and use real butter than to use a lot of margarine that’s not really good for you ’cause, well, they’re just finding out that it isn’t. So we just mix this up. And try to get the butter evenly distributed amongst the ingredients, like so. Then we’re just gonna sprinkle this. This is so easy. I mean, you could have this 45 minutes. You have a nice, hot dessert, or let it cool. You can serve this with ice cream. You can serve this with… I know at my house, with Paul, it better be ice cream or he’s not eating it. But anyway. Okay, we’re just gonna spoon this across the top of the apples. You could put whipped cream on that, you could put Cool Whip, whatever your pleasure is. Let’s try to get it evenly distributed all over the apples. What kind of apples? If you like a tart apple, you could use Granny Smith. I tend to like maybe a red Rome. I love Gala apples. Of course, I like to just eat Gala apples. They’re a wonderful apple just for eating, but they’re good cooking apples, too. This goes into a 375 degree oven for about 40, 45 minutes until the apples are nice and tender. That’s your gauge. Okay, now that’s our dessert. We got that out of the way. Now we’re going to do our vegetable, which is a broccoli. And we have a bunch of broccoli that we’ve we’ve put into florets. And people will say to me, “What do you mean by a floret?” Well, I’m gonna show you here. When you get your bunch of broccoli, we’re gonna cut the stem off because this is the part that’s very woody. Now you can use this. When I make my broccoli salad, this is what I like. But all you do is take your vegetable peeler and you wanna get that outside layer ’cause that’s where it’s kinda tough and you just pare it like you would a potato, like so. Turn it around, do the other side, just like this, okay? And you can use that part then, that inside part. That works very well. You understand what I’m saying. For the florets, That usually means that they just want the tiny, little flowers. Floret, flower. Okay? And that would be pieces like that, that when you cut the center part, it automatically drops the florets off. You see? And then when you get real close to the top, you can either cut or you can just break them off. And then you end up with your little florets, or flowers. The top, I usually just cut, cut. That’s what you call florets, okay? So we have some of them, and they’ve been cooking in some boiled salt water for just a few minutes. And I’m gonna add these because not only are they just gonna cook there, we’re gonna put them in a skillet, too. And you don’t want to cook these until they’re mush because then you’ve gone way far beyond what you really need to do. But we’re gonna heat up our skillet while these have been cooking for, until they’re tender but firm, all right? And then we’re gonna drain them. Meanwhile, I’m gonna bring some oil, a couple tablespoons of oil in the skillet. And this needs to start to heat up here. And to that, we’re gonna add garlic. I know it’s your favorite friend, Mike, right?
- [Mike] Oh, yeah.
- You and about a gazillion other people in the world. And this is just a couple of cloves that we’ve chopped fine. And soon as that comes up to heat, we’re gonna be on our way. Meantime, this, see how these are, these could be a little bit smaller, but they’ll be all right. These will, they’ll cook up very quickly, but you don’t want them to lose the color. If you leave them in the water that long, it’s too long, and you don’t wanna do that. So when this gets cooking, a little bit browned, this… The other thing I don’t like is when you let the garlic brown too long, then it tastes burned. Don’t wanna do that. So you wanna keep an eye on it. I’d rather it be undercooked, ’cause it’s gonna cook a little bit, than to be burned. That’s not a good idea. Okay, so I’m gonna go ahead. Presume that this is brown ’cause it’s gonna brown anyway. I’m just gonna start to put the broccoli in there. This is called Italian sauteed broccoli. You wanna drain it well, like so. And just… See how nice and green it stays? If you cook it too much, it gets like that really pale look, doesn’t keep the vibrant green color. You don’t want that to happen. You want this to stay nice and tender, but firm, all right? Okay, we don’t have any sizzle on that pan, but it’s starting now. That’s good. And this, we’re gonna just keep… As this sautes, what we’re gonna do is just keep turning it, keep turning it over and over, kinda like remember when we made those fried potatoes that time, just keep after it. Keep turning it until it starts to brown evenly. It’s delicious. You’re gonna love it. And what you do right before you serve this, we’re gonna add some balsamic vinegar. Oh, boy.
- Ooh.
- And that’s gonna make it taste… If you have not become acquainted with balsamic vinegar, I would suggest you go to the grocer, buy a small bottle and just begin to experiment with it. You say, well, what would I do? Well, next time you make a salad, try that instead of regular vinegar. Try that in its place. It’s great for putting it on things like this. Great. We made, couple of weeks ago, we did a show where we put it on peaches, and it was delicious. So we’re gonna take a break. When we come back, we’re gonna continue on with a wonderful salad and the centerpiece of the meal, our salmon. We’ll be right back. If you’re just joining us, we’re in the middle of making a delicious salmon dinner. We have our apple crisp already baking there in the oven. We’ve made our Italian sauteed broccoli. Now we’re gonna add a wonderful pear salad. And we’re using some different greens rather than the old head lettuce, iceberg. We wanna change our thoughts about some of the greens. Let’s introduce some new ones to our family. And my dad used to be a, he liked that iceberg lettuce. Well, here, he read somewhere that romaine, the darker the green on the lettuce, the more vitamins and the good it is for you. So he got hooked on romaine, and that’s what this is. And we have some wonderful leaves of romaine. We’re just gonna tear them up. Don’t use the knife ’cause the knife, if you don’t use it right away, then guess what, turns brown. Don’t want that. So we’re just gonna tear these up roughly. If you don’t like that middle piece here, you can cut that out. Personally, I like that crunch in there. I just like that, every once in a while, I get a little piece of crunch. So we’re just breaking this up, like so. And the other green that we’re going to add to this is arugula. Yes, that’s the one that looks like a dandelion green. When you get that in a salad, you say, ooh, they put a leaf of something. Yeah, it’s arugula. Very popular now. So we’re just taking our arugula and we’re just gonna tear it. And these are the two greens that are the basis for this pear salad. It’s called blue pear because not only are we putting pears in, but we’re gonna add blue cheese. We’re gonna pair up the pear and the blues together today. And just mix that together, like so. This is like one nice bunch. And you know, these portions are according to how many people you’re going to be serving. If it’s just you and your husband, or there’s only two or three, you wouldn’t want this much, unless you’re all big salad eaters. And if that’s so, go for it. You could use Bibb lettuce. Bibb’s a real nice combination with the arugula. But we have… And if you’re weaning them off the iceberg lettuce, you could use some of that in here, too. That would be all right. Okay, so… Whoops, get in here. Now we have the greens done. That’s good. Now we’re gonna take, this is two pear. And make sure… That sounds funny, huh? Two pear. Two pears, and we’re going to peel them and slice them, just like so, and sprinkle them over our greens that we have cleaned. And it’s really important for you to keep the greens in the refrigerator until you’re ready to use them because we don’t want them to be limp and soft. Ah, let’s put them all in. Why not? Everybody likes pears. We’re gonna toss that around. Mix that around a little bit. Use your hands. That’s what God gave them to you for. It’s amazing, we try to find every little gadget to do everything for us when the best little gadgets we have are right here, okay? Next we’re going to add blue cheese. Now there’s a ton of different kinds of blues. There’s Maytag blue, there’s Wisconsin blue. There’s all kind. And I think you have to just try and taste and find the one that you like the best. So we mix that, put that there. And then we toss that lightly again. Now before I do that, I’m gonna make the vinaigrette dessert. Dessert? Vinaigrette dressing. They’re all running together today. Okay, so in this bowl, we’re gonna introduce another kind of fruit, this apricot. Aha! You say, apricots, Arlene, with pears? Oh, yes. And it’s about three tablespoons that we’re gonna put. Let’s say two. Well, you know, let’s say three. Why not? Okay. And we have that. Now we’re gonna add some vinegar. And this is white wine vinegar, about a tablespoon. Three, two or three of the other, and one of the white wine. Okay. And then I like to mix those together first, and then about 1/3 of a cup of an extra virgin, a good grade of olive oil will go with this. See? Those colors are gonna be so pleasant to the eye on this salad that they’re gonna wanna eat their salad for a change, the kids. About 1/3 of a cup. And you know what? Whisk the whole time you’re adding it. Just keep whisking until… You’ll know when it’s there. If you don’t measure it, you’ll just know. About 1/3 of a cup. Okay. Now you wanna be sure that it’s mixed well. And at the last minute, we’re pouring that right over our salad, but we’ll do that at the table, okay? All right, that’s our salad. Now we’re gonna go on to making our salmon. Beautiful salmon steaks. Aren’t they gorgeous? And these are, of course, from McGinnis Sisters. You just wanna have a baking dish, like so. And we’re gonna take… Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. And we’re gonna put our salmon steaks. These are beautiful. Not a bit of a fishy smell. None whatsoever. None, just wonderful. All right, that’s how you know it’s good and fresh. Okay, now in a bowl, we’re going to make, we’re gonna stir in some melted butter and some Dijon mustard. Now this mustard has really come into its own. There’s so many… Dressings for salads, toppings for fish. They’re using it in so many different ways and it’s all delicious. It’s very good. Just adds a little spark. And don’t think, well, you can use the yellow mustard. It’s not the same. Doesn’t taste the same. So this is Dijon. And let’s see, now we’re gonna use some honey. This will sweeten it up. Oh, these flavors together, oh, boy. Yummy yum. Salmon, you wanna cook, you don’t have to cook very long, but this will bake for about 12 to 15 minutes, that’s all. All right, now we’re gonna mix that like that, okay? And we’re going to mix together our parsley, some bread crumbs, and some crushed pecans. Pecans on fish? Wait till you taste it. It’s delicious. Okay, we’ll mix those together. Now we’re gonna brush… We’re gonna brush these salmon steaks with this honey mixture, just like so. Oh, brush them on all the sides. Be generous. We have a lot. Okay, like so. And don’t pack them into your baking dish. Leave some room so that they can cook evenly, or bake evenly, I should say. Mm-mm, bet this would be good on chicken, this stuff I’m painting here. Mm, yummy. Just smells so good. I love the colors. It just really makes the salmon brighter, I think. All right, now… Let me get a little fork here, a spoon. Gonna mix this a little better. And we’re gonna sprinkle this on top of the fish. Easy to do. And it’s just like so. Yum. I think that the pecans in there add a little crunch going on in there. It’s gonna make it so good. And you know, when they toast, you know how good pecans taste when they toast? Taste when they toast? Yes. Delicious. And that fresh parsley in there will just add another dimension. This is gonna be good. What do you think, Mike?
- Oh, yeah.
- Oh, yeah. It doesn’t have garlic, but you’re gonna like it anyway, right? We’ve spoiled the crew really bad here.
- [Mike] That’s right.
- Now they think they’re all gourmet cooks and they tell you if they like it or not. It’s really bad, you know? But anyway, we’re gonna take a break, put these in the oven. We come back, we’ll be at the dining room showing you everything we’ve prepared on today’s program. We’ll see you in just a minute. Don’t forget, you have the opportunity to subscribe via the internet if you’d like to receive our “Enjoy” newsletter every month without having to send in your request with an envelope. Just go to www.ctvn.org, and it will lead you through the steps on how you can receive our “Enjoy” newsletter. For those that don’t have that convenience, we will be glad to send yours via the mail when you send that self-addressed stamped envelope. And don’t forget to help us out a little bit with the printing cost by adding a few dollars, okay? Well, here we are. All I need is for you to be sitting here with me at the table because the food’s all ready. We’ve started… Look at our wonderful Dijon salmon. Oh, man, if you could be here to smell, it is incredible. The pecans, the breadcrumbs, that Dijon smell is just incredible.
- [Mike] Mm-hmm.
- And next to it, there’s the pear blue salad. And we’ve just, I sprinkled a few croutons on there because some of us like that. And look how wonderful that orange dressing, the orange color of the apricot dressing, looks on top of that salad. That’s a beautiful, beautiful combination. You could also add pecans to that or walnuts if you wanted to, whatever. But that’s just a really nice, nice salad. Next to it is our Italian sauteed broccoli. And we’ve added just a sprinkling of shredded cheese. Don’t have to put that on, but if you want to, you can. I kinda like to spice up the color a little bit. And then next to me, this is, ah, this is our apple crisp. And oh, my, look at that. Doesn’t it look delicious?
- Mm-hmm.
- I tell you what, it smells wonderful. And it’s something so easy. One of the crew said they thought that maybe they could even make it, it was so easy. And I think that’s probably true. And then we’ve just added a little toasted bun. You just split your buns, butter them down, add a little garlic salt to them, lay them flat in a skillet till they brown off. Just a little something to beef up what you’re having for dinner. We hope that you are getting some ideas of what you can prepare for your family. I think we need to include fish more and more in our diet because it’s really good for us, particularly the salmon. It’s got the right stuff, as they say. And you know what? You’re the right stuff because you stop by every week, because you know what, it just wouldn’t be the same without you here at home. We’ll see you the next time.
- [Announcer] Food provided by McGinnis Sisters Special Food Stores in Brentwood and Monroeville. Taste the world.
- [Announcer] Cornerstone TeleVision wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.
I am going to make this for dinner sometime after I get all the ingredients from the grocery store