Smoked Salmon Dip

Since we now have a smoker, I figured it's a must to make some smoked salmon, right?  And after you've smoked some salmon, what better than some salmon dip?  I tried my best to replicate Moose Tooth's recipe.  It's not perfect, but it's still darned good.  The dip was a total hit at work!

Ingredients

1/2 fillet smoked salmon, shredded
8 oz cream cheese, room temperature
1 garlic clove, minced
2 T onion, minced
2 t dill
salt and pepper to taste
dash cayenne

Combine all ingredients.  Serve with sliced baguette, crackers, or veggies!

Apple Crisp Cupcakes

A while back I was complaining about how we can't go apple picking up here and how difficult it is to find good apples.  My mom, being a most excellent mother, went out to an apple stand and mailed me a box full of crunchy, fruity goodness.  In fact, she mailed me so many that I could scarcely eat them all!  I need another use for apples.  I considered a pie, but didn't feel like making a crust.  So, apple crisp cupcakes it was!

Ingredients

Two apples, diced
1 T butter
cinnamon and sugar to taste

1 c sugar
1/2 c melted butter, cooled to room temperature
2 eggs
3/4 t vanilla

1 1/2 c flour
1 1/2 t baking powder

2/3 c milk

1/2 c brown sugar
3 T butter, room temperature
1 t cinnamon
1/4 c oats


To start, make the filling.  Combine apples, butter, cinnamon and sugar in a small saucepan.  Simmer over medium heat until the apple soften and the sauce thickens.  Remove from heat and cool.


Preheat oven to 350.  In a large bowl, cream the sugar, butter, eggs and vanilla.  Set aside.  In a small bowl, mix the flour and baking powder.  Slowly add the flour mix to the sugar mix, alternating with the milk.  Blend well.


Grease your muffin tin, or use liners.  Put one small scoop of batter into each cup, just enough to cover the bottom.  Spoon in some of the apple mixture, then top with more batter.


In a small bowl, combine the brown sugar, butter, cinnamon and oats until they are well mixed.  Sprinkle atop the cupcakes.


Bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Halibut with Peach-Pear salsa, Roasted Pear Salad with Peach Vinaigrette

Hurray!  The photo uploader is working again!  I can continue to share my deliciousness with you!

This is a fantastic dish, tasty and healthy, full of fruits and veggies.  As a bonus, it's really easy to do.  I wanted to do a macadamia crusted 'but for this one, but it's really hard to find macadamia nuts in Alaska.  Go figure.

Ingredients

1 halibut fillet, cut into quarters
1 c seasoned bread crumbs (just add some salt and pepper!)
1/4 c diced onion
1/2 jalapeno, diced
1 pear, diced
1 peach, diced

baby spinach
roasted walnuts
dried cranberries
1 pear, sliced

3/4 c EVOO
1/4 c vinegar (changing the type of vinegar changes the final product... experiment!)
2 T peach preserves or pureed peaches

First, prepare the salsa.  Mix the onion, jalapeno, pear and peach together in a bowl.  Refrigerate for at least an hour before serving.

Second, the vinaigrette.  Oil and vinegar do not want to mix, as you will see.  I like shaking them together in an old water bottle to force the mixing.  Blend in the preserves as well.

Now, preheat the oven to 350.  Take the halibut pieces and dip them first into the vinaigrette, then coat them in bread crumbs.  Bake until flaky, approximately 10 minutes per inch of thickness.  While they are baking, sprinkle the pear slices with vinaigrette and roast in the oven.

While the fish is cooking, mix the spinach, cranberries and walnuts together.

To serve, place a bed of salad on the plate along with a few slices of roasted pear.  Top with halibut, drizzle with vinaigrette, and top with salsa.  Enjoy!

Eggplant Caponata

 Burger with eggplant caponata and mozzarella

Dear Blog, I have been neglecting you dreadfully!  I apologize!

You see, Fall is my favorite time of year, but also the busiest.  School has started up, hunting season is in full swing, and college football is rolling again.  Between all of that and my annual fall head-cold, I have been failing in my duties as a blogger.  But no more!  Today, I shall gift you with eggplanty deliciousness!

Earlier in September, two of our friends came up to Alaska to accompany us on our week-long hunting adventure.  We didn't get a caribou, but we did get a bunch of ptarmigan, which were quite tasty.  But I digress.  The day before we left, Stacey made this amazing dish for us.  I'd never had eggplant before, but I was hooked.  This stuff is good on anything!  Toasted bread, as a "salsa" for tortilla chips, and on a burger with fresh mozzarella.  Yummy!

Now, for some strange reason, blogger has changed their photo uploader thingy, and I can't figure out how to work it!  So, picture later.

Note: this recipe yields a TON, even after reducing the eggplant from the 2 called for in the original recipe

INGREDIENTS

1 large onion, diced
1 medium eggplants, diced
4 large cloves of garlic
Water, as much as needed
4 plum tomatoes, diced
2 tbsp virgin olive oil
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Salt
Ground pepper
1 baguette, sliced and toasted

In a large saute pan, over medium heat, add the onions, garlic, eggplant and 1 cup of water on high heat, along with plenty of salt and pepper. Cook until the eggplant has softened, adding more water when necessary so the mixture doesn’t dry out. When the eggplant has absorbed enough water to be soft and well-cooked, add the tomatoes, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, along with additional salt and pepper if necessary.
Lower the heat and simmer the mixture for 10 more minutes, or until the tomatoes have broken down. Remove from the heat and allow to cool to room temperature, and then serve with the toasted baguette slices.

Red Wine Reindeer

I thought I wouldn't be able to post a recipe like this until after the hunt in September!  Yesterday I took a Becoming an Outdoorswoman class on field dressing.  Basically I spent the day with a bunch of other women field dressing a bull and cow elk.  After the class, the instructor gave us some reindeer steaks and ground reindeer from the animals the class before us did!

The steaks spent 24 hours marinading in red wine and garlic.  While the steaks warmed to room temperature, I reduced the marinade with some more garlic, onion, and red pepper.  Then they went to the grill, about five minutes on each side, basted with the reduced marinade.  Fantastic!

Baby Got Back!

 Baby got a Traeger grill, too - finally!  My little Traeger Jr. was delivered yesterday evening, and I promptly set out on a cooking adventure today!  Traegers are pellet grills - they smoke, they grill, and they bake.  Jack of all trades!

For my first Traeger adventure, I went with the classic baby back ribs, with a Cajun twist.

Step 1: Soak the ribs in beer for an hour, turning half way through.

Step 2: Get the smoker going.  I used apple pellets.  Rub the ribs with Cajun seasoning and smoke for 1 hour 45 minutes.

Step 3: In a saucepan, blend your favorite BBQ sauce with some Cajun seasoning and garlic.  Set aside.

Step 4:  Brush the ribs with the BBQ sauce.  Wrap in tinfoil with a little beer.  Return to grill over medium (225-275) heat for another hour and 45 minutes.

Step 5:  Remove ribs from foil.  Grill an additional hour.

Fireweed Custard

This time of year, fireweed is everywhere.  It's a gorgeous plant, one of my favorites.  As it turns out, it's perfectly edible as well.  Pretty flowers, edible... I had to get in on this game.  I've got a few more things to experiment with, but the first thing I did was a fireweed custard.  I adapted the recipe from the fireweed ice cream recipe at livefromalaska.

I gathered my fireweed from Arctic Valley.  I didn't really know how much I needed, so I just picked several dozen stems.  Now, the custard recipe calls for petals only, so once I'd laboriously de-flowered my flowers I ended up with about three quarters of a cup.

Next, I added the cleaned petals to 1/4 sugar and processed them for a few seconds.

The resulting mixture was a rather gorgeous purple, instead of the magenta of the petals.  I added this mixture to 1 cup of heavy cream, 1/2 cup skim milk and 1 tablespoon of honey.  Over medium heat, I kept stirring until the sugar was fully dissolved, then removed to cool.  Meanwhile, I whipped up an egg yolk, then carefully stirred the egg into the cream mixture.  This was then returned to heat, just long enough to thicken, and finally, refrigerated.

Somewhere along the way I lost the nice purple color, but I tried to get it back with some judicious food coloring.

I served this custard layered with chocolate cake.  I wasn't sure how the flavors would work together, so I used a less-chocolatey chocolate cake, but actually I think it would have been even better with a dark chocolate cake - just a hint of bitterness to accentuate the sweetness of the fireweed custard.  The custard cake still won rave reviews from the family, though!