10 Minute Salmon Rillettes

I first discovered Salmon Rillettes via an interview with Eric Ripert. (Rillettes are like a looser and more textured version of Pâté). Ripert's recipe requires poaching the salmon in white wine, which is great, but I cannot be bothered. I've found that using salmon leftovers either from takeout or home made works just as well, and since my kids really like roasted salmon, I just roast extra salmon and use the cooled leftovers the next day for salmon rillettes. It's fantastic gussied up as an appetizer for your next party, or heaped on a bagel for brunch.

Salmon Rillettes in a bowl

Note about Cooking Salmon

The easiest way to make this is to use leftover salmon. If you're cooking your own salmon just for this, then I highly recommend using whatever method you're most comfortable with to cook your fish. That said, the goal is to avoid those hard/dry edges that you often get with improperly cooked fish. I'm talking about that hard and dry garbage that restaurants dump on top of a salad. To me, roasting your salmon is the easiest option. Simply oil the bottom of a cast iron pan and preheat it in the oven to 420 degrees. Once the oven and pan have come to temperature, remove the pan from the oven and carefully place the salmon, skin side down, on the pan. Drizzle a a few teaspoons of oil over the salmon, and then sprinkle about 1/4 teaspoon of corse salt and a few grinds of pepper over top. Cook your salmon to preferred doneness (this depends on the quality of your salmon but I prefer medium rare about 120-125 degrees). Once salmon is cooked, carefully remove the cast iron pan from oven and immeidately remove salmon from pan so that it does not continue cooking. Place salmon in the fridge to cool.

Note about Smoked Salmon

I prefer Nova smoked salmon for this recipe. I wouldn't use a smoked salmon with a strong wood-smoked flavor as I suspect that the smoke would dominate everything else.

Note about Quantity

This recipe makes a lot of salmon rillettes, but it halves easily. If you have a quarter or half pound of salmon in the fridge, just adjust the other ingredients proportionally.

Salmon Rillettes

Adapted from SEAFOOD SIMPLE (2023) by Eric Ripert

Serves 8-10 as an appetizer. Takes 10 minutes to make.

Ingredients

about 14oz or 2 cups cooked salmon (skin and any bones removed). That's about 1 pound when raw)

1-2 tablespoon minced shallot

3 oz smoked salmon

2 tablespoons chopped chives plus 1-2 teaspoons reserved for topping.

1/2 half of a lemon juiced (plus 1/2 lemon in reserve)

1/2 cup mayo (or a combination of 1/4 cup mayo and 1/4 cup crème fraîche)

fine sea salt

1/8 teaspoon ground white pepper or black pepper

hearty crackers, baguette, or bagels for serving

STEP ONE

Mince 1-2 tablespoons shallot and place in a small bowl. Add juice of 1/2 lemon and a pinch of salt and set aside.

STEP TWO

Place cooked salmon in a medium bowl. Use a fork to break up the salmon into bite sized pieces. Set salmon aside. Chop smoked salmon into small bite sized pieces. Then add smoked salmon pieces to the bowl with the cooked salmon. Add your 1/2 cup mayo, shallots and lemon juice, and ground pepper. Stir to combine, then taste and adjust seasoning and maybe add another squeeze of lemon or dollop of mayo.

STEP THREE

If you're going to serve right away, gently fold in your chopped chives and then garnish with your reserved chives. If you're going to serve the salmon rillettes more than an hour or two later, wait to add the chives. Instead, refrigerate the salmon mixture until you're about to serve it and then add it chives. This will keep the chives from looking bruised and sad, and will keep the chive flavor from taking over the whole dish.

Enjoy with crackers, sliced baguette, or bagels. Or be like my kids and just eat it with a spoon. Keeps covered in the fridge for 2-3 days.

Heck Ya! It's Elevated (Easy) Lemon Chicken Time!

Are you ready to grilll!!!!! I'm so ready. For several weeks this winter our grill was litterally incased in ice. I would have gone out and taken a picture but the patio was covered in ice as well and I was terrified of slipping. Anyway, 90% of our ice is melted and it's time to start grilling. (By the way, this recipe also works on the stove top especially if you have a grill pan).

This Lemon Garlic Grilled Chicken is everyone's favorite way to eat chicken thighs. Its flavors are complex enough that you can serve it to company while it comes together quickly enough to be a weeknight staple. The thing that you can do to elevate this recipe is to use good quality dried herbs de Provence. Although by no means necessary, I particularly like using blends that contain a bit of dried lavender or adding a pinch of dried lavender to your standard herbs de Provence blend.

Note about Messy Grilling:

If you don't use a grill basket for your lemon and garlic, then grilling the garlic for lemon chicken is a bit of an art. We don't use a grill basket because we don't want more things to clean. To follow this method you're going to have to be strategic about your placement on the grill so that things don't fall through. Or you can just throw the garlic away and not worry about it. (I usually lose about 1/3 of my garlic in the grill. Shhh don't tell anyone.)

Note about Herb de Provence:

A good herb and spice blend makes an actual difference in your cooking because the better the quality of the herbs were when they were dried, the better they will taste. If you have the option, I really like adding a pinch of dried lavender as it elevates this recipe. You can use a spice blend without it and add your own, or skip it all together. If you don't have herbs de Provence and you don't want to buy anything else, you can just use dried thyme, dried rosemary, and dried oregano mixed together.

Note about What to Serve with Lemon Garlic Chicken

We eat this chicken with everything (including boxed mac and cheese), but we especailly LOVE serving it along side grilled zucchini or other grilled veggies. Just grill the veggies first and set aside while grilling the chicken. If you decide to go all out and serve this meal with some homemade foccacia, call me first and I'll come over for dinner.

Lemon Garlic Grilled Chicken

Significantly Adapted from Jennifer Steinhaur's Weeknight Lemon Chicken breasts with herbs, NYT Cooking

Prep time 10. minutes. Grill time 15 minutes. Time marinating: 2 hours to 1 day.

Ingredients

about 1.5 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/4 cup dry white wine

4 large cloves of garlic

1.5 teaspoons Diamond kosher salt (or 3/4 teaspoon table salt)

1 tablespoon dried herbs de Provence (+1/4 teaspoon dried lavender)

1 large lemon

fresh pepper to taste

STEP ONE

Cut your lemon into thin rounds (between 1/4 and 1/8th of an inch thick and remove any seeds). Smash your 4 cloves garlic with the flat side of a knife. You don't want the garlic breaking up too much, because you're going to grill the bigger pieces.

STEP TWO

In a measuring cup or small mixing bowl add 1/4 cup olive oil, 1/4 cup white wine, 1.5 teaspoons diamond kosher salt, 1 tablespoon herbs de provence and a few grinds of fresh pepper. Mix to combine.

STEP THREE

Using either a large mixing bowl or a gallon sized sealable plastic bag, place your chicken thighs in the bag and then add the lemon, and garlic. Then pour the dressing over top. If using a mixing bowl, mix ingredients together with your hands or seal your freezer bag and massage ingredients around the chicken until evenly distributed.

STEP FOUR

Allow chicken to marinate for 2-24 hours. The longer it sits the better it will taste.

STEP FIVE

Preheat grill on medium high. Spread chicken thighs out on the hottest part of the grill and either space garlic and lemon slices around the grill or add lemon and garlic to a grill basket. Grill chicken for about 7 minutes on each side until tempearture reads 165 on a meat thermometer. Grill lemon slices and garlic until they take on color and begin to blister a bit. Plate and serve!

Weeknight Sheet Pan Ravioli (It's Magic)

I cook a lot AND I'm a messy cook. As a result, I feel like I spend a silly amount of time cleaning up the kitchen. So when I find a recipe that uses 1 sheet pan, can be assembled in 10 minutes, and requires zero extra cleanup, then I'm so happy. When I find out that the whole family loves the recipe enough to have it in regular rotation, I am ecstatic. It's magic. I think that you deserve a little magic too. My only complaint about this dish is that because of the cheese top, it was tricky to take photos of. Please don't let my photos keep you from enjoying this meal. Weeknight Sheet Pan Ravioli has all the warm, cheesy goodness you need on a cold day. And please don't skip the golden raisins, especially if you're using a spicy pasta sauce. The raisins are just such a lovely surprise, balancing out all the salty-cheesy-umami goodness with little pop of sweetness.

This recipe is adapted from Hot Sheet by Olga Massov and Sanae Lemoine. I'm a huge fan of their new cookbook and when I first saw this recipe, I knew I had to make it. That said, their version uses 3 bowls and had some glaring errors. I cut cleanup down to a snap (you'll need zero bowls) and fixed the ratios. The result is the recipe below.

Note about Beans:

We really prefer small white beans for this recipe. Navy beans or any other variety will do. This is not a place to use homemade beans, we're about speed here, so grab a can.

Note about Pasta Sauce:

We love using spicy vodka sauce or spicy arrabbiata for this recipe, but we've also all been very happy with a simple (not spicy) marinara sauce.

Note about Capers:

The original recipe called for capers. I'm generally a fan, but not all of my kids are. We tried this recipe with half capers half not. We didn't think that the capers worked that well. If you love capers, and they would fit with the pasta sauce that you choose to use, then you can add 2 tablespoons when you add the raisins.

Weeknight Sheet Pan Ravioli

Prep time 10 minutes. Cook time 30-40 minutes. Serves 6

Adapted from Hot Sheet: Sweet and Savory Sheet Pan Recipes for Everyday and Celebrations (2024) by Olga Massov and Sanae Lemoine

Ingredients

1 cup (4 ounces) shredded low moisture mozzarella cheese

1/2 cup (1.5 ounces) shredded Parmesan cheese

24-26 ounces frozen cheese ravioli straight from the freezer (packaging amounts vary)

1 can 15.5 ounces small white beans rinsed and drained

1/3 cup golden raisins

2-3 tablespoons olive oil

Fresh pepper to taste

1/3 cup heavy cream

24 ounce jar pasta sauce

chopped parsley for serving (optional)

STEP ONE

Preheat oven to 400 and use olive oil to grease bottom of a sheet pan. Grate 1 cup mozzarella cheese and 1/2 cup of Parmesan, set aside

STEP TWO

Spread ravioli out in an even layer on the greased pan. Spread rinsed and drained beans over ravioli. Evenly spread golden raisins on top of the beans and ravioli. Next, drizzle 2ish tablespoons of olive oil over ravioli-bean-raisins and then drizzle 1/3 cup heavy cream over that. Spoon jarred sauce evenly over the whole thing, and then sprinkle cheeses evenly over that.

STEP THREE

Bake for 30 minutes and check to see if cheese has begun to take on a golden color and sauce is boiling around the sides. Continue baking until cooked through (I've used a meat thermometer to test that ravioli has come to temperature. It always has). Remove pan from oven, sprinkle parsley over top and allow to rest for 5 minutes before serving.