Salmon Florentine in One Pot

A surprisingly old picture of my dad and I--I think this was 7 years ago?

Growing up, I was never good at eating my fruits and veggies--in fact until this past year there were a whole bunch of veggies I was completely convinced were inedible. This might be because the typical vegetable side dish we had as a kid was a can of corn or a bag of frozen peas (I even have a vegetarian sister) or green beans in tater-tot casserole (pretty good actually). The strange thing is that my Dad LOVES all kinds of vegetables, and sometimes would cook some for himself, even though no one else would eat any. I guess this next dish is in his honor, since it features two foods I mostly associate with him: cooked spinach and salmon, and the fact that I'm making it in a Dutch Oven means it pretty much should be named after him.

So here is my second recipe from Glorious One Pot Meals, Salmon Florentine ala Bill. Though my Dad has made me salmon in probably 100 different ways, I'm not sure he's made this way. Maybe he will try it if it turns out well!

Ingredients: 
Olive Oil spry
Spinach--enough to fill the Dutch Oven
4 salmon fillets (around 4 oz each)
1 lemon, thinly sliced
6 cloves of garlic
4-5 tomatoes, thickly sliced
Salt and Pepper 
Italian Seasonings 
Red Pepper Flakes


This is a really easy dish to make, and uses relatively few ingredients. I tossed it together in five minutes or so--I think unwrapping the salmon was the most time consuming part. So you spray your glorious pot with cooking spray, and add a thick layer of spinach (I used a spinach/baby kale mix from walmart). I increased the seasonings from the book, because I thought the ingredients sounded a little bland. So I put the salmon on top of the spinach mix, and sprayed it with cooking spray and liberally seasoned with salt, pepper, Italian seasoning, and red pepper.

Next I sliced the lemon super thin and pealed the garlic. That went in a layer over the salmon and spinach. I have a bigger pot than is called for in the directions so it didn't cover the whole layer, and I placed the garlic on the fillets under the lemons.

This deliciousness is covered by another layer of spinach, which is then covered with thickly sliced tomatoes. I bought WAY too many tomatoes, because the recipe said 5-6 so that is what I got. But I purchased huge beefsteak tomatoes, which were delicious, but enormous. I only used 4, and ate some with salt and pepper without cooking. I seasoned the tomatoes as well, and stuffed some extra spinach in so it was as full as I could get. Then sprayed the lid with oil, covered it, and stuck it in a 450 degree oven for 40 minutes. The fillets were frozen, but this seemed like a long time even so. However, it was perfect when I took it out!


 The spinach had shrunk to half the size as it cooked, but it was deliciously fragrant and fresh! The bigger tomatoes were a good choice because they really held up to the cooking process.

 The Verdict: This is the best thing I've made in a long time. I didn't want to stop eating it, even after I was full. The tomatoes were fall apart delicious, the spinach was lemony, and the salmon tender. There was something delightfully fresh and simple about this dish, though I really wanted more spinach to salmon (which I'm noticing is my complaint about every dish I make!) Next time I might try with a white fish--I have some hake in the freezer that would be good--lower calorie as well!

One Pot Wonder--Chicken Marbella

There are so many recipes in the Glorious One-Pot Meals cookbook that I want to try, that it was hard to narrow it down to the one to try first. I settled on Chicken Marbella, because I had both Brussels sprouts and portobello mushrooms to use. The recipe calls for prunes (my sister says to call them dried plums to make it sound better) which I'm unsure of how I'll like, but the author actually says her husband shares my skepticism for fruit in savory dishes and that he liked this. So in light of trying new things, I'm going with this!

Chicken Marbella (Somewhat adapted from the book to fit my larger pan )
Cooking spray
Chicken breast (another monster one from Costco)
1/4 c chopped, pitted prunes 
1/4 c chopped pitted Spanish green olives
3 TBS capers, with a bit of juice
1/4 c red wine vinegar
1 TBS olive oil
1 C chicken broth (was wine, but I don't ever have wine around)
1 TBS dried oregano
2 TBS finely chopped fresh parsley
6 fingerling potatoes (small)
sea salt
2 portobello mushrooms chopped
7 baby portobello mushrooms chopped
16-20 brussels sprouts (about 12 oz) trimmed and haved lengthwise
3 bay leaves

 I pulled out all the ingredients, and realized that it didn't call for any garlic--which seemed like a travesty, so I pulled out the garlic to add. After setting the oven to 400, I begun chopping with the dried prunes, which I have never ever in my life tried before this. I snuck a teeny piece and it was not bad.

I'm very glad that I finally broke down and bought some new knives a couple of months ago--it has made all of this chopping so much easier to have sharp knives! The prunes, olives, capers, and caper juice were mixed together, and set aside while I prepared the chicken. Since my two chicken breasts were so large (quite the image!), I decided to break them down into smaller pieces to fill up more of the pan.

At that point, I got a call from the Dominican Republic--my mom is finally feeling better after having some kind of tropical fever for several weeks, and we caught up about Thanksgiving goings-on. I'm getting excited to visit them in December for Christmas! Because of the skype call, I didn't get pictures of the rest of the prep, but the prune mix went on top of the chicken. The broth, vinegar, parsley, oregano, and extra garlic and red pepper was mixed and half poured on the chicken. I sliced the potatoes and layered them on top of the chicken slices, and then cut up and layered the mushrooms, and then sliced and covered everything with Brussels sprouts. Bay leaves and the rest of the broth completed the dish, and into the oven it went to cook for 45 minutes.

 The book says it is done when you can smell it outside of the oven, and sure enough when the buzzer went off I could smell it through out the apartment. Here is the finished dish--after I'd checked the chicken was cooked through.

The finished meal--Chicken Marbella

The Verdict: Good, but not great. Some of the chicken was overcooked, and a little dry, even though it basically poached in the liquid. The best bites were those that had the mushrooms, olives, capers, and prunes. Once again I would have liked more veggies to the amount of protein, and I wish I'd gone ahead and added the whole bag of Brussels sprouts! If I made it again, I think I'd marinate the chicken with the prune, olive, caper mix with some of the liquid before cooking, and increase the amount of veggies, and not slice the chicken into strips.

My Glorious Pot!

The next cookbook from my shelf is Elizabeth Yarnell's Glorious One-Pot Meals.  I am so excited about this cookbook, that I went out and bought a special pot to make the recipes in. Yay! I now am the proud owner of a bright shiny blue cast iron pot. The recipes in the book are for a 2 qt pot, to serve 2, but I bought the more standard 5 qt size. I'll just double the recipes and have left overs--I do like to cook meals to last for lunches all week!

This is what my shiny pot looks like--so pretty, and will make yummy meals! I want to make almost all of the recipes in this book--the fish dishes look amazing, as do the chicken ones, I even want to try lamb! Stay tuned for some experimentation with new recipes and my new toy!