A lovely, light and lazy dinner

Today was my first day off work AND uni in absolutely ages, and I had a fantastically lazy day. Well, I'd just had 6 days straight of work, so I think I deserved it. The only plans I had made were to cook dinner for my family, as I knew we'd all be home for once. But I hadn't really planned what to cook.

I got up around midday, had the chilli, and decided to go to the movies with my brother. But before going to the film, I had a flick through How to Eat, chose what to make for dinner, and we went to the supermarket. I wanted to get some salmon escalopes, chives, cream and meringues. However, they were out of chives, so I got dill instead. Also, I've never seen fish "escalopes" before, but I assumed that it meant a very thin slice of fish. The girl at the fish counter misunderstood me when I asked her to slice the fish fillets in half - instead of cutting them into thin, thin slices, she just cut them across the middle into fat chunks. But she was so nice and sweet that I didn't want to say anything. And besides, I was in a hurry and didn't want to miss my film. So we just went home, stashed everything in the fridge and went to the cinema.
We saw The 40 Year Old Virgin. It was hilarious. After the film, we went to Max Brenner for some hot chocolates, came home around 7pm, and I started cooking.

150. Escalopes of salmon with warm balsamic vinaigrette
151. Quickly-scaled mont blanc

These recipes are both from the Fast Food chapter, but aren't paired together. I thought they went together well, and they were so easy to make.

I started off by doing the dessert, which just meant putting chestnut purée in some glasses, and topping it with a mixture of whipped cream, rum, sugar and crumbled meringues.


Tin of chestnut purée - $9.36 from The Essential Ingredient. I only used a couple of tablespoons of the stuff, so I want to use up the rest of it soon. Perhaps I'll make a turkey with chestnut stuffing!!


This is what the chestnut purée looks like - it's surprisingly solid stuff, I had to mash it up with a fork before spooning it into my glasses...

Once that was done (and see below for the pictures of the finished product), I could do the fish. To make the fat chunks of salmon into "escalopes", I sliced them with a super sharp knife into thin slices.


"Escalopes"

Then you just cook them briefly in a non-stick pan, cover with chives (or dill, in my case) and pour over a mixture of equal parts balsamic vinegar and olive oil which you've warmed through in a saucepan. I served it with a green salad (by which I mean all the random bits of lettuce slowly dying in my fridge).



The vinaigrette is fantastic with the salmon, as the acidity of the vinegar cuts through the "oily meatiness" of the fish. My mum used some bread to mop up all the juices, but the rest of us were happy just with the salad.

And onto dessert...

Check out these fab martini glasses! I got them for my birthday in April this year, but only took them out of the box today. And you know what, my friends who'd bought them for me had my name engraved on them! How sweet!


Quickly Scaled Mont Blanc

I only made two glasses of the stuff (wonderful though it was), because, in the interest of not becoming a-huge-fat-blog-with-a-crap-wardrobe-and-health-issues, I've decided that from now on, I'm going to restrict portion sizes, especially of desserts. We shared these glasses between the four of us, and even though we probably could have kept on eating had there been more, we were certainly satisfied.