Salmon and Spiralized Vegetables + Tomato Pesto Dill Cream Sauce

First, spiralize the 3 zucchini and 1 big rose-orange sweet potato. The vegetable noodles will be very long. Cut them with a scissor if you'd like, then put it in a big roasting pan. Drizzle with 3-4T EVOO and sprinkle with 1t Himalayan pink salt. Roast this uncovered in a 325° oven for 20 minutes. Put this in a smaller baking dish as the bottom layer.

Meanwhile make the sauce. Begin by sautéing the first chopped vegetables in 2-3T EVOO over medium heat, then add the next ingredients. Simmer over low heat until soft, about 40 minutes, then remove from the heat and let it cool 15 minutes or so...

1 lg. purple shallot = 2c chopped

ends of the spiralized vegetables

1/4 lg. green bell pepper

5 big garlic cloves

1T dry parsley

1/3c tomato pesto

1t Penzeys Smoky 4/S

28oz. crushed tomatoes

1t Himalayan pink salt

2T dark Balsamic vinegar

1t sharp Hungarian paprika

Top left filet is skinned

While the sauce is simmering, put 20oz. of salmon filets grey skin side down in a non-stick pan. Slowly heat them until the color changes just a bit. Remove them from the heat, remove and discard the skin. 

Arrange the fish over the vegetable 'noodles.' Add a thin layer of the sauce as it is now. Set aside 1c. After 5 minutes or so, to this cup of cooled sauce, add sour cream, dill and stir this together. 

Shown before final 15 minute heating

2/3c whole fat sour cream

2t dry dill

Spoon the dill cream sauce over everything.Refrigerate the unused tomato-vegetable sauce to use over baked chicken, plain pasta or spaghetti and meatballs, in the future. Cover the sauced fish and vegetable noodles. Heat in a preheated 300° oven, 15 minutes or so before serving. . .Lin

A BIG Allium Adventure!!

I didn't know onions were in the Lily family!  They're also known as alliums!
I've become sort of compulsive with certain cooking and kitchen related things in the past few years.  You know how people collect things. . .well, I have quite the collection of Hall's Superior Kitchenware bowls and covered casserole dishes.  They're useful and so beautiful!  More recently, I've been buying onions, a variety of them, different colors and flavors for different recipes.  I finally decided I need to do something with them since I have so many.  Especially since a couple days ago, a friend and I made tacos for 110 people, and we chopped WAY too many onions. 😜 I split them with another kitchen worker, but we still each had 4c of finely chopped Vidalia onions!!  Oh my!

So today's the day!
I was going to make all these ingredients into a nice pot of soup. Well, problem is, I don't have anyone to share this with right now. I chopped and chopped, then mixed them all together, then realized this is WAY too much onion for a little 3 quart pot of soup! Yup, I was right, it's 12 cups of assorted chopped alliums. Garlic, Purple Shallot, Yellow Onion, Purple Onion, and of course, those Vidalias! 😄

Purple Onion, Vidalias, Shallots, Yellow Onions, Garlic in the center

The greens in the little vase, are mostly for garnish.  Garlic shoots from some cloves I planted, as well as some lovely chives I have in my yard.

I'm using 4 cups of the mixed onions for this recipe, but freezing the remainder in four 2-cup packages for future soups, stews or chili.  

4c mixed, chopped alliums

3-4T butter

2c of filtered, cold water

1t-1T Rosemary Seasoning *

2 sm.-med. new red potatoes

1-2T Chicken Better Than Bouillon

2-4 additional cups of filtered, cold water

½-1c sour cream - optional

'Sweat' the onions and butter over low heat, in a heavy-bottomed, covered pot for about 10 minutes, before adding the next group.  I decided to use a couple scrubbed, finely cubed potatoes to thicken the soup, rather than four, keeping it gluten-free.  Simmer all this together, covered, for another 20 minutes or so, adding more water as needed.

When the potato cubes are soft it's ready to be blended.  An immersion blender is wonderful for this, but you can also use a regular blender.

After blending, check flavors and make any adjustments needed.  Cool for 10 minutes before stirring in the sour cream.  Serve with minced chives, a dab of sour cream and croutons if you want. . .Lin