Salmon and Socca

Yesterday, just as I was thinking that I was totally uninspired to make dinner, I got a call from a friend asking for chickpea flour.

I just happened to have some.

Socca, she said. Have you made it?

And why else would I have chickpea flour?

Socca is a pancake, nutty, thicker than a crepe and yet somehow more delicate. Gluten free, egg free, dairy free, it is an allergists dream. It's also easy, once you have the chickpea flour, and quick. The batter is more forgiving than crepe batter, and the pancake -- it's traditional street food in Southern France and Italy -- meant to be cut in triangles and eaten scattered with pepper.

As someone who rarely gets pasta, or bread, or a pizza, however, I tend to use food of this nature as a conveyance. It's highly personal. When I first read a recipe for it, by Mark Bittman, I topped it with everything. Shrimp, rosemary, a drizzle of walnut oil...my tastebuds remembered.

I just happened to have some leftover salmon, and made a bit of saag with broccoli rabe and spinach. It all married quite well. In fact, it marched down the aisle on its own.

Socca

1 cup chickpea flour
1 cup water
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Mix ingredients and let sit at least 30 minutes. Heat a griddle or medium skillet until hot and swipe with ghee or butter. Pour in a half cup of batter and swirl until it covers the bottom, pouring out the excess. Cook over medium high heat until light gold, about 3 minutes, then flip and brown the other side. Keep warm until done. Load with salmon, tomato and asparagus, drizzle with sea salt and asparagus and broil for five minutes, until warm.

Or, cut in triangles and dip into green saag, below.

Green Saag

4 cloves of garlic, peeled
2 inch knob of ginger. peeled
1 bunch broccoli rabe
2 handfuls of spinach
sea salt
olive oil

Finely chop garlic and ginger in a food processor and set aside. Boil water with salt sprinkled in, add broccoli rabe and boil two minutes. Add spinach and wilt an additional 30 seconds. Drain in a colander and then process in food processor. Heat a tablespoon of oil and saute ginger and garlic until limp. Add the processed broccoli rabe and spinach and stir until heated through. Serve warm.

Enjoy!

Jaime's salad

A friend of mine recently lent me Jaime Oliver's "Jaime's Dinners," and I am pretty sure I could have dinner with him every night. His sensibility is much like mine, in that healthy, fresh ingredients are the centerpiece, but as to what you do with them: anything goes. He follows a heady spinach cannelloni with an exotic laska, or coconut milk stew. He creates dinners in five minutes, for those who just have a jiff, or luxuriates in the hours it takes to braise tender chicken. He campaigns for healthy, delicious school lunches.

And he treats vegetables like individual primadonnas, accentuating their positives, masking their negatives and extolling their originality and overall worthiness. Take for instance, a dish he calls Keralan salad, though he acknowledges monkeying with it so considerably one might never actually find in in Kerala (which is in India). I further monkeyed with it considerably (I swear I bought the coconut, but couldn't for the life of me get it to shred properly, so ended up tossing on some frozen, and much less than he), though I hope he would still like it. I know we did.

Monkey Salad on Sesame Pan Fried Salmon
Serves 2-3
adapted from Jaime's Dinners

salad
2 red peppers
1 ripe mango
bunch cress, about 2 cups
1/4 cup shredded unsweetened coconut
1/2 cup fresh cilantro leaves

Cut the pepper into quarters, seed and slice thinly. Slice the mango into like thin slices. arrange on cress and top with coconut and cilantro.

dressing

ginger, about 2 tablespoons grated
zest and juice of 2 limes
3 teaspoons olive oil
pinch of sea salt
1 teaspoon rice vinegar

Chop the ginger and zest in a small mini-chopper, add rest of the ingredients and whiz to creamy.

salmon
about 1 pound of salmon filets
sea salt
sesame oil

Heat a half inch of sesame oil in a non-reactive skillet and sprinkle in a pinch of salt. When salt sputters, put the salmon in the pan, skin side down. Saute for two minutes, flip and remove skin. When salmon is desired doneness (about 7 minutes for pink), remove from pan.

To serve:

Toss salad with dressing. Put a salmon filet on each plate and top with salad.

Sante.