Poached Salmon with Primordial Ooze and planned leftovers – Salmon Spinach Quiche recipes

Last week (or was it the week before?), I made one of the kids’ favorites – poached salmon with primordial ooze.

Hmm… I think that name might need some explaining. The sauce is really a tzatziki-type sauce, or maybe a cucumber salad-type sauce. It’s very tasty and complements the salmon just perfectly. But “Mom’s sour cream and cucumber and dill sauce” was getting cumbersome to say, so we decided that we needed a new name. The day we decided that, we were watching something on the Discovery Channel, and they mentioned primordial ooze, and we thought that sounded perfect. So that’s what it is!

Salmon with Primordial Ooze Recipe

Poached Salmon with Primordial Ooze Sauce

4 salmon fillets
1/2 cup of dry white wine (optional)
1 medium lemon
2 cloves of garlic
2 sprigs (or 1 teaspoon if using dried) dill
Salt and pepper

1 English cucumber (or one regular cucumber, peeled and seeded)
1 clove garlic
1 cup sour cream
2 teaspoons dill
Salt

Lemon wedges

Rice (we prefer a wild rice combo that I buy at Costco)

Slice the cucumber and sprinkle liberally with salt.  Place in a strainer over a bowl and let sit for at least 15 minutes. Rinse and squeeze dry in a clean (non-terry) dish cloth. Dice very finely and put in a small mixing bowl. Add the sour cream, dill and garlic. Stir well and refrigerate until dinner, at least an hour.

In a large skillet with a lid, put 1″ of water and the wine. Slice the lemons very thinly and add, peel and all, to the pan. Smash the garlic, but don’t bother cutting it up, and add it and the dill to the water. Salt and pepper the salmon, and add it to the pan, spacing the fillets as well as you can. Bring the water to a boil and then reduce it to a simmer. Put the lid on the pan and cook until the salmon is cooked through and flakes with a fork, about 10 minutes.

Serve hot with the chilled sauce, lemon wedges, and rice.

This time, I cooked an extra fillet of salmon while making dinner, with the plan of making a salmon-spinach salad a couple of days later, but when we got over 2 feet of snow, I decided I wanted something warm for dinner! So I made a quiche instead. I hadn’t ever served quiche to the boys before, and I was a little worried that they’d revolt, but they loved it! Since I’ve always loved quiches, I’m very happy about this development.

Salmon and Spinach Quiche

Salmon and Spinach Quiche Recipe

1 pie crust
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
3 cloves garlic, minced
Pinch of red pepper flakes
1 shallot, diced finely
1 salmon filet, cooked
1/2 pound of baby spinach
4 eggs
1 cup milk

Heat oven to 350°F.

Make your pie crust and parbake it. Set it aside.

In a large skillet, heat olive oil and butter until the oil shimmers and the butter is melted. Add the garlic, shallot and red pepper flakes and cook until the garlic and shallot are translucent, about 2 minutes. Remove the garlic and shallot with a slotted spoon and set aside.

Add the spinach to the pan and stir until the spinach is wilted. Remove from heat.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs and add the milk. Stir in the rest of the ingredients, and pour into the pie crust. Bake at 350° for 35 minutes, or until a knife inserted halfway between the crust and the middle comes out clean.  Let rest 5 minutes before serving.

I served this with some tomatoes that I marinated in balsamic vinegar and olive oil while the quiche was baking. YUM!

And just for fun, here are a couple of pictures I took during that snowstorm:

Doodle shoveling the second morning of the storm (she still had to shovel one more time the next morning)

Our dog, Podkayne, romping in the snow halfway through the storm