Prepare a Beautiful Dinner made with Fresh, Simplistic Ingredients

I began with this recipe for Grilled Salmon with Lime Butter Sauce from the Epicurious website.  I then re-worked the recipe and served this meal for dinner:

Grilled Salmon Fillets & Zucchini with Citrus Dressing and Green Salad with Ginger Dressing

Ingredients:

• 2 large Salmon Fillets rinsed with cold water, patted dry and sprinkled lightly with salt & pepper.
• 6 baby (small) Zucchinis with ends cut off & sliced lengthwise (you will get about 4-5 slices from one small zucchini)
• 1 Lime washed/scrubbed, sliced in half & juiced with a citrus reamer
• 2 Lemons washed/scrubbed, sliced in half & juiced with a citrus reamer
• 1 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 2 large Garlic Cloves peeled

First, prepare the Citrus Dressing:

In a bottle with a tight fitting lid that is easy to shake add:

Olive Oil

Garlic-pressed

Juice of the Lime and Lemons (about 1/2 cup)

1/4 tsp (or to taste) Salt

1/4 tsp (or to taste) Pepper

Cap and shake well

Cooking Instructions:

• Heat up your grill, get it nice and hot.
• Using a grill tray (the style that I use has the small holes in the bottom) first cook the zucchini, flip and grill both sides until it begins to soften, when it starts to turn a nice brown color brush each side carefully (the dressing will cause the flames to flair up momentarily) with the citrus dressing.  Transfer cooked zucchini to a tray and keep warm in the oven on low heat until the fish is cooked.
• Use a grill cleaning brush to whisk away any zucchini bits, using your tongs, move the grill tray to a part of the grill that is not receiving direct heat/flame.  Brush with olive oil and return to cooking area, getting it nice and hot again.
• Grill salmon fillets flesh sides down for 4 minutes, then turn them over and cook for 4 more minutes.  Brush lightly with citrus dressing, flip and cook for 1 minute.  Repeat for the other side.  The fish should now be cooked to perfection.

Serve the grilled salmon fillets along with the grilled zucchini (citrus dressing on the side) and a healthy green salad tossed lightly with a ginger dressing, we used Makotos.  This meal looks very pretty plated on simple white dinnerware.

Download grilled_salmon_zucchini.doc

Thought & Tips:

I think that the original recipe from Epicurious sounds absolutely delicious, the first reason that I immediately decided to put my own twist on it was the amount of butter and salt that it called for.  I am not anti-butter (I am anti-margarine though), but whenever I can substitute extra virgin olive oil in a recipe that calls for butter or another oil, I always do so.  At this point, I knew that I would be drafting a recipe to suit my taste, so then I just went a head and tweaked a bit more. 

I did not have enough limes for the recipe, hence the use of lemons and I made double the dressing because I wanted to use it for the zucchini also.  I actually had quite a bit of the citrus dressing left and used some of it on my salad this afternoon after returning from the gym.  It was very refreshing, completely delicious and I think it would be great drizzled over a dish of angel hair pasta topped with a bit if fresh tomato, basil and some of that tasty left-over grilled zucchini.  I could think of plenty of uses for the citrus dressing, but you could cut that recipe in half-or grill more salmon and zucchini-which I could eat (grilled zucchini) every single day of my life!