Baked Salmon with Lemon Pepper Seasoning

My favorite quickie meal is baked salmon with lemon pepper seasoning, Scrambled Egg Omelet, rice, and Sauteed Bok Choy. There's just something about those combinations of flavors that just makes me happy.


I've mentioned the baked salmon with lemon pepper seasoning before when I also baked broccoli and made Kinpira (Japanese Burdock and Carrot Matchsticks). The latter recipe really needs to be redone, but as I make the baked salmon much more often, it's about time the recipe, such as it is, gets newer photos and a separate post.

Salmon and Dill Mini Tarts

In December, I plowed my way through all seven seasons of "Gilmore Girls." I had forgotten how much I loved that show -- the quick talking, the pop culture references, the quirky townspeople, the grumpy Luke, and the relationship between Lorelai and Rory. One thing that really bothered me though was that Rory only applied to Yale and Harvard, as if it was a given she'd get in. Just because she was smart doesn't make that a given. She only did newspaper, and she wasn't even the editor. And one day hammering walls for Habitat for Humanity doesn't cut it for volunteer work. Sooo unrealistic. As if the show was realistic anyway. Ha!

Remember in Season 6, episode 5, "We've Got Magic to Do," in which Rory and Lorelai are on the outs because she wanted to drop out of school and moved into her grandparents' pool house and worked for the Daughters of the American Revolution and hosted a WWII-themed party? She served salmon tarts. Salmon tarts! I couldn't get the idea out of my head. (Also, did you know Season 6 is the only one that doesn't have English subtitles? Only Spanish and French. My DVD player sometimes makes the sound go in and out, so I like to have subtitles on just to make sure I catch everything. Watching "Gilmore Girls" with Spanish subtitles sure was an interesting experience.)

So recently when I was making my standard Baked Salmon with Lemon Pepper Seasoning, I decided to use the leftovers to make these salmon and dill mini tarts. Add a bit of sour cream and cream cheese to the salmon and baked them in puff pastry with another dollop of sour cream and dill on top.

Serve these as appetizers for a dinner party and they'll go just like that. I liked them best when the puff pastry and salmon filling were still warm, to contrast with the fresh coolness of the sour cream and dill, but they tasted just fine when cooled too.

Deviled Eggs with Dill and Sour Cream

No matter how pretty, I still needed to figure out what to do with half a dozen Veggie-dyed Crackled Eggs.



While my normal approach to deviled eggs is to make Triple-Deviled Eggs with Black Pepper, Paprika, and Sriracha, I wanted to try something a little different. Just the simple additions of dill and sour cream provided tang and freshness to this classic appetizer.

Vegetable-Dyed Crackled Eggs

When my brother and I were little, our mom helped us make those shrink-wrapped images to wrap around eggs for Easter. She also hid chocolate eggs for us to find. I wonder where my mom got the idea? From the nuns who sponsored us? Or the parishioners who taught my mom and aunts how to make Christmas stockings? It's funny to think about it now, these little rituals introducing us to American pop culture.

It's been years since I made eggs for Easter, but ever since I saw the colorful crackled eggs on Barefoot Kitchen Witch, I knew I wanted to dye them with vegetables for a more natural effect. Beets were an easy given. Remembering the vivid purple of my Mashed Okinawan Sweet Potatoes, I hoped for a similar result, but it was a rather disappointing light blue-green. I decided to use turmeric to add a third color into the mix, and that ended up being my favorite.

My brother said they looked like dinosaur eggs. And I elicited "Ooohs" out of both Pablo and the niece when I peeled the eggs in front of them. Just a fun project to try without any artificial colorings.