Adventures in Cooking

We made another home run dinner (adapted from the South Beach diet cookbook) last night.  It was quick, it way easy, and it was adventurous.  This one is such an interesting recipe; a completely ingenious mix of distinct flavors that I would never have thought to combine.  Salmon, mint, and feta?  It sounds a little scary.  But I promise the flavors come together to complement each other so well!  Instead of tasting each individual flavor, they blend together perfectly to create something entirely new and delicious.  It tastes very fresh and light and slightly exotic.  Recipe below (for the daring and stout-of-heart):

Adventurous Pasta Salad

I apologize for the sub-par photo.  I forgot to take any pretty ones last night.  This is a shot of the leftover pasta that I ate for lunch today.  It was still just as good, if slightly less photogenic.

Ingredients:
1 lb. salmon fillet (skin removed)
8 oz. (shaped) whole wheat pasta
1/2 cup peas (fresh or frozen)
1/2 cup reduced fat feta cheese
1/4 cup chopped fresh mint
1/4 cup reserved pasta cooking water
Juice of 1 fresh lemon
Sprinkle of salt

Directions:
Heat oven broiler.*  Cover a pan with foil and coat lightly with cooking spray.  Plop the salmon down on the pan (no need to season it) and put it under the broiler until lightly browned and flaky on top.  Took about 12 minutes in our oven.  Could be a couple minutes over or under in yours.  Just watch it.  When it's done, let it cool a bit, then cut it into bite sized chunks and put it in a large bowl.

While that's cooking, boil a big potful of lightly salted water for your whole wheat pasta and cook it based on the package directions.  The recipe says to use "shaped" pasta.  Not quite sure what that means.  We used whole wheat rigatoni, but I think anything that's not long and stringy would do just fine.  Add peas for the last 2 minutes of cooking.  When pasta and peas are done, strain them and add them to the bowl with the salmon.  Don't forget to reserve 1/4 cup of the pasta cooking water for the sauce.

Whisk together (I love the word whisk) the feta, mint, pasta cooking water and lemon juice to make a sauce. Pour it over the salmon, pasta and peas and toss it all together.  Add a dash of salt (to taste), serve it up and enjoy.

*Side note: last night was the first time we ever used our oven broiler.  Up till now, we thought it didn't work so we always just turn the heat up really  high and over-bake when a recipe says to broil.  Last night I was frustrated and I turned the knob really hard until it suddenly clicked and when I opened the oven door behold, the broiler had fired right up.  Our fish tasted so much better properly broiled.  Moral of the story:  if you've got an old damn oven like I do, make sure you turn the knob until it clicks when using the broiler setting.