oil-poached salmon with roasted beets and garlicky cauliflower puree

Hello!

I landed in Glasgow a few hours ago and am now writing you from the the corner of a wood-paneled Scottish pub. I’ve crossed eight time zones on zero sleep--so I’m feeling simultaneously exhausted and hopped up--and I’m starting to wonder if chasing a huge coffee with a glass of red wine is as effective a jet lag cure as it seemed at the outset!

When I first arrive in a new city with no clue of how to get around or where to find a good meal or what to do with myself, I am beset by a panicky sense of dread. Right now, for example, I’m surrounded by gentlemen leafing through the local paper, sipping pints and speaking in a Glaswegian accent so thick I can barely make out what they’re saying. Not only do I feel like a crazy person from the jet lag, I feel completely out of my element. 

But, I think getting outside my comfort zone is important. 

I always come back with new ideas to incorporate into my Seattle life and new creative inspiration. Which is why I’ve been thinking a lot about how to incorporate a sense of exploration into my life even when I’m not traveling--how to experiment and take risks and step outside my comfort bubble at home. 

Lately, I’ve been experimenting with my photography, trying out new techniques to figure out what I find most compelling. Just like traveling, shooting this week’s recipe was uncomfortable at first. I felt overwhelmed and unsure of which direction to go. But once I started trying out different color schemes and compositions and lighting, it started to flow and feel more like an adventure than a nerve-racking foray into uncharted territory. 

It’s a good reminder that taking risks and venturing into the unknown keeps me growing and moving forward, even when I fear I’m sticking out like a sore American thumb and want to slink back to the hotel for a nap.

I’m heading to northern Scotland in a few days for my friend Natasha’s photography workshop. So I’ll be checking in with you next week from the Highlands. Until then, I hope you keep exploring--whether in your own living room or half-way around the globe.

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Oil-Poached Salmon with Roasted Beets and Garlicky Cauliflower Puree

• 1 lb wild salmon (I used king)
• Good quality extra virgin olive oil (amount will vary depending on the size of your pan)
• 1 spring onion, halved lengthwise
• 2-3 sprigs each parsley, tarragon and dill (feel free to substitute other herbs)
• 4 1-inch strips lemon zest
• 1 recipe Garlicky Cauliflower Puree (see below)
• 1 recipe Roasted Beets (see below)
• 2 tablespoon roughly chopped dill, to serve
• 2 tablespoons finely sliced scallion (green part only), to serve
• 1 tablespoon, torn mint leaves, to serve

*Notes: This technique works well with any flaky fish. Cod and halibut are good choices if you prefer whitefish. Feel free to use whatever herbs you like.

Place the salmon in a single layer in a deep saucepan or saute pan. Cover with olive oil and add the spring onion, herbs and lemon zest. Cover and cook on low heat until the salmon is just cooked through. Times will vary significantly depending on the thickness of your salmon, so start checking after 15 minutes or so. Remove the salmon from the oil and transfer to a large plate or platter. Salt generously and set aside to cool. Strain the oil through a fine mesh sieve and discard the solids. (You can use the strained oil in the cauliflower puree and the roasted beets. Refrigerated, the oil will keep for a day or two. Freeze or discard any strained oil that you don’t use within this window.)

When you’re ready to serve, spread the cauliflower puree on a serving platter. Arrange the sliced beets and salmon over the puree. Sprinkle with salt and top with the dill, scallions and mint. Can be served warm or at room temperature. 

Makes 4-6 servings.

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Garlicky Cauliflower Puree

• 1 large head cauliflower (about 2 lbs.), cut into ½-inch pieces

• 1 cup blanched slivered almonds

• Coarse sea salt

• 1-2 cloves garlic

• 2 teaspoons red wine vinegar

• ½ cup good quality extra virgin olive oil (can be the strained olive oil leftover from poaching the salmon)

Place the cauliflower and almonds in a stock pot and add ½ cup water. Bring the water to the boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to medium, cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until the cauliflower is very tender, 30-35 minutes. Remove the lid in the last 5 or so minutes of cooking to allow any water in the bottom of the pot to evaporate.

Transfer the cauliflower and almonds to a blender or food processor along with a generous pinch of salt, 1 clove of garlic and the red wine vinegar. Process on high speed, stopping to scrape down the sides as necessary, until very smooth. Taste and add the other garlic clove if your puree isn’t as garlicky as you’d like. With the motor running, drizzle the olive oil into the blender or food processor in a thin stream. Process until the oil is completely emulsified and the mixture is smooth. Taste and add more salt, if necessary. Set aside.

Makes 4-6 servings.

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Roasted Beets

• 4-5 medium beets (1 to 1 ¼ lbs), greens removed

• Olive oil, for drizzling

• Coarse sea salt

• 1 cinnamon stick

• 1 teaspoon allspice berries

• 2 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed

• 1/2 cup water

• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar, plus more to taste

Preheat your oven to 400°F.

Place the beets in a non-reactive baking dish. Drizzle with a little olive oil. Sprinkle with the salt. Place the cinnamon, allspice and garlic in the dish. Add the water and vinegar. Cover tightly with aluminum foil and roast for 45-60 minutes, until tender at the center when pierced with a paring knife. Set aside. Strain the cinnamon stick, allspice berries and garlic from the juices in the bottom of the baking dish. Discard the solids and keep the beet cooking liquid.

When the beets are cool enough to handle, remove the skins (use latex gloves or paper towels to avoid staining your hands) and cut into quarters or large dice. Place the cut beets in a non-reactive bowl and toss with their cooking liquid. Adjust seasonings, adding more red wine vinegar, salt and olive oil to taste.

Makes 4-6 servings.

smoky calendula margaritas

I just got back from five sun-soaked days in Palm Springs. Five days during which, per our tradition, I ditched my devices, hiked, swam, sunned myself and got what felt like a luxurious amount of sleep. 

All that sleep and sunshine and time away from my computer and phone did something magical to my brain. It afforded me the time and perspective to think. Not about laundry and bills and the rising tide of emails in my inbox as I do in my normal life. But really think--about the bigger picture of my relationships and my work and whether I like the direction things are going. Mostly I do. But I discovered that in a few areas (many related to this blog) I definitely do not. With a little distance and space to connect with myself, I realized I’ve started to feel like a phony in my online existence.

For the past several months, I’ve lost my lifelong joy in cooking. I’m constantly thinking about whether recipes will look good on the blog and on instagram, whether people will actually make them, how difficult they’ll be to shoot--instead of simply what I want to eat. My photography, too, has felt staid and unsatisfying. I feel like it’s become sort of advertorial and aggressively pretty as I’ve been prioritizing turning this space into a full-blown business and growing the blog and my followers on social media. My Instagram feed, the victim of too many online marketing classes, has started to feel impersonal and rigidly formulaic. The whole shebang had started to feel like a rather unfulfilling slog. 

And that, friends, is no good. 

I recently read a post by a woman I follow, who’d decided to take a six-month break from Instagram in order to focus on herself and being a better mom, wife and friend. I found it immensely encouraging to hear about someone else’s struggles with the social media monster. It made me feel I’m not the only one unnerved by my constant desire to find Instagrammable moments rather than be present. 

So it feels important to tell you all about how I’ve been feeling and publicly announce my intentions to keep things a little more real around here. I think it will keep me more accountable (thank you!) and I hope it will help anyone else wrestling with similar demons.

For these reasons, and because I just need this space to feel fun again, I’ve decided to scrap all the advice I’ve accumulated over the past 2 ½ years on how to grow your blog/social media following/online business that doesn’t feel like me. If it feels like an opportunity to grow my skills that will push me outside my comfort zone (like the Oaxaca photography workshop I took), that’s one thing. If it feels cheesy and inauthentic, it’s a no-go. 

I don’t care if posts featuring cakes and cookies and ice cream get more likes. I don’t eat those things very often. I don’t care if the prevailing theory of social media is that you should have a highly-curated feed with lots of negative space and a unified “color story”. I want to post what I find beautiful and what makes me happy, in whatever order I feel like. In general, I want less pretty and more real.

To that end, I plan to free myself from the vice-grip of social media. I want to work on developing a photographic style that feels truer to myself. This week I started reading cookbooks for fun again and choosing recipes that appeal to nothing but my own whims and fancies. It was fantastic. 

I want to focus on the parts of my job that bring me real joy: Travel. Leading retreats and workshops. Meeting and collaborating with new folks. Getting people jazzed and confident to cook for themselves and people they love. 

Connecting with other people and encouraging them to do the same is what gives me the most energy--not learning about SEO or fretting over my social media feeds. This realization feels incredibly liberating, like it deserves a little celebration. So this week, I made some desert-inspired Smoky Calendula Margaritas and toasted my new-found freedom. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted. And that’s definitely something worth raising a glass to.

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Smoky Calendula Margaritas

• 2 tablespoons calendula petals + additional to serve
• ¼ cup flaky salt (I used Maldon)
• ½ cup mezcal
• ¼ cup calendula simple syrup (see recipe below)
• ¼ cup freshly-squeezed lime juice
• ¼ cup freshly-squeezed orange juice
• Lime wedges, to serve

*Notes: I learned on my trip to Oaxaca that the best quality mezcal is clear, not amber. Do yourself a favor and track down some quality mezcal for these margaritas. I learned the hard way that cheap mezcal is not your friend. If you want to wake up without a killer hangover, buy good mezcal. 

- You can buy calendula petals online or from an herbalist or health food store. I bought mine at Rainbow Natural Remedies here in Seattle. Marigold petals will also work. If they come as full flower heads, remove the petals from the stems before proceeding.

To make calendula salt: place 2 tablespoons of the calendula petals in a spice grinder and pulse until roughly chopped (you can also do this in a mortar and pestle or molcajete). Transfer to small and bowl and add the salt. Stir to combine and set aside. Stored in an airtight container, the calendula salt will keep indefinitely.)

To make the margaritas: Pour some of the calendula simple syrup into a small plate with a lip. Transfer the calendula salt to a similar plate. Dip the rim of 2 8-oz cocktail glasses into the simple syrup then place the rims of the glasses in the calendula salt and turn to coat evenly. Set aside. 

In a cocktail shaker, combine the mezcal, calendula simple syrup, lime juice, orange juice and a pinch of calendula petals and shake vigorously over ice for 30 seconds. Pour into the prepared glasses. Top with more ice if necessary. Garnish with a lime wedges and serve.

Makes 2 drinks.

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Calendula Simple Syrup

• 1 cup sugar

• 1 cup dried calendula petals

Place the sugar, calendula petals and 1 cup water in a medium saucepan. Bring to the boil over high heat, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar. 

Remove from the heat and set aside to steep for at least 30 minutes, and preferably for an hour or two. Strain through a fine mesh sieve, pressing on the solids to remove as much syrup as possible. Transfer to an airtight container and store in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.

smoky tomato broth with masa dumplings and black beans

After my trips to Paris and Oaxaca, arriving home in the middle of our depressing political situation and abysmal Seattle weather had me in a proper funk.

The kind of funk that leaves you struggling to get out of bed in the morning. A funk that makes eating cookies for breakfast, lunch and dinner sound like a good idea. The sort of funk that requires spending as much time as possible in stretchy clothing (preferably pyjamas) in order to avoid feeling bad about all those cookies you ate.

But the good news is I think I’m finally emerging from this tailspin. 

Beau once told me about a Kanye interview in which Mr. West declared his personal mantra: “My life is dope and I only do dope things.” Now, when I find myself feeling small or like an impostor or afraid to pursue my dreams, I try to channel Kanye’s manifesto of personal awesomeness. 

To that end, I have started taking better care of myself again. I’m wearing grown-up clothes with zippers and buttons instead of lycra and spandex. I have replaced cookies with home-cooked meals. I’ve booked tickets to go see my best friend and her kidlets in Wichita and to spend some time under the California sun. I’m planning some fun travel around my Paris workshop in May (Hello, Scotland!). I’m organizing volunteers and testing recipes for next week’s Love Trumps Hate fundraising dinner. 

Earlier this week, I wanted to go back to bed and sleep until summertime. Today, I managed to shop for, test and shoot this Smoky Tomato Broth with Masa Dumplings and Black Beans. So things are looking up!

Hoping things are looking bright for you this weekend and sending you a reminder that your life is dope and you should only do dope things!

XO,

Olaiya

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Smoky Tomato Broth with Masa Dumplings and Black Beans

• 1/2 cup dried black beans, soaked and cooked (or 1 can black beans)
• 1 large onion
• 4 dried smoked serranos (or other smoky dried chiles)
• 2 teaspoons whole cumin seed
• 2 tablespoons neutral tasting high-heat oil (I used avocado oil), plus additional for frying the dumplings
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 avocado leaves or 2 bay leaves
• 1 stick canela (Mexican cinnamon, also known as Ceylon or true cinnamon)
• 1 28-oz can whole peeled tomatoes or diced tomatoes
• 2 tablespoons Mexican chocolate or cocoa powder
• 3-4 cups bean cooking liquid or vegetable or chicken stock (preferably homemade)
• Salt, to taste
• Piloncillo or brown sugar, to taste
• 1 cup instant masa harina
• 1 thinly sliced avocado, to serve
• ½ cup crumbled queso fresco (or mild feta), to serve
• ¼ cup cilantro leaves, to serve

*Notes: Home cooked beans are best in this recipe but canned will work in a pinch. 

- I recommend searching out the specialty Mexican ingredients in this recipe if you can. If there’s a Mexican tienda near you, you’ll likely be able to find them there. If not, you can order on-line. I get it if you don’t want to track them all down, but this soup is so much more wonderful and subtle with these ingredients instead of substitutes.

- For the masa dumplings, called chochoyotes, you can fry them as I call for in this recipe or you can cook them in your soup for 10-15 minutes until they’re cooked through. I like the crunch of the fried chochoyotes to add some textural variance, but they’re delicious both ways.

- The broth tastes even better the next day, so make it a day in advance if you have time. The dumplings should be made just before serving.

- I wanted to keep this recipe vegan- and vegetarian-friendly, but you can use lard instead of oil if you want. You can also add a tablespoon of lard to the dumpling dough to make your dumplings a bit more tender. If you have access to the lard left over from making chicharrones, a) you are a very lucky person and b) you should use that.

- To turn this soup into a heartier meal, you can add a poached egg or two or some shredded cooked chicken or pork.

Soup prep
If you've cooked your own beans, let them cool in their cooking water then remove them with a slotted spoon (dumping them into a colander while they’re hot leads to smooshed beans). Be sure to reserve the cooking liquid. If you’re using canned, drain and rinse them before using. Set aside.

Preheat your broiler and line a sheet pan with foil. Peel your onion. Leave the root end intact but trim the hairs down. Slice the onion in half through the root end then slice each half into sixths, so that each section has a little bit of the root holding it together. Place the onion, cut-side-down on your sheet pan and broil until the onion is nice and charred (but not burnt to a crisp). Flip and cook until the other side looks the same then remove from the oven and set aside to cool. (You can do this on a grill heated to high if you prefer.)

Place the smoked serranos in a heatproof bowl and cover with 2 cups of boiling water. Set aside for at least 30 minutes to soften. Do not discard the soaking liquid.

Toast the cumin seeds in a heavy pan over medium-low heat until fragrant and a shade or two darker. Set aside to cool before grinding them in a spice grinder. Set ground cumin aside. 

To make the soup
When the onions have cooled enough to be handled, roughly dice them, discarding the root ends. Dice enough of the soaked chiles to yield 2 teaspoons (discard the seeds unless you LOVE super spicy food). Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a heavy-bottomed stock pot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the diced onion, garlic, avocado leaves and 2 teaspoons of the diced chiles. Cook until the onions and garlic have softened, about 5 minutes) then add the canela and ground cumin. Cook for 1 minute, stirring often. 

Add the tomatoes with their juice, Mexican chocolate or cocoa powder, 3 cups of the bean cooking liquid or stock, ½ cup of the chile soaking liquid and a generous pinch of salt. If you want more spice, add more of the chile soaking water and/or diced chiles. Add piloncillo or brown sugar to taste--you want just enough to balance out the acid in the tomatoes and any bitterness from the chocolate. Bring to the boil over high heat then reduce heat to low and cook, covered, at a bare simmer for 30-40 minutes. 

While the soup is simmering, make the chochoyote (dumpling) dough. In a medium bowl, mix the masa harina, a generous pinch of salt and ½ cup plus 3 tablespoons hot water. Knead until pliable and smooth, about a minute. Form the dough into a ball, wrap tightly with plastic wrap and rest for 30 minutes.

When the broth is done, carefully strain it through a sieve, pressing on the solids to extract as much liquid as possible. If your broth is thicker than you’d like, add a bit more bean liquid, stock or water to thin it. Taste and adjust seasonings. Return to the pot, add the beans, and keep warm while you make the chochoyotes.

Pour high-heat vegetable oil to a depth of 1 ½ inches in a small saucepan. Heat over medium heat to around 325°F. While the oil is heating, cut the dough into quarters and roll each quarter into a log roughly 1-inch thick. Use a knife or bench scraper to cut the log into 1-inch pieces. Roll a piece of dough into a ball then place on your work surface and use your finger to make a deep indentation in the ball. Repeat with the rest of the dough. 

Add some of the dumplings to the hot oil, taking care not to crowd the pan. Fry, turning once, until golden brown, about 4 minutes. Transfer cooked chochoyotes to a paper towel lined plate and salt generously. Repeat with the rest of the dumplings.

Ladle the hot soup into serving bowls. Add a few of the chochoyotes and garnish with avocado, queso fresco and cilantro. Serve immediately.

Makes 4-6 servings.