Chef Michael Salmon - Join me in my Kitchen
Appetizers
We make these Spanish meatballs as an appetizer on our Foodie trip to the Catalonia region of Spain, but it could also be served as a main course for four people. Many of the sauces in Spain feature nuts as a main ingredient and these meatballs are served in a tasty meat broth that is thickened with ground almonds.
My roasted eggplant timbale is a recipe I feature on my Foodie trips to Sicily. It combines roasted eggplant and tomatoes with fresh mozzarella and fresh basil and is quite simple to make. The completed timbales are topped with a light balsamic vinaigrette.
Polenta is so versatile and can be served soft right after it is cooked on the stovetop or it can be formed and chilled to create a firm cake that can be crisped in hot oil. In this recipe I serve crisp polenta with wild mushrooms in a white wine-cream sauce.
Pork is the perfect meat to match up with my Caribbean spice mix. This recipe is from my first cookbook and was featured on my restaurant menu for the first few years. Caribbean dishes like this one really highlight intense flavors and bold-bright colors.
Brushcetta comes from the Italian word “bruscare,” which translates to “to roast over coals,” and refers to the toasting of the bread. Thick, larger slices of bread are grilled, rubbed with garlic and drizzled with extra virgin olive oil. Traditional Bruschetta stops there, but it has become popular to top the toasted bread with everything from tomatoes and basil, to meats and seafood.
Stuffed mussels make a great appetizer and even work as a nice Hors d’Oeuvres. They are rather simple to make, composed of two fillings. The cooked mussels are combined with chopped Serrano ham, garlic and tomatoes and spooned into the shells. They are topped with the second filling, a Mussel-White Sauce (bechamel) made with the reserved cooking liquid from the mussels. The mussels can be made a day ahead of time and finished at the last minute in a frying pan.
For this recipe I took a traditional Asian dish, shrimp toast, and used Maine lobster to create a recipe with a Maine twist. The shrimp version (also explained in the recipe) is much easier and quicker to produce since the meat is easily removed from its shell, or can be purchased pre-peeled. Raw lobster meat sticks to the shell, so in this recipe I quickly blanch the lobster just enough to release the meat from the shell.
This is one of my favorite appetizers from our trip to Tuscany and combines some of my favorite ingredients; Prosciutto, Fresh Mozzarella (use Buffalo-milk Mozzarella if you can find it), ripe tomatoes cooked down into a thick paste and fresh basil. Bake for just 15 minutes to soften the cheese, crisp the Prosciutto and meld the flavors. Make sure you have plenty of crostinis to “mop” up the sauce. A spoon is often needed at the very end to get every bit of goodness.
Zucchini blossoms are always a surprising hit on our Foodie Trips to Tuscany and Umbria. More often than not, they are a new experience for our travelers. In Italy, they are a mainstay. The male flowers grow on a short stem and are mostly a by-product (leave a few on the plant for pollination). Female flowers grow off from the zucchini fruit itself, and can be used for this recipe, but you will be sacrificing the fruit if you harvest them too early. Zucchini blossoms most simply are dipped in a batter and fried. I like to fill the flowers with a vegetable-ricotta filling before battering them.
These lobster cakes are quite different from your usual “crab cake”. When I created this recipe, I wanted to create a seafood cake that showcased the two main ingredients of lobster and avocado without the distractions of binders and heavy seasoning. When you make these cakes, you will notice that you have to spend a little more time forming and maintaining the shape of the cakes. There is very little binder in this recipe which is part of the reason they are so good. So take your time and be patient…and enjoy!
Join me in my kitchen as I prepare recipes from my two cookbooks, European foodie trips and explore new inspirations.
