salmon cakes over creamy corn in a tarragon sauce

• 1.5 pounds salmon (fresh, frozen, or canned will work)
• 1 egg
• bread crumbs
• fresh parsley, chopped
• 1 bag frozen sweet corn
• garlic, chopped
• heavy cream
• Dijon mustard
• fresh tarragon, chopped fine

To make the sauce, whisk together about equal parts mustard and cream. Add tarragon and refrigerate. Chop salmon into small pieces, mix together with egg, bread crumbs and parsley. Form into cakes slightly smaller than the size of your palm. In a skillet over high heat, fry the cakes in a swirl of oil for about 1+ minute per side. Once all have been browned, transfer to a 275 degree oven in a covered dish. Meanwhile, saute the garlic (to taste) in a little olive oil over a medium high flame for about 3 minutes. Add corn and continue to cook for about 5 minutes until corn is cooked through. Reduce flame to medium and add a touch of heavy cream. Season to taste with coarse salt and pepper and add any of the parsley or tarragon if you have any left over. Assemble by placing corn on plate, placing salmon over it and drizzling it in the sauce.

The dish: Much like the crab cake sandwich I posted, these cakes are pretty forgiving about exact measurements and spices so feel free to experiment and improvise. The corn was a nice touch, but the sauce was the star of the show. I'm not sure I ever used tarragon before, but I got the idea from something I read and the result was great. To create the cool drizzle effect I used one of those plastic condiment bottles people put ketchup in for picnics and just chopped a little off the top for the herbs to flow through. You can find those at the dollar store (Sam's dollar is the best around if you're local to the New Windsor area) and they're great to have on hand for such occasions. This entry is a little out of order as the cakes were actually served as a appetizer to our meal with the rents, but whatever. You could really serve this as a main dish just by increasing the portion sizes a bit.

Tuscan chili

• 4 cans cannelini beans, drained and washed


• 1 bag frozen chopped spinach


• 1 jar sun dried tomatoes, drained of oil


• 2 bell peppers, diced (I prefer yellow and orange)


• 3 cloves chopped garlic, or 3 tablespoons prepared garlic


• 3 tablespoons prepared pesto


• 4 links sausage


• 1/2 cup of vegetable stock


• chopped fresh parsley

If using raw sausage, brown meat in skillet and slice. If using cooked sausage, slice meat, then combine all ingredients except half of fresh parsley in crock pot (yeah, I'm that guy), season with dried Italian sounding herbs (look for lots of vowels- I used oregano), and cook on low for 8 hours. Garnish servings with fresh parsley.

The dish: I'm not really sure what makes a chili a chili, although typing this I'm inclined to think the presence of chili peppers does, but whatever. This is a great meal that has a chili-like satisfaction to it. Beans, peppers, meat- other than the Italian twist it's straight up chili. Like the more traditional variety of chili you can notch up the spice on this by adding some hot peppers, you can even find them Italian style if you wish to remain true to the name. If you're reading this and know me, you know the one thing on the planet that I CANNOT STAND is green peppers, which is fine because the yellow and orange ones really give off nice color alongside the green spinach and white beans. I used regular Italian sausage, but you could just as easily use a nice chicken sausage or no meat at all and this dish would satisfy. If you don't already own one I highly recommend picking up a crock pot as there is no way that we'd have a hot dinner half the time if we just didn't walk into it at the end of the day.