A few fish dishes

Hello!  As always, I've been missing in action.  I was going to do a summary of the past few weeks, but we've done some interesting things, so I'll divide the posts up, so you don't get bored reading everything at once.

I'll start with the few days after I left off - which was May 18, I think.
That evening we start off making chocolate truffles.  These are incredibly easy to make - 2 ingredients:  heavy cream and chocolate.  You melt the chocolate with the cream and then chill until you can scoop it and then roll it in cocoa powder, coconut, nuts, whatever you want.  I'm not sure what happened to mine, but they never set up, just big blobs of chocolate.  I've made them before and they are always fine.  The weird thing is I make things at school and can't do it, but I make them at home and they turn out great!  I guess it's the pressure of school (or lack thereof at home) that screws things up.  Anyway, my table mate's turned out good, so this is what they should look like

That night, we also made gumbo - chicken, shrimp, okra, the whole nine yards.  Along with the gumbo we made "dirty rice".  This is similar to the rice pilaf that we make (a lot), but the dirty rice also has chicken livers in.  I tried it and really, really did not like it.  You know me, I'll eat most anything, but I couldn't get around that texture.  

The next night, we did a warm calamari salad.  We roasted red peppers, sauteed the calamari and made a vinaigrette to put over the top.  It's a warm salad.  It was ok - not sure I'd order it, but if you like calamari, you'd enjoy this salad.  The problem with sauteeing calamari is that it can become rubbery very quickly, so you need to watch it carefully.  It's a pretty salad, though, with lots of color in it (which you can't tell from the picture)

Along with the calamari salad, we made potato crusted salmon.  You take salmon filets, wrap them in thinly sliced potatoes and sear them until the crust is brown.  It's quite a bit of work, but really, really tasty.  Underneath is a beurre rouge sauce - butter and red wine reduced down.  We also did braised leeks to lay the fish on - we've made those several times and I love them.  This was a really nice dish, but would be an expensive one in a restaurant because of the effort.

More to come soon - hope you are having an exceptional weekend!