Simple Food, Simply Cooked

Woke up this morning not feeling hungry, so fasted until dinnernoms. Then felt like having simple food, simply cooked, so settled on some seared salmon following (mostly) Julia and Jacques: Cooking at Home (Amazon link here)and adding pine nuts and a second course of salad with a complimentary dressing. The Salmon follows the Julia and Jacques recipe except that I used ghee instead of butter; added about 1/3 cup pine nuts at the same time as the onion; and cooked the salmon for only 4 minutes. Picture above shows the mis en place. Picture below shows the finished fish with the sauce poured over.Instructions for the salad dressing: For each serving, mix 1T olive oil, 1t horseradish, 1t hot mustard (I used coleman's) 1t dried sage and 1T buttermilk. It is the perfect foil after having had the fish. Sage, mustard, and horseradish are critical. You could substitute yogurt or sour cream for the buttermilk. Picture below shows the salad.

Eating Notes: Phil and I both felt like we could taste each of the components really well and that they blended perfectly. While musical piece traditionally come in three movements, this dinner was in two. The first movement was the salmon, with capers, pine nuts, onion and ghee all contributing distinct notes but coming together cohesively. The mustard-horseradish-buttermilk dressing of the salad provided a direct link back to the first movement of the fish course, but the leafy crunch of the salad left us feeling decisively satisfied at the end.