A Cedar Plank New Year's Eve

Since we live so close to the mess that is Times Square, we have spent the past few New Year's Eves at home, enjoying the fruits of our cookbook project.  Tonight A decided to make cedar plank salmon with green lentil salad, and it was a delicious end to our fabulous food year!

We went shopping yesterday to pick up most of the ingredients, since the only things the recipes called for that we had at home were salt, pepper and olive oil.  Our current olive oil bottle didn't even have enough for these recipes, so we finally got to break open our special bottle of olive oil that we brought back from Greece last year.

Clockwise from top left: the olive oil we brought home from Greece; roasted red peppers and sherry vinegar; Norwegian salmon fillet; green lentils; chopped fresh basil; and shallots.

Our main course was cedar plank salmon:

On the cedar plank, fresh from the oven

The salmon recipe called for the following ingredients:

• Salmon fillet ($25.98 for 1.5 lbs)
• 1 lemon ($0.89)
• Basil (used about 1/4 of the package, $1)
• Salt (we already had this, $0)
• Pepper (we already had this, $0)
• Olive oil (we already had this, $0)

The funny thing here is that the salmon is supposed to marinate for about 2-3 hours before being put into the oven. A didn't quite read that part so he had to rush home early from work to prepare everything. But honestly, he should have been home long before he left. The marinade consists of the olive oil, juiced lemon, salt, pepper, and the basil. Everything is combined in a bowl and the salmon is plopped in.

Luckily, A did actually read the fact that the cedar plank needs a lot of time to soak in water so he set that before leaving for work. The instructions say to soak for at least half an hour, but he ended up soaking it for... 10 hours? Suffice it to say, it was well hydrated. After marinating for a few hours, A heated the plank in the oven, layered on the salmon, and baked away.

Somehow A managed to bake these salmon pieces perfectly. Nice and pink on the inside and flaking perfectly off the skin. They had such a clean flavor to them because of their simple preparation, but they were still so full of flavor.

For the side dish, A made the green lentil salad from the Eat Well cookbook (the same cookbook that M used for her cookbook project in January).

For the green lentil salad, we needed:

• Green lentils (free due to error*, $0)
• Shallots (free due to error*, $0)
• Roasted red peppers (1/2 the jar, $1.60)
• Sherry vinegar ($6.99 for the bottle, but only used a small amount)
• Cilantro ($1.99 for the bunch, maybe $0.25)
• Olive oil (we already had this, $0)
• Salt (we already had this, $0)

* We got all of these ingredients at Whole Foods. Our cashier made so many mistakes, and they were still there after we pointed them out. We went to customer service for help and they ended up giving us the lentils and shallots on them, since he had charged us for tomatoes and bottle deposits instead.  If we had paid for them, they wouldn't have been more than a few dollars, total.

The long part of this dish is cooking the lentils. After rinsing the lentils and boiling the water, the lentils have to simmer for about 20 minutes. Other than that it was a lot of shallot cutting, roasted red pepper slicing, and cilantro mincing. Now, roasting the red pepper could have been a manual process, but A really didn't feel like attempting that tonight so he went with the jarred variety. After the lentils were cooked, they were drained to allow for some cooling. While they were cooling, the shallots were sauteed with olive oil to brown and caramelize. After the lentils cooled enough, the shallots, red peppers, vinegar, olive oil, salt, and cilantro were mixed in.

This was such a clean tasting dish that we both loved. It had a great balance between acidity from the vinegar and the added salt. The shallots added a nice texture and some sweetness. The roasted red peppers added some nice smokiness, and the cilantro added some nice spice to round out the dish.

We picked the lentils because they were described to be a good fit with a broiled salmon with lemon. Our cedar plank salmon with lemon seemed close enough, and in the end they paired perfectly. The meal just felt like it was a complete match.

The entire dinner, for just the cost of the ingredients we used, was a little over $30. Even though it seemed like an expensive meal when we were purchasing the salmon, it's still much less expensive than it would be for both of us to go out and get a good seafood dinner.  Most of the dinner cost was the salmon itself.  Even if you added up everything we bought for the meal, since it becomes a sunk cost after this, it's still under $45 and still less than eating out for New Year's Eve.  It was also much healthier than most restaurant salmon dishes, so we win in every way.  It was a successful cookbook project and great end of year meal!