Salmon Croquettes with Dill Sauce

My mom used to make salmon patties (she never called them croquettes) and they were actually a lot like these, so I was a little surprised to find them in a book called Soul Food Love.

But I hadn't made them in quite a long time, so I figured I'd give them a try. I always liked them, but they're just not something I think of very often.

For more about the book, I did a review over on Munching on Books.

The one difference between mom's recipe and this one - besides the name - is that mom served hers with ketchup. Which sounds weird, if you think about it. But it totally worked.

On the other hand, the dill sauce works just fine, too. I thought it was a touch heavy on the mustard, so I suggest that you start with less mustard and add more until it's the way you like it.

The recipe as written was intended to serve 8, so I cut it in half, which was pretty easy to do. I ended up with quite a bit of the leftover dill sauce once the patties were gone. I think about half of the sauce recipe would have been enough for all of the salmon - but I'll let you decide on that. I guess some folks might want a lot more sauce.

Salmon Croquettes with Dill Sauce
Adapted from Soul Food Love by Alice Randall and Caroline Randall Williams

1 1/2 cups plain Greek yogurt or sour cream*
1/4 cup Dijon mustard
6 springs fresh dill, chopped
2 14.75-ounce cans salmon packed in water**
4 celery stalks, finely chopped
1 large onion, chopped
4 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 teaspoons salt (or to taste; I used less)
1 tablespoon pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
Bread crumbs, optional***

To make the dill sauce, whisk the yogurt, mustard, and dill in a small bowl. Set aside.

Drain the salmon an remove and discard the skin and bones. (If you're using salmon from pouches, just drain the small amount of liquid, since there are no bones or skin bits.)

Mix the salmon, celery, onion, eggs, salt, and pepper in a bowl. Form the mixture into patties the size you like. I liked smaller patties - and they held together better. The recipe called for 8 patties from the full recipe, and I had about 10 of them from half of the recipe. Do what you like!

Add the olive oil to a large pan and heat on medium-high. When the oil is hot add the patties. Cook until well-browned on one side, then flip and brown well on the second side. Figure about 5 minutes per side.

Serve the patties with the dill sauce.

If you're not into creamy sauces with fish, a squeeze of lemon over the patties would work well, or serve them with lemon wedges.

Or, they'd also be good with some hot sauce - either straight-up, or perhaps a sriracha mayonnaise or even a salsa.

Mom served hers with ketchup. So ... once they're on the plate, it's up to you.

* The recipe called for plain yogurt or fat-free sour cream. I'm not a big fan of fat-free sour cream,
but if you like it, go ahead and use it.

I used part Greek yogurt and part regular sour cream.

** I prefer the salmon in the pouches, There's very little liquid, and the skin and bones have been removed already. The pouches I saw were 5 ounces, so 3 pouches was enough for 1/2 of this recipe, which was what I made.

*** Although the recipe said that bread crumbs were optional, I didn't see any way this was going to hold together without them. The recipe suggests 3/4 cup for the full recipe, but use what you need to keep it from being too wet, and so that it sticks together.

I received this book from the publisher for the purpose of a review - which I've already done. I was not obligated to also post a recipe.

Chicken Taco Meatballs

There was a time when I preferred my cookbooks to be all-encompassing. I wanted to have one book - or maybe two or three, for variety's sake - that would have appetizers, breakfasts, main dishes, desserts, and side dishes all in one neat little package.

And while you're at it, give me a smattering of Italian, Tex-Mex, Chinese, barbecue, and pickling, too.

Those books are great for a beginning cook or for someone who doesn't have much storage space for books. But the more I cook, the more I want details. Don't just give me one recipe for enchiladas, give me a variety of styles and sauces. Don't just give me Northern Italian - let's talk about that boot, too.

So when Global Meatballs landed on my doorstep, I did a little dance. I like meatballs. I like the idea of meatballs. But to be honest, most of the time my meatballs are either Italian or they're similar to my meatloaf recipe - an all-purpose, inoffensive ball of meaty goodness in search of a sauce.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that these may be globally-inspired meatballs rather than meatballs made in each country.

But I'm fine with that. I'm also fine with the fact that not all of the meatballs are meat. There are vegetarian balls, as well. I've got beet balls bookmarked. Maybe because I love beets, but also because it's so quirky to take a round vegetable and shred it, just to turn it back into a ball.

I've made a few recipes from this book and I have a whole bunch more bookmarked, like potato balls with a ricotta cheese filling, buckwheat balls with a mushroom gravy, and a bahn mi meatball sandwich.

As you can see, the book isn't just about making a bunch of meatballs, but it's also about how to dress them up for serving.

So far, my favorite recipe is the Taco Chicken Meatballs, probably because it's not something I ever would have thought of. The meatballs are served with a tomato-salsa-spiked rice, but they're also pretty good all by themselves or stuffed into a tortilla. Think about that. Taco Chicken Meatball Tacos. It's mind-bending.

When I made these, the meat mixture was way too soft to hold together when I first mixed it, so I added more bread - not soaked this time - to get it to the right consistency. The recipe did note that you could add more bread if the milk didn't all get soaked up, so obviously there' some wiggle room in the recipe.

Extra bread or not, it was a tasty recipe. I think next time, I'll try it with turkey.

Taco Chicken Meatballs
with Red Salsa Rice
Adapted from Global Meatballs by Adelines Myers

For the Red Salsa Rice:
1 1/2 teaspoons canola oil
1 1/2 cups long-grain white rice
1 cup salsa
1 cup water or chicken broth
1/2 teaspoon salt

For the Meatballs:
1 to 2 slices crustless white bread
1/4 cup milk
1 large onion, diced
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 pound ground chicken or turkey
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1 egg
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
1 teaspoon garlic powder
3/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
3/4 teaspoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon ground cumin

To make the rice:

Heat the oven to 350 degrees.

Add the oil and rice to a 30-quart ovenproof saucepan or Dutch oven on medium heat. Cook, stirring often, until the grains of rice turn milky white, about 5 minutes. If a little of the rice gets toasted, that's fine.

Add the salsa, water, and salt. Stir and bring to a boil. Cover the pot, take it off the heat, and place it in the oven. Cook for 25 minute at 350 degrees, then remove it from the oven and let it rest for 5 minutes with the cover on. Fluff the rice with a fork before serving.

To make the meatballs:
While the rice is cooking, soak the bread and milk in a large bowl for 10 minutes, until the milk has been absorbed and the bread is mushy. If there's a puddle of milk, add more bread.

Meanwhile, saute the onion in the oil in a medium saute pan until tender.

Have a baking sheet standing by. If you like, line it with aluminum foil for easy cleanup and spray with a little oil to keep the meatballs from sticking.

Add the onions and all of the remaining meatball ingredients to the bowl with the bread. Mix well with your hands.

Form the meat mixture into approximately 2-inch balls and arrange them on the baking sheet.

When all the balls are prepared, bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. When they're done, they should reach 170 degrees on a meat thermometer.

Serve the meatballs with the rice. Garnish as desired - anything you'd use for tacos would be appropriate, like lime wedges, sour cream, or guacamole.

I received the book from the publisher at no cost to me.

Maple Sugar Butter Cookies

The concept of the cookbook Real Sweet by Shauna Sever is interesting - it's all about using sweeteners that aren't standard sugar. So, no white sugar or supermarket sugar, but no artificial sweeteners, either. You'll find recipes that use coconut sugar, maple sugar, agave nectar, honey, turbinado sugar, and other natural sugars.

Whether these are better for you than white granulated sugar - well, I'll leave that up to you.

On the other hand, many of these alternative sugars give you one important thing that white sugar doesn't - more flavor along with the sweetness. There's a reason we put maple syrup on our pancakes, right?

Speaking of maple, I decided to make maple sugar butter cookies. I like maple and I like butter and I like cookies ... so ... why not?

Well, one reason you might not want to make these cookies is that maple sugar is pretty expensive. So I'd suggest making these for special occasions. I happened to have maple sugar hanging around that I'd been hoarding for quite some time. I'd gotten it from several different sources, and it was just waiting for a recipe.

The funny thing was that although I had the maple sugar and all the other ingredients, I didn't have the required whole wheat pastry flour. I thought I had some, but when I went to get it, the box was actually unbleached cake flour. Oops.

I was pretty sure my local supermarket didn't carry whole wheat pastry flour - heck, I wasn't sure if they had regular pastry flour - so I made an executive decision and used white wheat flour instead. The cookies turned out really well - buttery, with a little nuttiness from the whole wheat, and a mild maple flavor.

Next time I'm ordering specialty flours, I'll probably pick up some whole wheat pastry flour, so I can see what the difference would be. Or next time I might try regular whole wheat flour or even all purpose flour. I think all of them would produce good cookies, but of course there would be some differences.

As I was making these, I found one flaw with the recipe. While everything else was very detailed, it didn't say how long to bake the cookies - it just said to cook until the cookies were lightly browned on the edges and on the bottom. I made mine slightly smaller than the recipe called for - I like small cookies - and I ended up with three dozen cookies instead of two dozen. The baking time was around 14 minutes. So if you make these, figure it will be about that long.

Maple Sugar Butter Cookies
Adapted from Real Sweet by Shauna Sever

1 1/4 cups (5 3/8 ounces) white wheat pastry flour (or whole wheat pastry flour if you can't find the white wheat version)
1 1/4 cups (5 5/8 ounces) all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup grape seed or canola oil
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter at room temperature
3/4 cup maple sugar, plus more for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 35 degrees and line 2 or 3 baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, whisk the flours, soda, cream of tartar, and salt together. Set aside.

In a small bowl, whisk the oil, egg, and vanilla together. Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and maple sugar together on medium-high speed until it's smooth and lighter in color, about three minutes.

Reduce the speed and pour in the egg-oil mixture slowly. Increase the speed again and beat for another three minutes, scraping down the bowl as needed. It should be light, smooth, and glossy, like a mayonnaise. It's fine if you can see some bits of maple sugar in it, if your sugar was particularly coarse.

Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the flour gradually. When it's mostly incorporated but there are still a few bits of flour, stop the mixer and finish mixing with a spatula or spoon.

Use a small scoop to portion the dough onto the cookie sheets. I used a 2-teaspoon scoop and made exactly three dozen cookies. A tablespoon scoop should make two dozen.

Using three fingers, lightly flatten the cookies to 1/4-inch thick. Sprinkle a little extra maple sugar on top, if desired.

Bake at 350 degrees until the cookies are lightly browned around the edges and on the bottom, 13-15 minutes. The cookies will be firm enough to lift to look underneath - if they're soft, they're not done.

Let the cookies cool on the pan for 2 minutes before putting them on a rack to cool completely.

This book is available for pre-order and will be released on March 17. I received a copy from the publisher at no cost to me.