Remember these little guys? 
My husband went to Iowa this weekend and one of these yummy fellas is now in our freezer. I love that we are fully stocked with venison and pork for the year (and beyond).
We missed him while he was off butchering our pig, but the girls were happy to have plenty of Daddy time when he got home this morning.
Since my husband was home I felt like I could spend a little extra time cooking dinner tonight. I mentioned I’m my last post that we would be resuming our at-home Chopped Challenge soon. I picked my ingredients a few days ago and decided tonight would be a good night to work my magic with them. The ingredients?
1. Salmon. Not too bad.
2. Lentils. Not too good.
3. Granola. Oh dear.
I managed to pull together a decent dish, though it certainly wasn’t anything to write home about.
Presenting Salmon Granola Cakes with Lentils Three Ways:
Now doesn’t that sound yummy?
It ended up looking pretty good, but was not the most tasty food I’ve served. Lass looked at it and said, “That’s yucky.” I can sum up the dish in two sentences.
1. Lentils are gross.
2. Granola does not belong in a salmon cake.
In all seriousness, the dish wasn’t that awful. I made the salmon cake with pureed lentils and crushed granola as the binding (other ingredients were egg, dill, garlic, scallions, salt, and melted butter). The idea was pretty good, but I used too much granola, which made the cakes too sweet and too dry.
The best part of the dish was the sauce. I pureed lentils with melted butter, lemon juice, and salt. It was quite good and the lemon was a needed touch of acid to cut the sweetness of the granola when paired with the salmon cake. My husband pulled out some dijon mustard for his, and that actually ended up being the perfect complement. I should have added some mustard (or lemon juice or some other acidic flavor) to the salmon cake itself and it would have been much less overwhelmed by the granola.
The third preparation of lentils was an afterthought. I had cooked way more lentils than I needed for the cakes and sauce, so I added lemon juice, olive oil, and salt to the left over lentils and served them on the side of the cakes, just because I had them. The flavor wasn’t too bad, but I couldn’t get past the texture. I have never liked lentils for that reason.
Overall, I’d say the dish was a C+.
Although my dinner wasn’t stellar tonight, it was really fun to get back to this cooking tradition that my husband and I enjoy. It’s so fun to debrief the dish once I complete it. I don’t like to talk about what I’m planning to do before hand. That feels like cheating to me. But after it’s done, we talk through the whole process from the idea to the execution – what was good? what went wrong? etc. We talk about other ideas I had but didn’t pursue. He doesn’t care that the food I serve might be kind of bad and most certainly will be odd. I don’t care that he gives his honest opinions about what wasn’t good in the dish or what he would have done differently. I’ve learned a ton about cooking each time we’ve done this challenge. It’s a really fun family activity. The girls helped me cook a bit tonight, and I hope when they’re old enough they’ll want to do their own Chopped challenges.
