Red curry salmon with steamed rice and garlicky bok choy

I'm always looking for new things to do with salmon, because it's so wonderfully healthy (and delicious), and Dog knows I love a curry. This is an easy little weeknight recipe I came up with from a few different sources of inspiration, including this one (and all the comments) from an old Bon Appetit. The curry takes a different form from how I usually prepare it; instead a making big pot of curry and cooking other stuff in it, it's simmered down into a thick sauce and drizzled over the other stuff.

Bok choy is flourishing in my garden right now, along with spinach, lettuces, and about a million beets and carrots I can't wait to pull up. Are they ready? I don't know. It's so excitingly mysterious. Anyway, my bok choy is doing fabulously, and I hope you have some in your garden too.

Red curry noodles with ground pork, red pepper and carrots

I've been slowly accumulating food magazines over the last couple of years. I knew I wouldn't make probably a quarter of the recipes in them and the pile was beginning to get unwieldy, so lately I've been flipping through them and cutting out the ones that speak to me (then taping them to paper and sliding into plastic sheets in a cute binder). This simple and adaptable recipe was yelling at me the loudest, "Make me! ME!"... So I obliged.

Whatever you've got in the crisper is going to work in this dish. I used a red pepper and the rest of the carrots from my garden but it would be great with cabbage, zucchini or summer squash strips, beans or snap peas would be particularly good, and so on. You could certainly use any ground meat you like, and if you don't have ground meat you could just slice a chicken breast or pork chop thinly and use strips. 

Tilapia and vegetables in coconut chowder

This is a quick, colorful, super healthy weeknight dish. And infinitely adaptable to what you have laying around the kitchen and don't know what to do with, much like my frittata recipe. In this case, I had a handful of snow peas, half a red bell pepper left from a moderately successful peperonata experiment, couple of fingerlings, chunk of butternut, and a lonely old carrot. It's also easy on the dishes, only two pots! If your two-legged dishwasher is anything like mine, they'll be psyched.

And a few leaves of basil to tie it all together. Thai basil would be ideal and I will plant it again in the garden this year, but this is regular ole Genovese and it was just fine.

1 Thai chili, minced (seeds removed if it's going to be too hot for you)

1/2 an inch or so of ginger, minced or microplaned

1 garlic clove, minced or microplaned

1/4 a yellow onion, finely diced

handful of snow peas

half a red bell pepper, julienned

2 or 3 fingerling potatoes, cut into small rounds

chunk of butternut squash, cut into cubes the same size as the potatoes

lonely old carrot, diced finely

1 can coconut milk (I generally use the "light" one)

~1-2 cups of vegetable broth

~2 tsp green curry paste

zest of 1 lime

few dashes of fish sauce (don't chicken out, it's non-negotiable for authenticity - and, it is salty awesomeness)

few pinches of brown sugar

2 tilapia fillets

4 or 5 basil leaves, torn or julienned

1/2 cup of white or jasmine rice

sprinkle of cilantro

My white rice technique is pretty simple. I have never trusted the add-double-the-water thing where you just clamp a lid on and never stir, for me it always turns out gummy and stuck on the bottom. So I cook my rice in plenty of salted water and drain into a metal sieve just before it's cooked through. Then I pop the whole sieve back into the pot with a little water on the bottom, put it back on the heat, then clamp a lid on and let it steam for a few minutes. Voila, gorgeous fluffy rice every time. Anyway, yeah - do this.

Meanwhile, in a large heavy-bottomed pot or dutch oven, saute the chili, ginger, garlic, and onion in a drizzle of vegetable oil. Once the onion has softened, add your potatoes, squash, and carrot and allow to cook for a minute before adding the coconut milk, vegetable stock, green curry paste, lime zest, fish sauce, and brown sugar. I was careful to only add a little green curry paste since I didn't intend this to be a curry. It functions more as a seasoning here. Fish sauce is mad salty, so you may not need to add much more kosher salt for seasoning - just taste it as you go along. Ditto for pepper, considering the Thai chili. Cover and allow to cook for about 10 minutes, then add the red bell pepper, snow peas, and dunk the fillets right into the sauce, thinning with more vegetable broth if necessary. Cover again and let the fillets cook, probably another 7 or 8 minutes. Once everything has cooked through, stir in the basil.

Serve your lovely coconut fish and vegetable chowder in a wide shallow bowl with a scoop of rice and sprinkle of cilantro on top.

Serves 2, takes half an hour.