Slow Roasted Brown Sugar and Dill Cured Salmon with Pumpkin Ravioli with Gorgonzola Sauce and Crab Bisque

...and we're back! The blogging delay is over and I have missed it. In my absence I did finally watch Julie and Julia and it made me feel pretty bad about myself. So help me out - how can I make this blog better for you? More useful for you? Would it help if I married my friend with the last name 'Child' so I could be Julia Child too? I might need to grow about a foot as well but those are only minor details. I think most of my shoes get me halfway there. (Cooking in stilettos makes your food taste much better of course.)

To be fair, however, I do have a good excuse for the break. While cooking (of course) I managed to stab myself in my hand with my brand new knives (but they are such nice knives.) I am so talented I hit exactly the right spot, dinging the sheath around my tendon. Within an hour my left ring finger was easily twice as large as it should be and when moved left me in excruciating pain. It is now well on it's way to recovery, but let's say typing hasn't been particularly easy lately. So, um, don't do that when you are cooking.

But to the meal! So this is most certainly not a meal to make when you are pressed for time. I tried to squeeze it in before going out to a fundraiser (anyone want to support an awesome candidate for Congress?) which didn't work out well. Luckily, the food did. This menu pairs slow-roasted Salmon that positively melts in your mouth with homemade pumpkin ravioli and crab bisque. Intrigued enough to want to learn how to make fish melt and to make crab bisque healthy? Well come on in!

Slow Roasted Brown Sugar and Dill Cured Salmon
We'll have to start with how to make the fish since this is a loooooong recipe. The good news is that most of the long does not include any actual work. You're going to marinate the salmon in brown sugar and dill. The instructions tell you to do so for 8 hrs, but as someone who isn't at home 8 hrs before but at work I went for overnight. I feel the additional time certainly does no harm and allows the flavors to truly envelop the fish.

You'll also see they instruct you to wipe off the remaining sugar and dill. But where is the fun in that? I poured out a little excess liquid to keep it from burning while roasting but didn't touch the fish - any dill and sugar on the fish (and there was a lot) stayed put.

Finally, I skipped the mustard-mayo sauce. The slow-roasted fish, still covered in brown sugar and dill, was so incredibly flavorful I saw no reason to mess with it. I recommend leaving the marinade and skipping the mayo. The flavors melted in, the fish was beyond tender, and each bite left you wanting more. And who can resist that?

Pumpkin Ravioli with Gorgonzola Sauce
I have to admit - this wasn't quite how I expected this to go. The recipe and I diverged in more than a few instances. For instance, I skipped putting the pumpkin mixture on paper towels. Really? That just sounds tedious. Then, I ran into some wonton issues. Despite extensive searching at both my local Giant and Whole Foods I was unable to locate any wonton wrappers. No problem, I thought, I'd just buy that nice looking rice paper. Turns out you can't boil rice paper, but at least I only tested one to see. I then decided to go for my own and mix up some water and flour to make my own.

Well, pasta is flour and EGG and my flour and water was more like a gyoza skin. Still, that would have worked most likely. But as someone without a pasta maker (hint hint) I had to simply form ravioli with my fingers. This meant the folded part, while mushed together, would most likely not withstand boiling. Rather than ruining another ravioli I just went for pumpkin gyoza. I put a small amount of olive oil in a pan and pan-sauteed my ravioli. Just think of them as crispy ravioli!

At least at that point they still tasted delicious. I then learned another valuable lesson: I don't like gorgonzola. I knew I wasn't a fan of blue cheese but I thought gorgonzola might be different, or at least different when given in a different form. Nope. To be fair, the sauce came together excellently and would be delicious for those who like gorgonzola...but it's just not me. We live and learn!

Crab Bisque
Now this was amazing. A-may-zing. Seriously. Sear-ee-yeah I'll stop that now. :) I got a little carried away remembering how delicious and guilt-free this soup was. Crab (and lobster) Bisque have always been some of my favorites but usually they are full of cream. Well this recipe helps keep the pounds off while still letting you indulge.

And as someone who wasn't entirely sure how to make Crab Bisque, I largely followed the recipe and only have a few changes. For one, I skipped the celery. It just didn't seem like something I would want in my soup, and I also didn't want to buy a ton of celery for only a little. But when I think bisque I think creamy smoothness, not crunchy.

I also added the chives, lemon juice, and remaining crab meat while the soup was still in the pan. I know when you go to a restaurant they bring out the bowl with the meat in it and then pour in the bisque, but as someone preparing a lot of it that didn't make sense. With crab at the bottom of a giant bowl it seemed to me that when ladling it would stay sitting there and people would get less meat. I dumped it all in right at the end, mixed it up, and then removed the pan from the heat. And we all had lots of crab in our soup.

This turned out beautifully. Make it when you have someone to impress. And pair it with the melt-in-your-mouth salmon and you'll be set!