Tonight's Dinner: Creamy Lemony Peppery Salmon and Aspargus. Or something.

So I seem to do better about posting recipes if I do it immediately upon finishing the dish. Actually, right now I'm typing as the salmon cooks, so who knows if I'll even hit publish? I guess you'll know that I did if I you're reading this.

Blech. Meta-blogging is so boring. But I'm too lazy to hit delete.

So, tonight's misadventures come to you via my leftover sour cream (doesn't that make your mouth water?) and salmon fillets (not left over, just bought them yesterday).

I had no idea if this would work or not, but I also had asparagus. And asparagus and a lemony cream sauce seemed like they would go together too. Best of all? They (the salmon and asparagus, keep up already) both cook pretty quickly. The longest cooking part of this meal was the rice (because I didn't use instant).

(I need a few more parentheticals).

There's a term for cooking meat like this - is it poaching? Braising? Am I supposed to know this, being the blogger and all?

There goes my street cred.

**My incredibly deep thoughts on the taste of this dish at the end.

Creamy Lemon Pepper Salmon
Ingredients:

1 tbsp olive oil
¼ cup (half stick) margarine
1 minced garlic clove
1 tsp lemon pepper
1 tsp lemon juice
1 cup sour cream
2 salmon fillets, about 1/2 lb each
1 lb asparagus
Salt and Pepper, to taste

Directions:

Heat oven to 400F.

Lightly spray 13"x9" pan* with nonstick spray. Rinse salmon filets, pat dry, and place in one half of the pan.

Heat olive oil and margarine in a skillet on low. Add garlic and cook on low for one minute. Stir in lemon pepper and lemon juice.

It'll look better in a few seconds. Promise.

Still on low, whisk in sour cream until it's smooth. Salt and pepper to taste.

That's better.

Pour sauce over salmon – is this called poaching or something? I’m sure there’s a technical cooking term for this that I’ve forgotten. A term besides “Make My Mouth Water”, that is.

Cook for 12-13 minutes, or until the salmon flakes in the middle. Yes, you'll have to move some sauce aside to check, but there's enough sauce to cover it up. You could also use a meat thermometer, but that's so HIGH TECH. (It's also something you have to clean by hand, and I mostly avoid that.)

While the salmon cooks, trim your asparagus and toss with the barest hint of olive oil and some salt and pepper.

Come to Mama, Green Goddess.

About 3 minutes before the salmon's done, put the asparagus on the other half of the pan and continue cooking.

Serve over rice.

It looks like The Blob turned white and smothered my dinner.

* I did mine in a 13x9 pan so that I could add asparagus in the other half of it for the last 3 minutes of cooking. You could do the salmon by itself in a square glass pan - you have my permission.

**Pretty good, but very ugly pictures. I could have used about 3x as much pepper (not the lemon pepper, the real pepper) in it, but The Professor is not a huge fan, so if I ever attempt something similar, I'll probably just roughly double how much I ground into the pan. Also, maybe a little more garlic?

The asparagus ROCKED in this sauce. And the remains of it are going to be my lunch tomorrow, over the leftover rice with the leftover sauce. Even if I did have to beat The Professor back with a cleaver to claim it. Lesson? He needs to be faster to the cleaver drawer.