rechelle's lifelyrics

Last week, I wrote about our evening with our new friend from India. He shared my blog with his wife back home, and she wanted to learn how I made the salmon. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written about food, so I thought I would take this opportunity to share.

The first time I made the rice pictured in last week’s blog, it was for a special Sunday lunch I prepared for my oldest son, his wife, and her Mom. I found caperberries at a store in Eugene a few days before the event, and I went online to find a recipe that would incorporate them because her Mom LOVES caperberries.

The original recipe I found, “Chicken in Creamy Caperberry Sauce” from triedandtruerecipe.com, called for frying the chicken, but that was going to make too much of the meal prep last minute after we got here from church. So I opted to trim and thinly filet the chicken breasts and season them for roasting in the morning so they could be cooked while I was finishing the sauce after church. I adopted the same technique for the salmon last week, and made additional changes to the rice recipe for the dinner I prepared for Krish.

I’m going to give you the basic guidelines for roasting the meat in this article, and you can find the recipe for my version of the rice on my “Recipes For Family Gathering” page: Lemon-Caper Rice in Caperberry Sauce & other recipes

I accidentally did basically the same method for both meals, since I seasoned the chicken and left it in the refrigerator for a couple hours on Sunday morning, and then I seasoned the salmon and left it in the refrigerator for several hours to properly thaw it before roasting. You can absolutely prepare your meat and roast it right away, if needed, but it may be more flavorful to do it with 2-4 hours in between.

Be mindful of how much seasoning you add based on the thickness of the meat so it doesn’t become overpowering.

• Rinse, dry, and trim the meat of your choice. (I use paper towels to make sure the meat is not holding the water from rinsing.)
• Simply season with lemon pepper & add a little paprika. (I don’t always use paprika, but it went well with the rice.)
• Just before ready to roast, lightly coat the surface of the meat with olive oil. I just use my hands to rub in the spices as I’m coating the pieces with the oil.
• Since the chicken was only about 1/4″ thick, I roasted at 375° for about 5 minutes on each side. However, I roasted the salmon at 400° (without turning since it had skin on the bottom of the filet) until it came to proper temperature. I removed the skin, transferred to the serving plate, and set it in my warming drawer until the rice and vegetables were ready.
• (I poured a bit of the Caperberry Sauce over the salmon before mixing the rest of it in with the Lemon-Caper Rice to harmonize the dishes.)

Roasting either chicken or fish with lemon pepper (and paprika if desired) and a bit of olive oil is a fuss-free way to make your main dish while finishing up a salad, side dish, or sauce!