If I could be any Food Network Star, I would definitely be Giada De Laurentiis…I love her, she makes food that looks and taste great and she’s not annoying to watch on TV. When I want to experiment and cook something new, I always look for one of her recipes to make. I don’t know how it is with the rest of the Food Network Stars, but most of her recipes always get 5 star reviews from people and I think that is a testiment to itself why she’s so awesome. Anyway, enough about going on and on about why I love Giada haha. Well, this week I decided to make two of her recipes: Salmon with Lemon, Capers, & Rosemary and Tri-Colore Orzo. Both of these recipes turned out really well and were so simple to make. The total cooking time was about 30 mins for both dishes. The salmon was very easy in terms of cooking and clean-up…basically, you just take your salmon fillet, place it on a sheet of foil, season with salt, pepper, lemon, rosemary, olive oil, marsala wine, and wrap it up into a foil packet and bake! I know the recipe calls for cooking it on a grill pan, but I decided to put it in the oven at 425 degrees for 15min and it came out perfect. While the salmon was baking, I was making the orzo pasta…if you don’t know what orzo pasta is, its basically rice shaped pasta. So, to make the Tri-Colore Orzo, I took the cooked orzo pasta and combined it with the olive oil, dried cherries, arugula, basil, pine nuts, lemon juice, salt/pepper, and feta cheese (I couldn’t find the ricotta insalata cheese the recipe called for at the grocery store) into a large bowl. The orzo pasta paired really nicely with the salmon and the combination of these two recipes made for a delicious light and healthy dinner. One thing I should mention is that you can eat the orzo pasta hot or cold…its great both ways, and the combination of the cherries, pine nuts, basil, arugula, and cheese makes this dish very addicting. I love it.
Tri-Colore Orzo and Salmon Packets
This picture was taken just before I was about to place the bowl on the dinner table and it slipped out of my hands and there was orzo pasta everywhere…yea I’m very clumsy and I make myself laugh hahaha. An incident like this just reminds myself why I can’t have my own cooking show…it would be a DIASTER. Luckily, I made a lot of orzo pasta, so there was enough left for dinner haha.
Salmon with Lemon, Capers, and Rosemary – So so good! Make sure you use marsala wine, I think it really makes this dish tasty.
Giada – I just had to post this up…I found it and this totally cracks me up…yes, it is a bit scary because its reminesent of Carrie, but I still love it anyway haha.
