Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Lives: Part 3 -- Testing Tagine of Salmon with Lemon and Capers

I do love chef-prepared food. Preparing a dish from a chef-recipe is not quite as much fun. I'd enjoyed this salmon recipe presented by Chef Bill Briwa when I was at the CIA's west coast campus in Napa and it looked easy enough for a home-cook. All this has led to including the recipe in my "7-Day Menu Planner" newspaper column to appear some time in July. Chef Briwa gave us a lot of "you-can-do-it's" so I took the challenge.

Of course, we home cooks have to remember, we don't have the kitchen assistants that the culinary school chefs do. Those are the student assistants who fetch, chop, clean and generally help the chef-teachers. Nonetheless, I rose to the challenge sans assistants. Yes, I must confess I did grumble about the "work", but when the final product hit my taste buds, I jumped for joy at the fantasitic flavor. In other words, it's worth it if for a company meal. I would not prepare this during the hectic work week.

A tagine, by definition is any of various Moroccan stews gently simmered with vegatbles and other seasonings. Often preserved lemons are used. (I used lemon juice which the chef approves.) This recipe required a herb, olive oil coating/marinade for the salmon. I let it sit a couple of hours, refrigerated. Once marinated, I placed it on a bed of vegetables. Both the marinade and the vegetable base included garlic and olive oil in addition to spices.