Laptop Lunches #75

Carrot sticks, snow peas, and grape tomatoes with yogurt-ranch dip; sour cream coffee cake, oven-seared salmon with orange-ginger relish; and rice pilaf.

The cake, salmon, relish, and pilaf were all from America's Test Kitchen Cooking for Two, spread out over 2009 and 2010, if I remember correctly. The technique they used for cooking the salmon was a little weird, but it turned out an amazing couple of pieces of fish. The pilaf claims to make two servings, but it's more like 4-5 in my opinion. The same should probably be said of the cake--except that I ate nearly half of it this morning. The recipe is a great one in that you can make the batter and stick it in the fridge overnight before baking it in the morning.

I've had my fill of America's Test Kitchen for a bit (other than a few cake recipes I want to try). It is great to be able to cook in small batches, but their recipes involve a lot of steps and a whole lot of dirty dishes. I still love the cookbooks, but I had pasta salad tonight, from a box mix with add ins, and it was a bit of a relief. I've ordered a cookbook that promises to have slightly more pedestrian fare that had high reviews on Amazon, so we'll see how that goes when it comes.