I got the idea for the presentation of this dish from the cover of the April 2014 Cooking Light magazine. Their dish was crab cakes with a different sauce and these are salmon patties but it still works.If the lettuce looks like it really wilted fast in my photo, it was actually over two hours between the time I took the first picture and when I put the salmon patties onto the lettuce. My daughter had a softball game and today is her sixteenth birthday, so I figured we would all go to her game (they won 15-10) and then eat together even though we didn’t get home until after 8pm.
Here’s a lame-mom story – this is the first year that I didn’t make her a cake and bought one at the store, and not even a relatively healthy one. I usually make her favorite — German chocolate. I went to Food Lion on the way home from work (I had to interview someone late in the afternoon so I couldn’t leave early), and they didn’t have one. I called Tony and he went to Safeway on his way home from work and they didn’t have one. We decided he’d grab a random ice cream cake which thrilled her. But I probably won’t fall asleep for hours because I’m becoming more sensitive to chemicals and especially sugar. But that’s OK, I can lay in bed and look for some more recipes.
First I overlapped a couple large leaves of lettuce from my plant on the back porch to make sort of a circle, then rounded it out with a few leaves from a plant I got at a Farmer’s Market a couple months ago. The seller said it was a type of Chinese lettuce that starts with a T; if I ever see him again I’ll write it down. When you pick the leaves early, like these, they’re tender and can be eaten raw. If stalks grow on the plant, you can use it like bok choy and cook with it.
Next I arrange the patties of whatever we made on top and decorate it with a sort of dressing that I’ve been making quite a bit as a great substitute for tartar sauce or ranch dressing. We couldn’t find a tartar sauce without high fructose corn syrup but this is better because you can really pile it on and it’s healthy.
Yogurt Dressing
1 serving container organic Greek vanilla yogurt
2 T mayonnaise
1 T chopped dill
1 T chopped chives
1 T chopped parsley
1 medium crushed garlic clove
1/4 t paprika
Mix everything together, right in the yogurt container if you want. Use any herbs in any amount that you want. I snipped off of each of the plants listed and just happened to end up with one tablespoon of each after chopping it.
