Two Seafood Salads

In my posting of my Anchovies-Mustard Vinaigrette, I included photos of the Mache Rosettes and Watercress that I used to make the salad.I have now had that salad for two nights in a row, pairing it first with pan-roasted salmon fillet, and then with pan-roasted shrimp. I chose pan roasting because it's the quickest and easiest way to cook seafood to use in salads.

For the Salmon Fillet Salad, I used both the Mache and Watercress, and added chopped endives, grapes and sliced apples, and I tossed them together with my Anchovies-Mustard Vinaigrette (see the recipe on a separate posting). I seasoned the salmon with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, heated up some butter in a pan (you can use olive oil too), then seared the fillet skin-side down first to crisp the skin, for about 4 minutes, then flipped it over and seared the other side for about 3 minutes (you can cook it longer if you want it well-done -- I like my salmon a bit underdone, so I can savor the juices). To make he salad, I added a couple of chopped endive leaves, sliced fresh apples, and some seedless grapes, then tossed them all in my anchovy-mustard vinaigrette. Delicious, and it was so easy and quick to make!

For the Shrimp Salad, I also used both salad greens and chopped endives, but this time I added some sliced strawberries and one perfectly hard-boiled egg sliced into quarters. I rounded it off with a slightly toasted dinner roll, for a small dose of carbs. You can also add nuts, like some toasted walnuts, or pecans, or almonds, if you like. I peeled and de-veined the shrimp, tossed them with some salt and pepper, and pan-roasted them very briefly in some butter and olive oil. Before taking them off the heat, I splashed some low-sodium soy sauce, just to give it a little bit of Asian flavor. The egg was perfectly hard-boiled -- see my tips on how to do it under the "Tips and Tricks" section of this blog site.