Garlic Pesto Salmon with Rosemary Mashed Potatoes & Sautéed Spinach

The problem with waiting so long to roll out these reviews is I don’t always remember the who, what, when, and why of what we were doing. So you probably won’t get all the fun colorful details of selecting this or that based on whatever crazy shenanigans were going on around cave and cave adjacent activities.

I can say that Gatherer has been selecting more than the average amount of salmon dishes for a few reasons. First, it tends to be quick. We are in the beginnings of soccer season so I’m usually at the fields 2 nights a week. Second, it is flavorful and versatile as far as fish goes, so Gatherer doesn’t typically find it boring or monotonous. Third, the Natives eat it without much objection. If this isn’t self explanatory, you’ve never tried feeding natives of any cave. They usually ask for yum yum sauce (yes like at hibachi, yes we keep it in our fridge, yes you can buy it as Sam’s). Sometimes I have to explain to them that the flavors don’t mix but they’ve been fairly good about trying the dish as sauces lately. Fourth, apparently it is supposed to be good for you. Personally I’d like to throw in more shrimp and scallop meals but the natives have decided they don’t like shrimp. I’m trying to figure out how they are my natives, but I guess I shouldn’t complain because it’s not like shrimp and scallops be cheap yo (but they are might damn tasty).

On to the recipe itself. So when I looked at the recipe step one (waaaayyy off to the side in the corner, have I mentioned how I hate Gobble’s recipe cards?) was to preheat the oven to 425. I read through the rest of it and basically the only thing going in the oven was the salmon. In looking at the full meal I realized I could pan sear the fish, I wouldn’t have to wait for the oven to preheat and the cook time would be faster. Guess who didn’t turn on the oven to pre-heat. The sum of this meal is that I microwaved some precooked mashed potatoes that I threw some fresh chopped rosemary. I sautéed up some spinach. Normally when I’ve done sautéed spinach it is mostly with water and olive oil vs butter. This had butter and I like butter. So basically even though it isn’t particularly healthy, Gatherer will probably do sautéed spinach this way in the future. Salmon got a pan sear, heated the sauce up in a small pan (because it came premade). Door to door I think this meal took like 10 minutes with most of the time being me trying to figure out why I had paid so much for a deconstructed microwave meal.

It was good but this didn’t teach me a new recipe, I can’t tell you how to make roasted garlic pesto (and it was okay but not great as a sauce), there were no tricks on how to make mashed potatoes that will make you slap yo momma or anything like that.

Rating 3 sweet teas.

Nothing great, nothing horrible, just sufficient. Native1 that hates mashed potatoes still hates mashed potatoes but eats them out of necessity at this point. Probably won’t order again, but spinach, mashed potatoes and pan seared salmon with some sauce seems reasonable as a meal on an off order night.