Salmon Tortilla Wrap

The family that loves fish, finds each and every way possible to get their fish on their dish….Yeah!!! Please ignore my not so funny sense of humor rhyming the words…LOLzzz. My boys love the fish rolls or wraps for school. Making Salmon Tortilla roll is one of their favorite school lunches.

The Salmon needs to be lightly marinated and can be pan fried till crunchy. The marination is simple with garlic powder, black pepper, turmeric [optional, I prefer it], salt, lemon juice and dry parsley. I like my marinade to be simple, since Salmon has a very strong itself. The light marinade helps Salmon have its own flavor and the other spices help enhance it more.

I have people always question me as to why I never try making my Salmon like my other recipes for Indian style fish fry. Believe it or not, just like fishes come in different flavors, adding same spices to 2 different fishes while makes one taste amazingly delicious, makes the other one lose its flavor. Fishes like Mackerel have a very strong fishy flavor. Adding strong spices to a Mackerel and deep frying it after rolling it in refined flour makes it a scrumptious appetizer, where as if I try the same style of cooking on Salmon, which also has a very strong fishy taste would not taste that good. I have been to a few restaurants that serve Salmon cooking it like a fritter/ Pakoda or rolling salmon fillet in flour and serve it as a patty for Burger. I strongly felt that Salmon in such styles loses its taste. Salmon has a wonderful outer texture that makes it super crunchy when you shallow fry it and its best this way.

I always throw in some veggies like shredded cabbage, or chopped lettuce with sliced Onions and sliced tomatoes. Pair the crispy Salmon with the fresh and chopped veggies and sauces makes it flavorful and if you are making them for your kids, its always a great way to sneak in those veggies.

I added corn, that I had boiled and then saute’ed them till slightly crispy. My corn kernels were fresh. I took them off the cob after boiling the corn. It just gets a little easier to get the kernels off. You can always simply saute’e them in a pan by adding a tsp of butter/oil. You can also add a little garlic powder and chili flakes and add that zing to it.

Sauce can always be changed according to your taste. I added the mayo-garlic sauce and hot sauce, but I think mustard sauce or green chili sauce would be good too.

Grilled Salmon with Roasted Veggies

On days when you want flavor, variety, not spend too much time cooking and with all that you want a dish that everyone in your family enjoys. This is a dish when you serve your kids a super healthy meal without compromising on taste.

Salmon is our family favorite. Any day, any time, school day, home day, dinner, Lunch, friends, Salmon is my go to dish. I believe once I knew how to make it correctly, there was no looking elsewhere. Its amazing how kids just grasp so many flavors from you and you just know if you like something, they would like it too. When the grilled/pan fried Salmon makes it to my kids lunchboxes, it just doesn’t excite them, but their school friends too. I always have their friends requesting for certain dishes on play dates and Salmon happens to be one of them.

Jokes apart, we are a family who love seafood and a lot of that comes from my Father in law [May his soul rest in peace]. Mr. Parveez gets his seafood freshness checking skills from his father. He tells me stories of how his Abba would take him along to the fish market and teach him how to find if the fish is fresh or old. So, using those awesome skills he always makes sure we get the fresh catch and as much as I always tell people that frozen fish can be used, there is nothing better than fresh ones. You will know once you try it.

So, this day when we planned on having grilled Salmon, the option of making tortillas at home along with Rice and beans is always better than getting store bought Tortillas. Though usually tortillas and Rice make you very full, but it wasn’t one of those days where we wanted to fill up. One look to my veggies in the pantry, the carrots, sweet potato and bell peppers, all just looked to good to say no to. I might sound funny to you while you read this, but the fact is some days veggies seem like the best option with your protein and its actually a very good one too, and you feel lucky to have your kids gobble down those veggies.

So, if you are a mom like me, who has those days where 30 minutes is all your gang gives and you want to make something flavorful, healthy and filling, this is it!! Enjoy!!!

Chicken Fajita

One day, Mr. Parveez was gone in a meeting, and I was frantically trying to get lunch on the table in time. Looking at the uncooked chicken breast on my kitchen island, confused what to do with it, I asked my boys what they would like. The answer was “Can you make tacos”. I decided, tacos as fate would have it, with two kids hanging on my legs whining about how they were nearing starvation [not to forget the kids are 11 and 7].  And then, I realized I didn’t have any tortillas…. which makes for a pretty crummy taco lunch…. So now I had 2 choices.  I could try to pack both of my starving children into the car for one package of tortillas, or I could try to come up with something using what I already had.

Dreading the prospect of trying to wrangle the rug rats into the car, I chose to figure something else out, which is when I came across this amazing recipe for homemade flour tortillas and I owe my undying gratitude to that website [which I forgot to save…ggggrrrr] because not only were these homemade flour tortillas deliciously amazing, it also saved me from dragging my lovely, but kind of crazy, children to the grocery store in pursuit of the store-bought kind of tortillas.

The recipe is delightfully simple.  The hardest part for me was trying to roast them which has to be done on super low flame and should be rotated non stop. I found it was easiest to flatten the dough with my hands as much as possible before using the rolling pin. And even if you’re not like me and aren’t used to making chapattis and most of your tortillas come out kind of oblong or misshapen, that’s okay. The shape takes away nothing from the deliciousness.

You don’t have to be  disheartened if you don’t have a stand mixer. Though, the directions call for one with the dough hook attached.  And  If you have a hand mixer you probably have dough hooks too! This recipe works for hand mixers too! And if you don’t have any, making dough with your hand isn’t that difficult either.

Making chicken is fairly easy and doesn’t require any marination or too much prep either. Treat yourself to something delicious and easy….