Our Zesty First Adventure

Skyler and I have talked about starting a food blog for some time now. So Saturday night, we went for it (read more about it on our About Us). After church on Sunday, we had our good friends over–K2 & Maddy and Wes & Erica.

Skyler thought it would be fun to make salmon for dinner, and I instantly thought of doing a risotto and asparagus on the side. Wes & Erica brought sweet potatoes to make chips for an appetizer. The recipe we found for the risotto had lemon in it, so we carried the lemon theme through to each dish. Skyler made a prosciutto-wrapped salmon with chives and lemon zest. Wes made the asparagus with mushrooms and lemon.

For our starter, Skyler used the mandolin to finely slice the sweet potatoes, then drizzled olive oil on them, spred them on a baking sheet and sprinkled sea salt on them. We cooked them at 400F for about 15-20 minutes. (Next time I would want to try THIS recipe.) I followed a recipe by Giada di Laurentiis (which you can find HERE). She hollowed out lemons and served the risotto in the lemon cups but when we saw the lemons at the store, we decided to skip the cups. Skyler cut the salmon into portion-sized pieces, piled on lemon and chives, wrapped each steak in prosciutto, and pan fried them. Wes worked his magic and sauteed the asparagus in a pan with lemon and mushrooms.

If we were to do it over, we would need to work on the timing. Anyone who has made risotto before knows that timing is a biggie. I started too early so it was sitting in the pan longer than it should’ve. The sweet potatoes were tricky too. They didn’t get as crispy as we expected and some just didn’t cook through all the way. However, the meal turned out delicious!

We ended our evening with a great game of Apples to Apples and amazing homemade vegan Samoas (now the Girl Scouts call them Caramel DeLites) made by Maddy.