Another ?Dinner at Home?

I’m trying to love Martha’s Dinner at Home cookbook. I’m making an effort here people. So far I’m not wildly excited about it. My latest venture into the book is Roast Salmon and Potatoes with Mustard-Herb Butter (the butter ‘counts’ as a recipe since each of these menus has 4 recipes – I think that’s cheating!).

You slice up some potatoes and roast them, then add in your piece of salmon and roast that. This takes about an hour total. I ended up taking my salmon out and putting the potatoes back in to get them crispier.

When it’s all done, you brush both with your mustard herb butter (one stick of butter with 1/4 cup of herbs you choose and 1 tbsp Dijon mustard). I used oregano, chives and parsley for mine.

The herb butter was nice on the salmon, but I didn’t care for it on the potatoes. They already have some olive oil on them from the roasting and I thought this butter just made them greasy. The butter also does not have a very strong flavor. I gave up and got out some sour cream to dip these potatoes in. Put some garlic in this and maybe it would interest me!

The salmon was nice  – roasting it like this at a high temp keeps it moist. I use only wild salmon. This was crying out for lemon, so I squeezed some on it and it helped.

Another criticism I have of dinner this applies to a lot of Martha’s  menus, both in the book and in the “what’s for dinner” section of Living. If I am eating salmon with mustard-herb butter, I do not also want to eat potatoes with mustard-herb butter. I want different flavors on my plate. Recently I made cheese flautas and black-eyed pea salad from this book (it’s also in Oct Living). Both contained cilantro. I just don’t want to eat the same flavor from two things on my plate. I understand that this in some way pulls the dishes together, but honestly I don’t like it.

The menu for this also includes haricots verts with tapenade. I really hate tapenade. I did make haricots verts but steamed with butter, salt and pepper. The fourth component is lemon mousse which I didn’t have any interest in making on a weeknight (particularly since it has to chill for 45 min – I don’t have time for that).