RESPeRATE Gives Mayo Clinic’s DASH Recipe a Try

This week we prepared the Mediterranean-Style Grilled Salmon and also added our own side dish, Broccoli-Mushroom Sauté.

To feed four, the ingredients for the Mediterranean Salmon include:

o 4 tablespoons chopped fresh basil

o 1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley

o 1 tablespoon minced garlic

o 2 tablespoons lemon juice o 4 salmon fillets, each 5 ounces

o Cracked black pepper, to taste

o 4 green olives, chopped

o 4 thin slices lemon

Broccoli-Mushroom Sauté Ingredients:

o 1 Broccoli Flower head

o 24 pieces of walnuts or 4 comfortable handfuls

o 24 White Mushrooms (You can use any kind of mushroom.

(Asian mushrooms are considered by many to offer the best health benefits)

o Ground pepper o Olive Oil

Preparing Your Salmon:

You can either follow the Mayo Clinic directions or do what we did and play with them a little (Mayo Clinic Recipe). We started by chopping up about 7 stems of parsley, 5 stems of basil and one large garlic clove. We then put all in a small bowl. We then squeezed half of a fresh lemon instead of lemon juice over the herbs. If you like lemon, which we do, then go for it and squeeze the whole lemon. Mix it all up in your little bowl and then spread them over the salmon fillets. You can add pepper to the herbs too if you like. No Salt, remember it’s not good for high blood pressure. Flip the fillets so that the herb side is facing down on the aluminum. This confused us a bit at first, but you can see from our photos how it’s done and it works. We then broiled the salmon fillets in the oven for about 8 minutes. It’s really important to closely watch the salmon fillets as they broil in the oven. Everyone has a different type of oven that requires different amounts of time for cooking…so keep an eye on your fillets. When you see that the edges of the fish have turned white then flip them over and reduce the heat a bit for about another 4 minutes. Again, watch your salmon carefully that it does not over cook. You want the fish to remain soft and juicy, and not dry. Remove the salmon fillets and place them on warm plates. Then sprinkle on chopped olives. We kept our olives whole since we just love them that way. Then we added two thin slices of lemon for garnishing. Have fun decorating your plate.

Preparing Your Broccoli-Mushroom Sauté:

Now for our very own side dish creation, Broccoli & Mushroom Sauté, designed specially for our high blood pressure community. We chose to create a broccoli based side dish not only because we love it, but also because it is recommended by the DASH Eating Plan for its rich source of potassium, magnesium, and fiber. To start, we chopped up the broccoli into big pieces, but you can chop it up as small as you like. We then boiled the broccoli in water and added pepper. It’s important to not over cook the broccoli and just boil it enough that it is still a bit crispy. Vegetables tend to lose their nutrients when over cooked and mushy. We then chopped up two handfuls of mushrooms by cutting them into fours. It’s up to you to decide how small or big you like your mushrooms. We then lightly sautéed them in vegetable oil until they were slightly gold in color. To maintain the nutrients of mushrooms we only sautéed them till they were slightly gold and still a bit crispy. We then roasted walnuts, the nut that has proven most effective in lowering high blood pressure, in a stainless steal pan until they were dark brown. We then added the mushrooms, broccoli and walnuts into a bowl, mixed them all together and added some olive oil and pepper.
Ready to eat and delicious.