What's for Dinner? (6.6.10)

Note:  This is a cross posting of my sometimes-Facebook series chronicling our fun times in the kitchen.  I know there are some folks here who are not all Facebook-y, so enjoy, and think about all the 'What's for Dinner?'s you've missed!

I've been cooking, really, I promise! It's just a little harder to find the moment to sit and write about it these days. So anyway, some salmon, some eggplant, and a sweet potato. 3 tastes that don't necessarily taste great together, but they were pretty good for dinner. My standard roast sweet potato prep - dice into even 3/8" cubes, toss with olive oil, salt, pepper, adobo chile powder, chipotle chile powder, corriander, and half-sharp paprika. Spread on a sheet pan, and into a 425°܄oven for 20 minutes. While that's working, the salmon comes out of the fridge to come up to room temp, and the eggplants (one Japanese, one stripey(?)) get chopped into half inch by three inch batons. I also used this time to prep some minced shallot for the fish. At 20 minutes, stir and toss the potato, then back into the oven for another 10 minutes. Salmon into the pan skin side down with salt, pepper, olive oil and a little butter, and seared until the skin is crispy. Then in go the shallots, some white wine and some fennel tops and on goes the cover to braise for a few minutes. The eggplant goes into the sauté pan with a little olive oil until just soft and lightly browned - 4 minutes or so. Potatoes out and onto the plate. Eggplant out and onto the plate and drizzled with Asian-fusion sauce - minced green onions, ginger, soy, rice vinegar, cilantro and red chili/garlic paste. The fish out and onto the plate, and an extra pat of butter added to the pan sauce, brought to a boil, then spooned over the fish. What to these three things have in common? They were raw and in our kitchen before we cooked them! Not the most cohesive dinner, but delicious nonetheless.

Wine with dinner: 07 Eaglepoint Ranch Grenache - Juicy, fruity raspberry and cherry flavors, with enough acidity and structure to stand up to the food. To be honest, I'd probably want 3 different wines for the three parts of this meal, but since this is such a great food wine, it worked. Really, any light to medium bodied with with good acidity would be great here - red or white.