salmon and zucchini cakes

I surf Allrecipes pretty frequently during the week for meal planning and general brainstorming purposes. It's likely my favorite website right now. I love that any recipe I think of is there, from old-world foreign dishes to three-ingredient throw it in a pot and heat it for a bit meals, all overflowing with user photos and notes of experience. Unpretentious, user-friendly, and infinitely inspiring to my kitchen efforts.

Anything you can think of is on there, like some sort of user-generated encyclopedia of edibility. All over the world, these strangers virtually congregate, passionately pouring over each recipe, referencing their ancestors and homelands as they build and share their catalogues of must-try snacks and apps and dinner ideas. It excites me so!

I'm particularly fond of the viewer suggestions accompanying the recipe. I always check the site-specific comments for spice addition or omission advice or suggested variations in preparation. Many readers express their annoyance at the mere mention of culinary diversion, but I enjoy it. It's a genuine response to the recipe. Cooking is so much more than an equationesque, stepwise procedure for me. It's a living creative process, with recipes resembling templates more than they do rigid regulations.

Do you experience anxiety, watching me cook? Does my foregoing of measuring spoons make you nervous? Does watching me eyeball ratios and substitute seasonings make you uncomfortable? Do you insist upon adhering to every letter of the recipe like holy gospel, no more or less? Have you abandoned the urge to experiment with staple and spice?

You poor unadventurous bastards.

I kept running into these zucchini cake recipes. I love zucchini, it's pretty and makes a neat springy thud sound when you flick it with your index finger that i find oddly satisfying. I wanted to pair it with something equally patty-like, and saw a recipe for salmon cakes, though I couldn't tell you where, so I researched it and found this recipe for them, and it worked beautifully.

I started with the fish cakes. Picked up a can of salmon, which smelled SO GROSS at first. I shouldn't say "gross," more like strong and fishy and unappealing to me. Drained and dumped it in a bowl to flake it up with a fork as I cooked an onion in some bacon grease. Added the onions to the fish once it cooled, along with some mayo, an egg, some dijon mustard, a bunch of lemon juice, and a sprinkle of sugar. I didn't have a baked potato, so I picked out all the potato cubes left in my kapusnaik that was sitting in my fridge and tossed em on in there. Mix that shit up real good.

The mix looked damp, so I added some breadcrumbs, powdered parmesan and pepper, mixed it until it was tacky, and formed a dozen patties. Fried them in bacon grease until they were all crispy on each side. They stayed together in and out of the pan, and tasted incredible! Not foul or fishy at all! Very cheesy and lemony, to be totally honest with you.

The zucchini patties weren't nothing, just some shredded veg I squeezed the water out of with my potato ricer before adding egg, onion, a little flour and some parmesan and salt and pepper. Fried them just like I did the salmon, but used a spoon to get the mix in there, as it was much stickier than the fish was.

Ate both with sriracha and horseradish and lemon. Very light and tasty with low prep time. Cheap, too! Definitely give it a try, it's a handful of cheap ingredients and gets some fish and veg in your diet. Let me know what you think! Shoot me your dinner photos or ideas on Facebook. I love seeing what you're up to in your kitchen, you know.