Salmon with Wop Salad

Tuesday 13 April

Holt planned something special but quick to fix for Barbara's gala homecoming after classes ended in Canada (hooray!). Ohio never looked so beautiful, with the redbuds and the crabapples in bloom, and the weather clear and balmy (unlike us - we are balmy, but not so clear).

Holt pan-fried some beautiful salmon fillets and topped them with olive-artichoke tapenade - okay, wop salad that he had made earlier to have on a quasi-muffaletta. He admits to being so naïve when he got to New Orleans that he thought wop salad was named for the sound you make when you chop up the ingredients.

To accompany, he made oven-browned snowpeas, an adaptation of our new favorite recipe for sugar snap peas:

1/2 pound (or whatever) of sugar snap peas - take the ends and strings off, if they've got any.

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon chopped shallots

1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme

kosher salt to taste

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (no, really - that hot).

Toss sugar snap peas, shallots, thyme, and kosher salt in a bowl; spread in a single layer on a baking sheet. Bake 8 minutes (6 for snowpeas) in the preheated oven, until browned and tender but firm.

And some bubbly, of course, because it was a celebration.