Birthday Dinner

Last night I had my parents and my sisters family over for my mom's birthday dinner. Luckily my sister brought dessert and I meant to make her peach jam, but that never happened with the dentist etc.. They really liked what I made and it was healthy too. I made salmon tostadas with corn salsa and chili lime rice.

Ingredients:

Salmon
Whole wheat tortillas
Romaine Lettuce
Cilantro lime dressing (you can make your own, but I bought mine at Trader Joe's)
6 ears corn
1/2 red and green bell pepper
1/2 tomato
1 jalapeno
1/2 cup V8 Juice
2 limes
1 lemon
Chili powder
1/4 cup cilantro
2 cups rice
1/2 white onion
4 cups chicken broth
2 tsp of tomato paste
1 clove garlic
Salt and Pepper to taste

First:
I cooked the corn by boiling water and setting the corn in the pot of boiling water, covered and let it sit for 10 minutes. You can also grill your corn. Set the corn aside to cool since you will be cutting it off the cobb.

Second:

Start your rice. Chop the onion and add a tbsp of olive oil in your pan and saute the onion, add 1 clove of garlic minced and saute for 1 minute. Add the tomato paste and let it caramelize together and add 1/2 to 1 tsp of chili powder. Mix in your rice, chicken broth and the juice of 1 lime. Let it come up to a boil and turn down to a simmer and cover with a lid for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes I turn off the heat and let it sit there so it will be ready when we are ready to eat.

Third:

Bake your tortillas on a cookie sheet at 375 degrees until they are golden brown and crisp. This will be your base. I did mine in 2 batches.

Fourth:

Cut up all your veggies for the corn salsa and set aside. Cut the corn off the cobb and mix all the veggies in with the corn, bell peppers, tomato, jalapeno, you can add onion, but I left it out and cilantro. Add the juice of 1 lime, V8 juice and salt and pepper to taste. Let it hang out on the counter so all the flavors come together.

Fifth:

Start cooking your salmon. Have all of the ingredients out on the counter so it will be easy to put together once the salmon is done. Salt and pepper the salmon, I added a little chili powder to my salmon as well. I heated up a skillet with olive oil and placed the salmon in until it formed a crust on the top. I squeezed lemon juice over the salmon while it was cooking. Flip the salmon over once it forms the crust and turn the heat down to medium heat and cook it how you like. We like our salmon cooked all the way through, so it took about 10 minutes total.

Put it all together:

Place the tortilla on the plate, top with romaine lettuce and drizzle with cilantro lime dressing. Add the salmon on top of the lettuce and place the corn salsa on top of the salmon. You can add a little sour cream to the top if you wish. Place the rice on the side and you have a healthy and flavorful meal.