Friday, October 28, 2011

planked king salmon


Self-inflicted controversy: Mario calls for king salmon. I couldn't find king salmon. So I had a choice: Try to find the prescribed fish, regardless of cost and likely at a potential hit to quality, or get the best I could from what was available to me.

Frankly, it wasn't a tough call on this recipe. I'm totally sure that king salmon is super special, but this dish was on the menu today, and since I'm not a big fan of salmon in any event, I was going with the best available salmon.

In this case, that was a Scottish salmon. And it turns out that the latitude of Edinburgh isn't that far south of that of Juneau, so, I'm totally rationalizing cheating. Still, I sort of hate salmon, so I'm happy to get them out of the way. 



The preparation is pretty simple, especially since I have had cedar planks sitting on my window sill for about a hundred years. I considered cooking it on the grill, because that's what i figured you did with cedar planks, but the book said in the oven, and that was easier anyway. Totally simple, actually. I heat up the planks for 20 minutes, then oil, salt and pepper the filets. 



And they cook for 9. 



And, ta-da: it's magic.



While all that is happening, I chop up cucumbers for the salad, and that goes together in a very familiar way. I've made Asian cucumber salads that seems a lot like this one, with a swap of vinegars and a few spices.

It looks nice on the plate, right? And almost embarrassingly simple. Wasn't even hard to shop for.

So this is the part where I tell you that even though I hate salmon, I looooooooooved this dish. That would be an exaggeration and will have to wait until this blog is converted into a movie, at which point it will be preceded by an emotional, soft-focus montage of me hating salmon before finally deciding to try this particular salmon in a moment of epiphany. There will probably be an Aerosmith song playing. Because if there is one thing I dislike as much as salmon, it is a Aerosmith-backed montage.

For the time being, I'll admit that I did like it. But that brings the number of times I have had salmon that I actually liked up to a total that is still able to be accounted for with the fingers of one hand.

Up next: mustard-crusted salmon, completing the salmon trilogy

2 comments:

Alan said...

Are there any cauliflower recipes in that cookbook? Any chance of a cauliflower epiphany?

jim webster said...

two that i can think of off the top of my head. one is a pasta, one is part of a salad.