salmon

A lunch composed of mainly leftovers with chow mein noodles, sesame seeds and homemade salad dressing added. Leftovers included Savoy cabbage, some chopped/sliced green onions and cucumber, and some cooked salmon from Saturday night. Oh man! So delicious!

Here are a couple of informational nuggets:

1. The salmon was bought at my local grocery store and cooked on our gas grill. But note a couple of things: a) It was Norwegian salmon, not Chilean. The stuff from Norway costs a couple of dollars more a pound, but it seems to taste better, and it’s definitely raised better, with fewer antibiotics and less-crowded conditions. I’m going to buy it from now on. (I have to admit that I don’t actually like wild salmon; Norway’s product is farm-raised. Hey, I eat farm-raised beef, too!) And by the way–I don’t buy Costco’s salmon because it has the skin removed. While it’s nice that I’m not paying for something that won’t be eaten, skin-off salmon is much less flavorful and moist, I think, than skin-on. The skin helps protect the meat and adds fat, ALWAYS A PLUS. b) It was prepared very simply, just sprinkled with coarse salt and left to sit uncovered in the fridge for 30-45 minutes. Any longer than that and it’s going to start tasting more “cured.” The coarse salt is helpful because it’s easier to see how much you’ve put on; a light layer, perhaps 1/2 teaspoon per pound, is enough. Then you want to wipe off the excess with a paper towel before you grill it, or–and I’m going to try this next time–you can rinse it off briefly and pat dry. It’s hard to know the exact amount of salt to apply, so this way you can be sure you’ve used enough and still be able to fix it if you’ve overdone it. My son said that he thought Saturday’s salmon was better than what we had the time before, and I think I didn’t salt it when we had it then. I’ve done this salting step before, though, but failed to remove the excess, and while the salmon was great it was also very salty. So live and learn! c) I just heated the grill to medium heat, turned it down to more like medium-low, then put on the salmon for about 10 minutes, closing the lid. I brushed it with olive oil and sprinkled it with pepper. No salt! I DO NOT LIKE salmon that’s not cooked all the way through, so I then gave it a couple minutes more and tested it with an instant-read thermometer. It read 135 or so, which was fine. The salting really helps keep the fish moist as it cooks. But DONT OVERCOOK YOUR LOVELY SALMON! Honestly! The times I’ve been served salmon chalk! No, no, no!
2. I used the recipe for “Asian Vinaigrette” from my cookbook. So good! You can look up my master recipe for Creamy Italian Salad Dressing here on this website and make the following changes: a) use rice vinegar and brown sugar, 2) use 1/2 cup vegetable oil and 1/4 cup sesame oil instead of olive oil, 3) add 2 tablespoons soy sauce, 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger, and 1 teaspoon Asian chili-ginger paste, and 4) omit Italian seasoning. So you can make the dressing without buying the book, but I have a whole chapter about my salad dressing philosophy that you really should read. It’s riveting.
3. Yes, chow mein noodles are pretty horrible, but how many of them are you really going to sprinkle on your salad? You could certainly use sliced almonds instead–or in addition.

So grill yourself up some lovely salmon, and buy enough so that you can eat the rest cold.