54 posts tagged “salmon”

The last line-caught salmon I cooked, I was too elaborate, so I wanted to go simple on this one. Salt, pepper, and garlic oil. The potatoes were mostly just an experiment, parboiled, tossed in garlic oil and grilled along with the salmon. They were overcooked when par-boiled, which gave them a fluffy texture (but also made them break apart a lot easier), but they were actually quite excellent. These were done over very high, and close heat.

The sauce was a frozen leftover crayfish thing, that I added a little blue cheese to and reduced. This was fantastic in its own right, but in the end it turned out to be overpowering. I never thought salmon was a delicate thing, but compared to crayfish, it certainly is. And in retrospect, I feel just downright dumb to not realize that asparagus would obviously be too delicate in flavor for such a sauce.

Oh yeah, and I overcooked the salmon. I haven't done skinned salmon fillets on a high and close heat very often. I should do something about that.

Still, a good meal, though.

This is from chef Richard Phillips' contribution to the British cooking show "Cooks Challenge." I'll freely admit that his efforts looked better than mine — but not by a whole lot, to be honest. Salmon looks its best when unadorned, and grilled or broiled, in my opinion. And when you have a top-notch ingredient like this line-caught salmon, I almost never do anything complicated to it. But this was just too good an opportunity as the freezer contained not just this beautiful salmon, but also shrimp, and quite a few leftover crayfish shells. Being frugal is a great virtue, especially in these days. And I just get a great feeling of satisfaction, if I can cook a meal just from the larder, so to speak.

I'll never again throw away shells from shrimp or crayfish again. The stock you can make from such leftovers will bring your cookery to an entirely new level. I don't cook much red meat, but I'm seriously considering hanging on to scrap meat and bones, to make stock from that too. Demi-glace, baby!

The crayfish sauce was my own idea, mind you. It was fantastic. The mousse was nice, but the salmon just disappeared in it all. The dish would have been almost as good with any other fish. As much as I enjoyed it, this was just not the best use of such a good piece of salmon.

It's simple: In a pan, sauté mirepoix, garlic and crayfish shells. Add water, a tea-steeper (or cheesecloth) with peppercorns and thyme, bring to a boil, cover and reduce to a simmer. Let it go until the crayfish shells start softening. Puree in a blender or food processor till smooth, and strain. Add the bits that didn't strain through back into the blender, with some of the strained liquid and repeat — get as much out of it as possible. Unless you have a lot of time, you'll want to do this the day ahead and refrigerate it. To finish it, heat it up, cut it with heavy cream and season with salt (and finely ground white pepper, if you want). Reduce until desired consistency. (I also added some cream to the sauce after plating it, trying to be artistic. Didn't work out too good, heheh.)

British cooking shows are generally much more interesting than the ones on this side of the pond. Not that they're all that great, but overall, they're really are far better.

Cooks Challenge has two chefs create dishes that are judged by — well I don't know exactly whom, but the one show I caught (not the one were this salmon recipe came from) had a really annoying bint who'd been running some sort of a weight-loss show, so she was one of these minor celebrities. She judged them. You might think that someone in that line of business would be knowledgeable about food — but noooooooooooo.

She explained that she was a vegetarian. Which of course means, you don't eat fish — right? But just like a televangelist denounces the evil, sinful desires of the flesh, only to get caught shitbox truffle-hunting with a male hooker, there are a few evangelical vegetarians who haven't quite got their game plan sorter out either.

So of course, the chefs obviously asked her if she ate fish, which she obviously, of course, did. She also had several other things she didn't like — not weird or exotic things; just plain, everyday stuff.

WHO THE HELL DECIDED THAT THESE PEOPLE ARE FIT TO JUDGE FOOD?

On American Iron Chef, they had once one of the actors from The Sopranos, and every single comment he made was about how close the dishes resembled Italian food. WTF? On the original Iron Chef, even the most seemingly worthless celebrity judges, like pro athletes, the (seemingly) most vacuous bimbo starlets, politicians — hell, they even have a sooth-sayer as a recurring judge — would make genuinely informed, eloquent and downright erudite observations.

I mean, would you want a painting judged by a color blind person? Or someone who's favorite pictures are Velvet Elvis and Dogs Playing Poker? Sanctus Simplicitas.

... Not.

The tandoori paste is from Gordon Ramsay, and I've used to several times before with great results. But on those occasions, I sautéed the salmon in a non-stick pan. In this case, I decided to grill it. This didn't do wonders for the tandoori paste — it lost almost all its flavors. D'oh. That's a bit of a novice mistake — a friend of mine does a fantastic ribeye steak on the grill, upon which he heaps frightening amounts of garlic and rosemary. The grill reduces the potency of the flavors, and it comes out just right. I should have thought of that. Oh well. The salmon was caught though, and not purchased, so it was of excellent quality and still came out tasting great.

Sadly, I kinda lost my nerve after having pulled it off the grill and discovering that it hadn't cooked through properly (it was frozen and hadn't thawed out properly yet) — and then I sort of lost my nerve and ended up overcooking it a bit.

Homemade smoked salmon from my buddy's father, homemade pizza bread, mozz, green and purple onions, and a little parm on top. Very tasty. I do so like making my own pizza dough. Or any bread dough, that is.

Salmon fillet marinated in soy, Shiraz red wine, water, brown sugar, garlic, lemon zest and oil. Sautéed carrots and plain rice, with a corn starch-thickened sauce made from the (boiled) marinade.

The marinade was somewhat heavy on the soy sauce, so it was fairly salty. I was impressed by how well the marinade penetrated, but I did leave it in the fridge overnight. I was amazed by the color — the soy and red wine created a dark, purple hue that looked out of this world.

It was cooked over extremely high heat, with charcoals up a raised griddle that brought them up so high they touched the cooking griddle. I really lucked out on this occasion, because I think a regular salmon fillet would have been burned pretty badly. I think the extended marination protected the fillet quite a bit. I also lucked out just on the cooking time — about 12 minutes. It was cooked presentation side down, and when I flipped it onto the skin side, I adjusted the vents for lower heat, and also placed the fillet a bit away from the coals.

The was very crispy. I didn't use to eat the skin, but these days, I'm changing my mind. I've read that sushi bars serve them, as a snack. They're right, I think. Of course, I'm not so familiar with this to present the fillet skin side up (it went soggy before I could eat more than 1/3 of it — especially with the sauce).

The sauce made from the marinade was a complete disaster. If the fish was a tad too salty, the sauce was inedible.

The rice, just plain. The carrots and peas were just sautéed and seasoned with salt and pepper.

Very nice meal.

The biggest fishie I ever caught was a four pound cod. I thought I'd hooked some seaweed, or possibly that I'd run into a retarded fish or something, since it offered very little resistance. A week later I caught something that almost yanked the pole right out of my hands — I thought I had the Loch Ness monster's angry cousin on the line, but it turned out to be a freakin' one pound trout. Those buggers can really fight. I can't imagine what it'd be like to land this salmon, cause it was something thirty pounds.

Grilled up very nicely, though. With nothing but oil, salt and pepper — good quality ingredients calls for simplicity, I think. The asparagus was grilled along with the salmon, but the hollandaise had to be made indoor, of course. I'm extremely happy with the luscious and velvety appearance. I've spent an awful lot of time trying to figure this sauce out — the difficulty is overblown, to the point of making people overly intimidated by it, which in turn actually makes it harder to create.

But I've come up with a method that's a mixture of Escoffier's (no double boiler — keep it simple), the CIA's technique (simmer shallots or purple onions and crushed peppercorns in vinegar till dry, add water and filter it, to create an underlaying flavor), and a stick blender (to whip the egg yolks up). I'm not sure whether I love hollandaise more than I love being able to create the sauce itself, heheh.

This was a bit of a project. I've been having problems creating a really crispy "au Gratin" crust, and I still do — but I I'm getting closer, though. I think. My findings will be released, once I have discovered the secret! /deranged Dr. Frankenstieen cackle/.

The taters were sliced extremely thin on a mandolin*, along with a yellow onion. These were layered with a fairly thick Béchamel sauce with little touch of freshly grated nutmeg — no cheese. This was baked for 45 minutes at 350°F, and then a mixture of grated Swiss cheese and hard breadcrumbs was added. After 15 more minutes, it still hadn't browned up properly, so I poured some oil over it and turned the broiler on. This helped, but it still didn't look right. Maybe I should have gotten the breadcrumbs wet with oil when I was mixing it with the cheese. I thought the cheese would provide liquid, but it just melted away and drained downwards into the potatoes. Also, I used too much breadcrumbs. You live and learn. I learn a lot.

But the main part of the meal was the salmon. Hand caught and flash frozen. Not by me, mind you**. The way I deal with ingredients is that the better it is, the simpler I prepare it. Here, it was just salt, pepper and oil. I really wanted to create some proper grill marks on it, and I almost got it right. I used a neat little trick to raise the coals up until they were about an inch away from the grill — I'll have to get a picture of that tomorrow and demonstrate. I had some very high heat to play with. The only unfortunate thing about a Weber style kettle grill is that the grill griddle is relatively light, so it doesn't have enough mass to retain the heat, if you slap a big wet thing on like a thick salmon fillet. So it's kinda hard to get proper grill marks. I'm still not sure if it really is possible at all, but at least next time, I'll try letting the protein come to room temperature — that'll help, at least.

The sad thing is, I undercooked the thick part of the fillet. It's always a little tricky to cook a fillet that varies a lot in thickness, but I thought I knew what I was doing. Not so. All I can conclude is, I need to start grilling fish a lot more. And hey, 'tis the season for it.

A final thing I learned is that the unsightly white goo that excretes from salmon when it is overcooked — it doesn't just happen when it's overcooked. It also happens if you just use very high heat. The goo appeared when I put the salmon over direct, close, high heat for grill marks — but it dissipated when I moved it to a colder area. Interesting.

*(The thing about a mandolin is, it's one of those kitchen "gadgets" that is truly and genuinely indispensable. The only way to develop knife skills is to practice, so I try to use my chef knife as much as possible. But if you need slice a lot of things, very uniformly thin, there's just no alternative to the mandolin.)

**(I've never met a worse fisherman than myself. I haven't fished in years, and I don't miss it one bit. If you'd melt down the lures I've lost up through the years, you could keep Mr. T in bling for the remainder of his life. I spent some of my time tying knots, a tiny bit actually fishing, and most of it just running back and forth on the shore trying to unstick my lure from the bottom. One time, I actually lost the top of my pole doing this: I yanked on the pole, and the top half came off and promptly slid down the line, into the lake while I stood there just gaping at the sheer horror of how bloody awful I was. Now, I've never cared for "Catch and Release" much. I'm not gonna join Peta anytime soon, but some people call it cruel. I'm not sure if I agree, but I see the point. And if fish were capable of complex thoughts, I'm sure they'd happy to be released, no matter if they've suffered pain... The problem with fishing is that if you kill what you catch, you're contributing to a Darwinian thing — the only fish left in the lake will be the bastards who're too damn smart to eat a lure. With catch and release, you end up with a bunch of idiot fish going "Oh! Shiny!" and going for my lure. So I'm very much in favor of catch and release, these days. I mean, that other people practice it. Not me, of course. I catch one of those bastards, I'm overwhelmed with a profound sense of hatred and an overwhelming desire for vengeance: I've spent FOUR fuckin' hours out here for this half-pound fucking trout?! Die, motherfucker, die!)

Probably the worst looking quiche I've made, yet the tastiest. And that's just due to the salmon. It's almost heresy to say this, but I think smoked salmon is far better than bacon, for a quiche. Bacon doesn't stay crispy in a quiche, and quite frankly, it doesn't provide anywhere near as much flavor.

A mistake I made, was to not use any cream or sour cream, but just 1% milk. That made the whole thing far too thin, so in order to make it set, I had to cook it for almost 1:30 hours, rather than the 45-55 minutes recommended. That created an unsightly, overly browned surface, but worst of all, it made the crust get almost rock hard. This is a little ironic, but mostly just annoying, seeing that last time, I had problems because I didn't pre-cook the crust enough to make it set and become flaky. So now I ended up with a non-flaky, bone hard crust. Damn annoying how I somehow manage to stumble into every possible trap, for such a simple dish.

Of course, I'll get it perfect next time. Or the time after that...

Update — quiche crust tends to soften up a lot, as leftovers. You can't expect anything too crunchy or crispy, but this was still absolutely excellent. Just look at all that lovely smoked salmon:

Sole fillets rolled up around some smoked salmon and covered in a bread crumb crust with lemon thyme and a touch of cayenne. Béchamel sauce with shrimp and dill, seasoned with salt and finely ground white pepper. Boiled carrots and asparagus.

This was mostly put together with what was around — leftover carrots and asparagus in the fridge, along with some freeze-packed, homemade smoked salmon, dried dill and cayenne from the larder and fresh lemon thyme from the garden (and also milk, butter from the fridge, and flour from the pantry for the sauce). The only things that had to be bought were the fish and a can of shrimp. I like that. Although I'll stay away from canned shrimp from now on — they were more expensive than the frozen stuff, and had a very salty flavor. I can't remember where I got the idea of using small shrimp in a white sauce with seafood (it sort of seems like some gaudy nonsense you see in 1970's food porn) but I really like it. It takes zero effort, provides an additional taste and texture, and for some reason I just think it looks kinda luxurious (in that classy, hang-glider collar, bell-bottom pants, disco, gold-chain, surf-n-turf, classy way).

I remain deeply frustrated with my abilities (well, lack thereof) to plate properly, and to take good pictures. The only ones I'm truly proud of are my burgers. The results aren't all bad, but a fair few of them look like a collaborative effort between Stevie Wonder and Michael J. Fox on a meth and tequila bender.

Didn't overcook the asparagus this time — that's kinda tricky when you're boiling it. Had to time that with the carrots properly, and I'm pretty pleased I got that mostly right.

I've been concerned about cooking dishes that have protein and starch, but no veggies (especially curry type stews), and have tried to make the occasional vegetarian dish to make up for it. Starch is just a filler; something to stretch the meal with. And it's mostly nutritionally worthless; just a quick energy boost. So it's the least important part of the three. And although I'm a meat eater, I'd be hard pressed to choose between giving up protein for a week, and giving up veggies for a week — but I know for sure that losing the veggies would be far worse than the protein, nutritionally speaking. So I think I'm gonna try to just skip the starch more often from now on, and just double up on the veggies.

Got some new ramekins, and I've been eager to use them for something. I'd originally thought of a soufflé, but then I decided to use some mashed potatoes with parsley, and top it with some Parm cheese and Japanese panko breadcrumbs. It turned out quite nice, although there was just far, far too much of it. Since I did the salmon in the oven, along with the potatoes, I had to make a compromise as far as the temperature goes, and the salmon ended up cooking for too long, on too low a temperatore, so I the top didn't brown up at all. Also, some of that white goo ended up coming off the salmon, which is a sign that it has been cooked too long. That's gotta be one of the worst looking salmon fillets I've ever made. Oh well.