I have mentioned before that the grocery store version of any kind of food sucks if you've ever had that food when it's been grown, raised, or caught straight from nature. We had another startling example of this last night when we ate some salmon.
Now. I am not a fish fan. I eat the fish A. catches, and it's okay, but I don't go wild for fish like some people do. My previous experience with salmon has been, in a word, gross. The fishy smell and flavor are absolutely appalling to me. So when Mr. Jason returned from his annual two-week Alaskan salmon fishing expedition and presented us with ten pounds of salmon fillets he had caught and processed himself, I was apprehensive.
For one thing, ten pounds of Sockeye and Silver salmon is worth about two hundred dollars at market prices. So I really didn't want to screw up cooking it. For another, it was incredibly nice of him to give some to us and I really wanted to like it.
So I put my faith in my belief that most food only sucks when it's from agri-business and cooked a few pounds of Sockeye salmon last night. The color is shockingly red when raw and is quite amazingly pink when cooked. I broiled it plain last night, just so we could really taste the flavor.
The verdict: Yeah, it's just grocery store salmon that sucks. This fish had slightly more of a fish flavor than the white-fleshed trout and pike A. catches in our lake, but it was certainly nothing disgusting. Cubby ate an enormous portion because, unlike me, he's all about the fish. Good for his brain and all, I guess. Everyone else was appropriately impressed with it as well.
So the moral of this story is that if you want to eat really good salmon, you need to have a friend who goes salmon fishing in Alaska every summer and then presents you with wild salmon straight from an Alaskan river. Start hunting for that friend now. You can't have Mr. Jason; we've called dibs.
5 comments:
That was a wonderful gift he gave you. The gift of fresh fish and the gift of realizing how good it is.
Same here. The only salmon I've ever eaten and enjoyed was served at home parties when we lived in Alaska and the host had provided the Salmon fresh from the wild. Guess you didn't get to go to many of those when we lived there, and you didn't like fish even then - except tuna casserole with potato chips on the side, of course.
You've just described about the only way I'd try salmon again. I've had it at least a half-dozen times, and never liked it.
I finally decided that one of the perks of being an adult is I don't have to eat things I don't like just because someone else thinks I should like it. I'll have the steak, please. :-)
absolutely right. My dad and Bubba go salmon fishing in Alaska most summers and come home with the most incredible salmon. Anything else just tastes like poo now. Enjoy!
I grew up in Pensacola, Florida on the Gulf Coast. I thought all seafood slept in the Gulf the night before I ate it - shrimp, mullet, crab, snapper, flounder. Then I moved to Western New York. I won't even eat fish up here. It is NOTHING compared to the fresh seafood I loved growing up in Florida.
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