Measure Free Hippie Cook

Double Treatment Salmon

24 September 2007 by Jean Johnson

It’s true. Since we speak meat and potatoes so well, measurefree emphasizes vegetables, whole grains, and those oh so affordable legumes. Indeed, this kind of peasant food has kept body and soul together throughout the world for centuries. As for me? I find eating deliciously low on the food chain frees me from over-dependence on the corporate economy and lessens my environmental footprint as well.

But my father fished for salmon after he retired, and my grandfather fresh from Norway in the early 1900s, harvested oyster beds for years in one of the Pacific coasts generous bays. More, wild salmon have good lives and quick deaths. So every now and then, I schlep on over to the fish counter. Also as a gesture to the fish eating public, I included some wild fish ideas in Cooking Beyond Measure. This one’s called Double Treatment Salmon (p. 168)

Right now the wild coho or silver salmon are running in the Northwest. For $13+ dollars, I got the fillet pictured. I turned the oven up hot, around 400. Tore off a long sheet of aluminum foil. Put the fish on one end and folded the the rest over the top, folding and crimping the sides to seal the fish in its tent. After 15 minutes or so, I went for the double treatment and turned the oven from bake to broil–pulled the foil back on the fish, and sprinkled on dill, paprika, salt, and pepper. Under the broiler for brief few minutes the pale pink meat turned brown and crispy and yummy looking. The only thing was that the fish looked a little dry. I fixed that, though. Just put a few thin pieces of garlic butter over the top to give the top some gloss. The garlic butter also gave that first bite of fish a round mouth feel that brought me up short–and made me think that I might want to remember the garlic butter when I veggies and beans as well.

I served the fish with sliced tomato and roasted summer squash. I also ate a cucumber while I was cooking, and the crisp crunch was satisfying without dampening my appetite. It’s easy to slice up a cuke for the cook–and whoever else wanders into the kitchen with an appetitie that won’t wait.

Note on Wild Salmon vs Farm Fish–and Eating Beans: All manner of bizarre things happen when fish are penned up as farm animals. They get disease and have to have antibiotics and who knows what else. Their feed can make even the inured shudder. And they don’t get exercise so their flesh is flaccid. It’s also so pale that marketers dye it.

I hate to sound overzealous, but when I can’t afford to pay the extra for wild salmon that come to their deaths clean and fresh and strong from their lives at sea, I eat legumes. Legumes are perfectly good protein. So if I want to gild the lily and eat high off the hog as it were, I want to do so responsibly and pay the larger costs of my food decisions. The idea that animals are confined unnecessarily–and even mistreated as is the case with laying hens, pigs, and cows–grieves me. So I try to spend my food dollars in ways that support smaller family fisheries and ranchers and farmers who remember what conscientious animal husbandry is all about.

Note on Garlic Butter: My mother taught me to make this except she used powder instead of fresh. Before she died, though, I got her blessing on my style of garlic butter. Like KBJ (Mom), I leave a cube of butter out to soften at room temperature. Then instead of the powdered stuff, I put a pinch or two of coarse salt on your cutting board, mince 3-4 cloves of garlic into the salt, and stir into the butter.

The garlic butter I have in the fridge right now has kept for weeks. But I am careful to keep it refrigerated when not in use, since I heard somewhere along the line that fresh garlic cloves in olive oil can cause botulism if not kept chilled.

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