My Adventures in Cooking Fish
Tracy and I were craving some salmon, and it was on sale at Safeway, so we bought a value-pack of the stuff. I went on the internet, and scrounged up an interesting sounding recipe. Now, my track record of tasty recipes that I have found on the internet is pretty good -- it's few and far between that I found a recipe that make me spew forth a stream of explitives, but that's exactly what happened on Sunday night.
The recipe was simple -- almost too simple. Take your salmon, and wash it in cold water. Towel it dry. Grate the skin of an orange (called zest), and rub the zest into the salmon with your fingers. Cover with a metric buttload of brown sugar. Fridge for 4-24 hours to marinate. All of this went without any real problems. However, when I pulled the salmon out, the brown sugar was gone, and my pieces of fish were sitting in a brown goo. Apparently, the brown sugar absorbed all of the water that was still in the salmon, turned into a liquid, and ran right off the fish and into the dish. Fat lot of good that did! Strike one for this recipe.
Now, the more interesting part of this recipe was how to cook the salmon. Basically, the recipe said "make your BBQ as hot as it will go for 15 minutes. Put the salmon on the grill. The skin on the bottom will burn, but that's okay because you're not going to eat that anyway. The fish will cook nicely."
So I opened up my BBQ to light it, and was immediately confronted with two problems: first, the entire grill was covered in white mold. YUCK! I guess some moisture got in there from all the rain we've been having. I scraped it off with a brush and figured that the heat would do a nice job of sterilizing the grill. The second problem was that the knob that controls the gas level wouldn't turn. Apparently my BBQ is a piece of shit (well, not apparently, I knew that already, what would I expect from something I bought at wal-mart?) and the knob mechanism isn't protected and with all the moisture we've been having, it RUSTED. So I brought out the WD-40 and eventually got it turning okay. I was wondering if the latent heat from lighting the BBQ would cause the WD-40 I put on the knob to ignite, causing the knob to melt in a fantastic dripping pile of plastic goo, but nothing so imaginative happened.
My auto-igniter hasn't worked for a long time (I don't even know why they include them -- they never work more than about 5 times before they break), so I generally light my grill using the "olympic method" -- you know what that is. Fold a paper towel up about 4 times until it resembles a torch, and jab it between the grill bars, then turn on the gas. Works like a charm, assuming you actually get it through the bars. Well, on my first attempt, I didn't, and had to drop the paper-towel on the grill itself lest I lose all the hair on my wrist. Of course, as soon as I did that, this huge gust of wind came out of nowhere, whipped the paper towel into the air, and it floated off, a huge mass of paper-embers. I imagine I must have looked quite silly jumping in the air and trying to swat it down. Eventually it floated into a nearby tree -- fortunately, by that time, the cold air had caused it to expire.
The second torch worked, and my BBQ was lit! The recipe said run the BBQ on high heat for 15 minutes, so that's what I did. When I came back 15 minutes later, it was HOT. I took my salmon (with a new layer of brown sugar on top), tossed it on the grill, and went back inside because I was freezing my ass off and I had to wait 5 minutes. When I came back 5 minutes later, there were enormous flames jutting out the back side of my BBQ! I said something like, and don't quote me on this, "*Expletive* *expletive*, *expletive* *expletive* *expletive*!!!"
I ran outside and tossed open the lid, and EVERYTHING inside my BBQ was on fire. The grill was on fire. The side of the BBQ were on fire. MY SALMON WAS ON FIRE. It was so hot in there that the brown sugar had liquified (which is was supposed to do, because that's basically what carmellized sugar is), and the intense heat and flames had ignited the liquified brown sugar (which is, apparently, flammable).
Grabbing my metal spatula, I approached the BBQ and grabbed the fish off, tossing it onto a nearby plate. As I cut the fish open, more expletives were heard coming from my mouth as I discovered the inside of the fish was STILL RAW.
I turned the BBQ off on one side, and put the fish on that side, and let the ambient heat from the other side cook the fish normally and sanely. I am left wondering what kind of BBQ the recipe author used -- because my BBQ gets incinerator hot when it's left on max heat with the lid closed. He must have been using the world's wussiest BBQ.
Turns out, the fish was actually pretty tasty once I cut all the burnt parts off. The orange zest was subtle, but nice. But I will NEVER cook my fish that way again.
At least not with my incinerator piece of shit BBQ.
The recipe was simple -- almost too simple. Take your salmon, and wash it in cold water. Towel it dry. Grate the skin of an orange (called zest), and rub the zest into the salmon with your fingers. Cover with a metric buttload of brown sugar. Fridge for 4-24 hours to marinate. All of this went without any real problems. However, when I pulled the salmon out, the brown sugar was gone, and my pieces of fish were sitting in a brown goo. Apparently, the brown sugar absorbed all of the water that was still in the salmon, turned into a liquid, and ran right off the fish and into the dish. Fat lot of good that did! Strike one for this recipe.
Now, the more interesting part of this recipe was how to cook the salmon. Basically, the recipe said "make your BBQ as hot as it will go for 15 minutes. Put the salmon on the grill. The skin on the bottom will burn, but that's okay because you're not going to eat that anyway. The fish will cook nicely."
So I opened up my BBQ to light it, and was immediately confronted with two problems: first, the entire grill was covered in white mold. YUCK! I guess some moisture got in there from all the rain we've been having. I scraped it off with a brush and figured that the heat would do a nice job of sterilizing the grill. The second problem was that the knob that controls the gas level wouldn't turn. Apparently my BBQ is a piece of shit (well, not apparently, I knew that already, what would I expect from something I bought at wal-mart?) and the knob mechanism isn't protected and with all the moisture we've been having, it RUSTED. So I brought out the WD-40 and eventually got it turning okay. I was wondering if the latent heat from lighting the BBQ would cause the WD-40 I put on the knob to ignite, causing the knob to melt in a fantastic dripping pile of plastic goo, but nothing so imaginative happened.
My auto-igniter hasn't worked for a long time (I don't even know why they include them -- they never work more than about 5 times before they break), so I generally light my grill using the "olympic method" -- you know what that is. Fold a paper towel up about 4 times until it resembles a torch, and jab it between the grill bars, then turn on the gas. Works like a charm, assuming you actually get it through the bars. Well, on my first attempt, I didn't, and had to drop the paper-towel on the grill itself lest I lose all the hair on my wrist. Of course, as soon as I did that, this huge gust of wind came out of nowhere, whipped the paper towel into the air, and it floated off, a huge mass of paper-embers. I imagine I must have looked quite silly jumping in the air and trying to swat it down. Eventually it floated into a nearby tree -- fortunately, by that time, the cold air had caused it to expire.
The second torch worked, and my BBQ was lit! The recipe said run the BBQ on high heat for 15 minutes, so that's what I did. When I came back 15 minutes later, it was HOT. I took my salmon (with a new layer of brown sugar on top), tossed it on the grill, and went back inside because I was freezing my ass off and I had to wait 5 minutes. When I came back 5 minutes later, there were enormous flames jutting out the back side of my BBQ! I said something like, and don't quote me on this, "*Expletive* *expletive*, *expletive* *expletive* *expletive*!!!"
I ran outside and tossed open the lid, and EVERYTHING inside my BBQ was on fire. The grill was on fire. The side of the BBQ were on fire. MY SALMON WAS ON FIRE. It was so hot in there that the brown sugar had liquified (which is was supposed to do, because that's basically what carmellized sugar is), and the intense heat and flames had ignited the liquified brown sugar (which is, apparently, flammable).
Grabbing my metal spatula, I approached the BBQ and grabbed the fish off, tossing it onto a nearby plate. As I cut the fish open, more expletives were heard coming from my mouth as I discovered the inside of the fish was STILL RAW.
I turned the BBQ off on one side, and put the fish on that side, and let the ambient heat from the other side cook the fish normally and sanely. I am left wondering what kind of BBQ the recipe author used -- because my BBQ gets incinerator hot when it's left on max heat with the lid closed. He must have been using the world's wussiest BBQ.
Turns out, the fish was actually pretty tasty once I cut all the burnt parts off. The orange zest was subtle, but nice. But I will NEVER cook my fish that way again.
At least not with my incinerator piece of shit BBQ.
posted by Tarindel @ 12:19 PM
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