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So, at Friday Gamer's Guild, in the bathroom I was looking at an IDS (student paper) lying around, and for once actually looked at the Kroger ad insert. Not much there for me... but the Silverbrite wild-caught salmon fillets for $3.99 caught my eye. Absurd price for wild Alaskan salmon... and in fact, it actually only says "wild caught in USA", so who knows. But I didn't notice that, I just thought "cheap good salmon!" I've also been looking for more cambozola, and had been told Eastside Kroger might have it, and my downtown Kroger sure didn't and while i haven't checked its fish selection it's kind of meager in the meat department, so Monday I tried biking to Eastside. (Was also looking at flashlights and cell phones in the mall.) Kroger had the salmon, of which I bought the last two packets, and the cambozola, and also blue brie.
Then, as I was arranging my shopping bags so they'd fit in my anorexic bike baskets, lyceum and her bf M walked in, so I hailed them. Told them about my haul, including the salmon, which they expressed interest in, but alas I'd taken it all. "Maybe I could have you over," I said, inspired partly by the discovery at checkout that the last two packets had actually been the last *three* packets, so I had like 6 on-sale not-frozen fillets to eat.
After eating a package myself, I did have them over tonight. With three fillets (one package just had a single large fillet) I decided to try three different cooking methods: pan-fried, like my first two, broiled if they'd bring over-safe equipment over, and microwave because I know that sometimes works, and we could sample them all. Also rice with garlic and shallots as a starch.
End result: eh. Pan-fried was definitely the best, probably helped by pan seasoning of rosemary powder, black pepper, and the accumulated contents of a cast iron pan that's been cooking Kobe beef and burning salmon recently. I'm not sure about the broiled salmon; I gave them the good cuts, and the last thick third looked undercooked so I put it back in, and it jumped to being overcooked. The microwave fillet had a common problem of the edges cooking very quickly, while the center remains raw; eggs have had this problem too. I think the rotary table in the microwave needs epicycles, to get the center out of being the center. Final results were decent pan-fried, ok others, helped with lemon and salt.
Plus, you known, on-sale non-frozen salmon of unknown provenance a couple days after purchase. It was smelling a bit fishy to start with... not going bad fishy, just fishier than salmon usually does IME, if that makes any sense. Broiling was improvised: in a deep pyrex dish they brought, with tin foil. And a lot of the microwave recipes out there call for marinating first, which I didn't have time for.
As for the rice, it's nice if you get some of the garlic with it, but I didn't really plan ahead and really should have sauced it. Olive oil and balsamic vinegar -- yes, basic salad dressing -- works well IMO. (I discovered this long ago by using rice as a bed for salad, or pouring post-salad dressing on rice.)
If done again I'd probably just pan-fry everything, and put sauce on the rice.
Live and learn. Highlight turned out to be getting M to try the cheeses, and while I've been thinking the cambozola wasn't quite up to its predecessor and liking the blue brie, he actually liked the cambozola more (and at all), despite initial misgiving, finding it a better blend of the cheese species. The blue brie is visually very much brie with thick blue veins; the cambozola... also has deep veins, but also a lighter blue tinge in the rest of the cheese. Plus, it's camembert, hence has a stronger base.
Other highlights were showing off my new LED flashlight, which puts my old incandescent to shame. I wondered if it was new batteries vs. dying rechargables (freshy charged, but old batteries) -- nope, swapped the batteries, still an amazing difference. I'd just bought it, so had to show that off. And in trying to convince lyceum to build up her biking stamina I went to weigh my bike again... 37 pounds. 39 last time I tried, well, it's a crappy scale. Also I weigh 18 pounds more than last time, a year ago. :(
I'd been wondering where I first got cambozola, finally thought to check my log. Nothing there... despite telling both gale and LJ about it, I didn't journal it! Weird. Fortunately I did LJ it so I can say: Bloomingfood's. Just don't stock it often, I guess.
Then, as I was arranging my shopping bags so they'd fit in my anorexic bike baskets, lyceum and her bf M walked in, so I hailed them. Told them about my haul, including the salmon, which they expressed interest in, but alas I'd taken it all. "Maybe I could have you over," I said, inspired partly by the discovery at checkout that the last two packets had actually been the last *three* packets, so I had like 6 on-sale not-frozen fillets to eat.
After eating a package myself, I did have them over tonight. With three fillets (one package just had a single large fillet) I decided to try three different cooking methods: pan-fried, like my first two, broiled if they'd bring over-safe equipment over, and microwave because I know that sometimes works, and we could sample them all. Also rice with garlic and shallots as a starch.
End result: eh. Pan-fried was definitely the best, probably helped by pan seasoning of rosemary powder, black pepper, and the accumulated contents of a cast iron pan that's been cooking Kobe beef and burning salmon recently. I'm not sure about the broiled salmon; I gave them the good cuts, and the last thick third looked undercooked so I put it back in, and it jumped to being overcooked. The microwave fillet had a common problem of the edges cooking very quickly, while the center remains raw; eggs have had this problem too. I think the rotary table in the microwave needs epicycles, to get the center out of being the center. Final results were decent pan-fried, ok others, helped with lemon and salt.
Plus, you known, on-sale non-frozen salmon of unknown provenance a couple days after purchase. It was smelling a bit fishy to start with... not going bad fishy, just fishier than salmon usually does IME, if that makes any sense. Broiling was improvised: in a deep pyrex dish they brought, with tin foil. And a lot of the microwave recipes out there call for marinating first, which I didn't have time for.
As for the rice, it's nice if you get some of the garlic with it, but I didn't really plan ahead and really should have sauced it. Olive oil and balsamic vinegar -- yes, basic salad dressing -- works well IMO. (I discovered this long ago by using rice as a bed for salad, or pouring post-salad dressing on rice.)
If done again I'd probably just pan-fry everything, and put sauce on the rice.
Live and learn. Highlight turned out to be getting M to try the cheeses, and while I've been thinking the cambozola wasn't quite up to its predecessor and liking the blue brie, he actually liked the cambozola more (and at all), despite initial misgiving, finding it a better blend of the cheese species. The blue brie is visually very much brie with thick blue veins; the cambozola... also has deep veins, but also a lighter blue tinge in the rest of the cheese. Plus, it's camembert, hence has a stronger base.
Other highlights were showing off my new LED flashlight, which puts my old incandescent to shame. I wondered if it was new batteries vs. dying rechargables (freshy charged, but old batteries) -- nope, swapped the batteries, still an amazing difference. I'd just bought it, so had to show that off. And in trying to convince lyceum to build up her biking stamina I went to weigh my bike again... 37 pounds. 39 last time I tried, well, it's a crappy scale. Also I weigh 18 pounds more than last time, a year ago. :(
I'd been wondering where I first got cambozola, finally thought to check my log. Nothing there... despite telling both gale and LJ about it, I didn't journal it! Weird. Fortunately I did LJ it so I can say: Bloomingfood's. Just don't stock it often, I guess.
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no subject
Date: 2010-07-01 21:42 (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-07-01 22:07 (UTC)From:(Which helps for frying, too -- I hate when there's a thick part and a thin 'tail' which cooks through quicker. I haven't thought of anything better other than hacking off the cooked part and moving it to plate early.)
I tried wrapping the microwave fillet in paper towel, for something like those goals. Managed to get it to stick to part of the piece. :\ Made it easy for me to tell my broiled and microwaved pieces apart, at least, since I gave myself that part. Didn't think of cover plate.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-02 03:55 (UTC)From:I think I do try to rotate my cooking dish by about 90 degrees and maybe moving it around a bit. The covering plate might also help to trap steam and hot air and distribute heat that way.
For cooking salmon, another technique I am slowly trying to perfect is to figure out how much chicken broth to bring to a boil with sliced ginger versus how much salmon to slice up and drop into the boiling broth, such that the fish cooks but doesn't overcook (and become dry). Done right, this seems to have the potential of creating very tender salmon in a flavorful soup.
Cutting up the salmon (and maybe throwing the skin in earlier?) can be a bit of a pain, but I usually don't worry about presentation too much. Hm, maybe sticking the salmon briefly in the freezer would help firm it up and make it easier to cut. But then how to account for temperature variation when throwing it into the broth....