Monday’s food is full of flavor. Tuesday’s food is fruits of our labor. Wednesday’s food is full of greens. Thursday’s food is lots of beans. Friday’s food is love on a plate. Saturday’s food works wonders too! …But the food that is eaten on the Sabbath day is bountiful and blessed and good all day through! This has become almost a mantra to manifesting seven perfect dinner menus. Mother Goose
Spring is now in full, beautiful bloom. This brings to mind the warmer, slightly longer daylight hours staining our skies with vibrant sunsets delivering a promise of fair weather at sea. It is like that old saying, ‘Red sky at morning, Sailor take warning. Red sky at night; Sailor’s delight’. Oh, those spectacular, late afternoons! All of this lovely fresh air would no doubt be making many sailors’ appetites ravenous. Red
Having set the scene, it is not necessary to look very far in order to become inspired to cook for some hungry sea-faring folk. Those vibrant pink skies make one conjure up thoughts of gentle, pink pillows of flaky salmon. Salmon One longs for the kind of salmon that is redolent of a briny, oily texture that falls apart at the very moment it comes into contact with the tine of a fork. One wishes for this fish to be so very fresh that it will still have the taste of the sea, but yet it will not taste ‘fishy’.
The fat on salmon contains the so called good cholesterol, and is all located in a rather thin layer just below the skin’s surface. Because of this, it is best to try to cook this fish with the skin still intact. In this way, when the heat reaches a certain temperature it causes that fat to liquefy into the flesh. This improves the flavor and adds a lot of extra moisture to the fish.
We should be looking for the kind of fish that still has the skin attached. It also should be wild-caught instead of the farm-raised variety because the farm-raised fish contain far more undesirable levels of heavy metal and bacteria.
There is an easy and rather unorthodox way to prepare skinless salmon so that it will still maintain the flavor and moisture. First, it is important to note that all seafood it best if it is cooked for the shortest length of time. Fish that is allowed to cook for too long always becomes tasteless and dry. It is with this thinking that we suggest the following method for cooking salmon.
Melt about ¼ cup unsalted butter, or olive, or another kind of oil, in a large, microwave-safe bowl. Rinse and pat dry two 4oz. salmon filets. Season on both sides with salt, pepper, herbs, garlic, lemon and/or what ever else is called for in your recipe. Cover with some plastic wrap and microwave on full (high) power for two minutes. Remove from the oven and check to see if the fish flakes and is no longer raw in the middle. If it requires more time, continue cooking in additional twenty second intervals, checking after each interval.
Salmon made in this fashion is delicious, good for our health, saves dinner preparation time, and looks pretty enough to bring back those serene, blissful memories of a lovely spring day’s sunshine ever so gradually melting into the deep, blue sea. Ahoy there Sailor!
