Salmon Experiment #3: Sauteed Salmon with Sweet Potato, Papaya Rougaille, and Couscous

Once again in my deep concentration upon a recipe I forgot to photograph my piece of art as it was in the making. My results didn't look like the picture in this recipe at all, but were even more beautiful and colorful, in my opinion, with the vibrant pink of the papaya and reds of the onion. I made the rougaille up a few hours early, substituting balsamic vinegar for red wine vinegar since that is what I had on hand. The papaya was very good, I'd had the giant fruit sitting on the counter ripening over the last few days. My mouth still stings from the uncooked red onion in the mix, but it was a pretty impressive sauce to pile atop the dish. I went for a walk to enjoy the 65 F sunny October afternoon, down to the Point to sit on some rocks and contemplate life, and then it was back home to start on the rest of the recipe.

I didn't find zucchini at the store so I just popped cubed sweet potato into salty water and boiled that while I worked on the rest of the ingredients. I threw the other half of my red pepper from the first salmon experiment into the oven with some olive oil and let it roast that way. As I don't like mushrooms and didn't want to use any butter, I sauteed up the onions and garlic with cumin and olive oil and then prepared regular small couscous since I don't particularly like the large fat couscous either. So I made several important alterations to this recipe but I still think it turned out tasty. My roommate had to give me lessons in preparing salmon with the skin on because up to this point I'd been trying to saw it off pre-cooking and was ending up with disastrously torn fillets. Fried up the skin peeled right off! So we sauteed the salmon up that way and then laid it on a bed of couscous and heaped the delicious rougaille on top and off we went to enjoy what turned out to be a very tasty dish (though as I mentioned above, I might reduce the red onion amount because it overpowers my mouth and the aftertaste!).

So there you have it, my third experiment and I'm still learning about how to cook with salmon. There are three or four fillets left in the bag so I'm sure you'll hear about yet more experiments to come! I saw one recipe that is poached or steamed with earl grey tea and I've been wanting to try these tea poached dishes, so that may come next!

Salmon Experiment #2: Salmon in a Couscous Crust

Here is my second salmon semi-success! I got a picture of it before it hit the oven this time, but of course forgot to take one after it was out. Imagine the couscous fluffy and you get the idea. The salmon is hidden deep beneath the layers. This recipe was tasty, but it isn't one I'm going to make again probably. The salmon was rather tough, maybe because it was baked with so much liquid? The other two judges weren't completely sold on it either. Both could have done without the capers, and one wasn't so sure about the parsley. I liked the couscous part, but was disappointed in the salmon.

I also thought I'd show you my new cooking grounds - an island! It's pretty awesome to have so much more space to work with when cooking. The oven and sink and their counters are off to the right, and that's the back door. 

Salmon Experiment #1: Maple-Glazed Salmon

So I bought a bag of salmon from Costco. Wild-caught, free-swimming, Pacific-happy, Monty-approved Salmon. But I don't know how to prepare salmon. My fall-back before has always been the following easy steps:

1. Douse in fresh, real, lemon juice
2. Stir in some fresh garlic
3. Marinade and bake.

I might have added basil once. With potatoes. And everything tasted so fishy I had to throw out the leftover potatoes. I guess we did have salmon burgers once, but I bought them pre-burgered.

Well, with this bag of opportunity sitting in front of me (my response to the need for protein in my diet), I hit the net, searching for "salmon" recipes. Deciding to give the Food Network a try, I clicked on their first link: Maple-glazed salmon with Pineapple Salsa. I had had glazed salmon in restaurants before and never been very impressed except one time in Olympia (where the fish are equally fresh and happy), but for some reason decided I wanted to try one on my own. So when pressed for a meal idea for a guest I decided to give it a try (because guests are only good excuses to try new recipes on, fail or succeed).

I ended up making my own teriyaki sauce with this recipe, because I don't particularly like teriyaki sauce and didn't want to buy a big bottle of it I then wouldn't use. I figured I liked all the ingredients in this recipe so the sauce couldn't turn out too bad. With the assistance of my teriyaki-loving roommate I ended up adding some sesame seed oil and some rice wine vinegar to even the flavor out, but it turned out pretty good! I didn't thicken it since I wanted to use it for a marinade, so left out the cornstarch steps and put it in an old restaurant-style soy sauce glass container.

I also left the jalapenos out of the salsa because, well, I don't like jalapenos and where on earth would I find pickled ones anyway? So with a significantly altered recipe all around, I took my three salmon fillets out of the freezer this morning and threw them in a ziploc with the marinade and headed to school. I came back this afternoon and retrieved them, poked the fillets with a fork and laid them in a baking dish with the marinade. But then I got to reconsidering how I wanted to prepare the salmon. I didn't have a coal grill as the recipe demands, and I didn't really want to bake, so I looked at some of the Food Network's other salmon recipes and decided to try a searing technique. Initially this seemed like a disastrous decision as the salmon certainly 'seared' with deep burnt patterns all over. The oil was madly spattering and the salmon was cooking at different rates and I finally pulled them out before they could completely charcoal.

I heaped up salsa on the salmon and then laid a fresh pineapple ring on top of that, placed some steamed broccoli on the side, and served it up. I was terrified to take a bite, but when I did, it was pure bliss. The salmon flaked more beautifully than it ever had before when I'd made it. The flavors of the marinade permeated each bite. In all, I considered it a resounding conquest. A culinary feat. A day to smile.