Day 6 of PCA II – The Salmon are Running!

Well today we did Salmon. Ours was farm raised and we were provided with the information on the difference between farm raised and wild caught. I’m always for wild caught.

Tonight we fabricated the salmon and made –

Grill Salmon with Maitre D’Hotel Butter, Peas and Mashed White Potatoes with Roasted Garlic ~and ~ Sautéed Salmon Cakes with Whole Grain Mustard Emulsion and Frisee Salad with Vinaigrette.

I think I am still most impressed with the little things. It’s amazing how a small thing can just make a dish come alive. For these two dishes it was the butter. I am so going to begin to incorporate hotel butter in more foods. They are so easy! Just take your butter and add things to it that you use in your dishes. Our butter tonight contain parsley, a bit of lemon juice and some of the soy mixture we used on the grilled salmon and fresh garlic. It’s also nice to note that your butters don’t have to be only ‘savory’ butters but you can make sweet ones too. Add a bit of brown sugar and cinnamon, or almond extract. Talk about a happy bagel. With two sticks of butter you could made 4 different hotel butters. (Of course if you have a bigger family or event you’ll need more) What a nice treat to have in your fridge to top off a dish.

I have also started saving the bottles my dressings come in. I refuse to buy it any more. It is so easy to make a vinaigrette and so much cheaper. I bought one the other day my Marie Calendar’s Blue Cheese Vinaigrette. Very tasty and I could so make it for 1/3 of the cost. Save your cash!

I’m not a big salmon ‘fan’. It’s a long story, but of course it’s my blog so I will share. Years ago my husband and I had a very large salt water aquarium. We started off with the small fish to condition the tank and then went on to create a reef system. Did that for while and then decided we wanted the big boys. So we shifted gears and went with a predator tank – a shark, lion fish, eagle ray. Well they had to eat and we had to ‘hand’ feed them (we used long tongs.) What did they eat? Well gold fish was the first option, but the darn things don’t live very long in salt water and these guys were not the greatest of hunters, and it was cruel to the gold fish. So it was time for salmon. We’d buy a whole salmon frozen and then spend the day in the kitchen with a hack saw cutting it up into little chunks and individually wrapping them up. There were salmon bits everywhere. Thus my aversion to salmon, it just brings back memories of all the years we’d prepare the fish food.

My car still has a slight fish odor. I have several fabric softener sheets lying about to help.

Tomorrow we’re doing our lobsters for recipes later on. Yes they are alive. We won’t be using the meat tomorrow as we’re doing quail and grilled pizza. I think everyone is happy to get away from the fish for a while. But then it’s right back into the fish with Albacore on Thursday.

Our class size is shrinking. We lost Alexandra (Jay’s wife also called Princess). And there is talk of us losing one more whose schedule is just too hectic to do all the things she needs to do. And yet another wants to move to the morning class. That would put us at 15 from our original 21. That sounds a bit more manageable.

Until Tomorrow!