A friend posted a brilliant recipe -- salmon, grains, vegetables, fruit, and aromatics. I did not have all the ingredients, so I had to get creative. It was fabulous.
There is something about our creativity and cooking, and the beauty of ingredients and the ways they ignite our senses that makes cooking, and then eating, so satisfying. I was completely absorbed in the experience. It felt like Sabbath time. Deeply restorative and nourishing.
The experimentation, and taking my time to luxuriate in each step, each fragrance rising from squeezing or sauteing, or slicing, or crushing, or grating. All of it enabled me to disappear into a presence that was so deep it felt like another dimension. It reminds me of the kind of presence I shift into when I am hiking a wild desert landscape.
So here's the method. I took a lime and finely grated the zest. Mixed that with a bit of sea salt and set it aside. A splash of extra virgin olive oil in the cast iron skillet, a clove of garlic grated into that and slowly heated. Sliced a summer salad onion thinly and added it to the pan. Browned the onions until they lightly caramelized and reduced in volume. Measured two teaspoons of oil into a glass and fork-whisked in a bit of ground ginger from my spice cabinet since I did not have any fresh in the house. Set two small wild salmon filet portions on the pan and rubbed the zest-salt into the fish and drizzled the ginger oil on top. That went into a preheated 400 degree oven.
Meanwhile, I prepared a half cup of rinsed quinoa with a cup of homemade chicken stock and to that added some of the greens from the onions, chopped, along with some diced roasted red pepper that was left over from something I made a few days ago. Cento has a good preparation of that in a small, reasonably priced jar. And some sliced almonds. Tossed that together and added it to the pan after removing the fish and onions so that the quinoa pilaf could absorb the pan juices. Set the fish and onions back on top of the quinoa and allowed everything to rest a few minutes before serving with a generous squeeze of lime over the top. That was the best part of the whole preparation. There is something beautifully refreshing about freshly squeezed citrus.
It atomizes and offers the explorer of wild gastronomic landscapes a final gift for the senses.
The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 begins. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.
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