My Boy Can Cook

I've been thinking about my brother a lot lately, which really isn't unusual as I think about him often. People think about the people that were important to them, especially when those people have killed themselves and there are a lot of unanswered questions.

He was my older brother and for much of my growing-up years, I idolized him, though he tormented me no end, in my eyes he was a god. That's just how it is with younger brothers and older brothers. 

I could run through a maudlin self-indulgent list of why he was so wonderful to me, and maybe convince you as to why I thought so, but the reality is that you would just read the words and never see the man I looked up to and tried so hard to emulate. You just wouldn't get it, so I am not going to try...and we'll both be happier that way.

We had several things in common: music, fantasy football, pinochle, and cooking. My Mom made sure that we both knew how to cook. She had told us both, "If I die before your father, then you have to get him remarried right away because he would starve otherwise. My Dad could cook toast. My Mom made sure that my brother and I could do much more than that.

Both my brother and I worked our way through several different restaurants on our way to landing in our respective careers. We liked talking about food and cooking, it was a safe subject for us and we were both very passionate about it. As time went by, and we grew older and our lives drifted apart (while his demons and mine grew) we communicated less and less, though invariably, when we did talk, we would touch on each of the subjects...including cooking.

Over the years, my brother adopted a kind of country bumpkin/biker look that confounded the rest of the family. He adopted the pose of the outsider and tended to live up to the "family black sheep" persona. After a while, even his speech patterns shifted toward a rural-rough-edged mannerism that was completely contrary to how we were raised. He became an Oakland Raiders fan and thus tended to adopt certain speech patterns. I still understood his words though, because I was listening with that eager "little brother" ear that yearned so for his approval and recognition.

That's why I was thinking of him tonight. Why, when I was cooking a chili-lime seasoned salmon with picatta sauce, herbed rice and peach-strawberry-blue cheese fruit salad I was listening with my "little brother" ears for his voice, standing behind me saying, 

"My boy can cook."

God how I wish I could hear him say that.

Cooking Therapy

For a long time, I have been able to gauge the stressfulness of my day by the complexity of the recipe that I create when I get home. There is a direct correlation between the amount of chopping, stirring, braising and general work involved in a recipe and the amount of *stuff* that I have endured during the day.

So bear that in mind when you hear what we had for dinner last night. I wanted to have salmon again. Salmon is a good reliable fish that has its own nice flavor but doesn't tend to overpower anything with its presence. Essentially, you always know that you are eating salmon, you just don't have to have it beat you in the skull with its presence. 

Of course, being that I live in the overfished and polluted waters of the San Francisco Bay area, I have to rely on buying either farmed salmon or alaskan salmon...either of which is fine for my purposes (as I usually like to do some sort of sauce) and the fact that I don't care to spend half my paycheck for the honor of purchasing a "wild" salmon fillet. 

I was looking for contrast and something different (that involved lots of prep and chopping...it was indeed one of those days) so I started out pouring a little olive oil into a shallow pyrex and then loaded the oil with a lot of salt-free cajun-creole spice, lime juice and no-salt and garlic powder. I then lay the fillet skin-side up into the pyrex and let it sit for awhile so that it would soak up the spices and get well coated with a thick layer of the stuff.

Before removing the fillet, I heated a little salt-free butter in a saute pan, making sure to let the pan get very hot before removing the fillet and placing in face down in the saute pan. I let it sit there for about 5 minutes, the intent being not to cook it, but to sear in the cajun/creole spice layer and blacken it. I then pulled out the fillet and placed it skin-side down on a baking rack and shoved it into the over to bake at 350 for about 30 minutes. The top was a nice evenly seared black.

I then diced some pineapple, mango and raspberries into small pieces and marinated them in a tiny amount of lime juice and balsamic. While the salmon cooked I prepped some brown rice with salt-free chicken bouillon, a generous amount of fresh cut herbs, mushrooms, no-salt, crushed garlic and scallions.

When the salmon was done, I removed it and layered the pineapple-mango-raspberry mix on top, and then served it with the rice and some sautéed spinach. The contrast of the cajun-creole and the sweet topping worked nicely, bringing out a savoriness in both that didn't hide the salmon, just perked it up.

So enjoy the fruits of my lousy day.

The Discovery of Hidden Sodium

To start with, it is very difficult to find any packaged foods that are not packed with ridiculous amounts of sodium. Sometimes the amounts are so ludicrous that the labels have to fraction down the displayed amounts so that they don't make people start weeping in the aisles of Safeway. This fractioning down is done cleverly by the use of "per serving" listings. So that nice can of Campbell's Tomato soup that says it has 800 mgs of sodium per serving seems high, but semi-tolerable until you read the fine print and find out that Campbell's believes that you can get 2.5 servings out of one can, which translates to that little can actually having 2000 mgs of sodium (800 x 2.5=2000). The USDA recommendation for daily sodium intake is 2400 mgs (usually these USDA recommendations are listed right on the label as well...convenient huh?)

So when my girlfriend was recently told to go onto a No-salt diet, we faced quite a challenge, one that re-ignited my interest in cooking. I am the first to admit that I have a "salt-tooth" big time. But I also love my girlfriend so I set out to see what could be done. First stop, the grocery store.

There are actually a lot of salt-free spices in the supermarket. I found  Italian, Mexican, Cajun/Creole and poultry seasoning mixes all salt-free. In addition I discovered crystallized Lime, cumin and chili powder. 

I was very excited. Suddenly there was a whole world bursting open to me outside of my safe little realm of salt, garlic, basil, oregano, lemon and seasoned salt...oh yeah, and pomegranate (more on that in posts).

OK, so what to cook first?