Salmon cooked in lettuce. It’s a recipe from Asturias, the verdant and rainy part of northwestern Spain where the weather most resembles what we’ve experienced over the past month. I would be just fine if I lived in Asturias, or Ireland or Oregon or northern Minnesota, but since I didn’t actually sign up to live in any of these places, our continued immersion in fog has been disorienting to me. The salmon is best if you also use fresh spring peas, and you begin by sautéing onions in butter, then add the peas and cover them with romaine lettuce. Slip salmon fillets under the lettuce, put a little butter on the fillets, and cook until they’re done. I think this method is similar to cooking fish steamed in parchment paper (en papillote), and if you aren’t careful it’s an easy way to overcook the salmon. When cooked correctly, however, you end up with a green vegetable topping that’s perfect for spring. It’s easy to think of salmon as the sterile accompaniment to unappetizing vegetables on the side, like the carrots or asparagus with salmon at a catered business conference in a hotel. “My first guess is salmon. No, my only guess is salmon,” said a character in Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, in a scene where they’re awaiting lunch at a meeting for investment bankers. This is a book I respect and remember quite well, even though I haven’t bothered to follow the author’s later work. It ends with the same character opening a restaurant, one of the most respectable forms of artistic achievement in today’s America. Your acquaintances won’t necessarily read your book or go to your art show or watch your movie on Netflix, but if you open a restaurant, people will eat in it.
(Photo: University of British Columbia, Vancouver.)
365 Days of Food 