Wild Alaskan Salmon Grilled on Cedar Planks

I was invited to this food event put on by Stop & Shop and I took Edie with me because Lucy was still in school. The event was at Aqua Grill downtown and the Chef, Jeremy Marshall did a cooking demo for us. I'm going to be making his ricotta sorbet for our Fourth of July party in the country, so I'll post it here when I've made a few batches. It was lovely.

Edie sat on my lap the whole time, eating little toasts out of the basket, drinking cranberry juice out of a wine goblet and watching the demo intently, but by the end of the lunch, she was more than ready to leave. I call Edie "my co-pilot" because she's a mama's girl and she'll sit through anything as long as I'm right there. She liked the event and enjoyed the chef and all the cooking and stuck her nose up at the children's pasta they served and preferred the grown-up shrimp, but it wasn't totally her idea of a dream day.



When we went to pick-up Lucy from school, I over heard Edie telling her she saw "a chef and the chef was cooking and we ate in a fancy restaurant." There was silence. I turned and saw Lucy's whole face drop. Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled out down her cheeks. She ran to me. She was sad, angry, trying to figure out exactly what she had missed.

"You went to see a chef cook without me? Why didn't you wait until I got out of school? You know I like to cook and Edie doesn't..."

She cried for a bit into my shoulder as I tried to explain things, fumbling around awkwardly for the words, and told her that when she was on vacation I would take her to see a chef demo. That she was next. That Edie just had her turn first. But still she cried. It didn't stop for a long time. It was pure hurt.


And I realized that Edie cooks with me because it's something we do together, but Lucy doesn't do it to be with me. She genuinely likes cooking. She is really interested in it. She wants to see a chef demo, go to the Fancy Food Show this week. She wants to experience cooking in a grown-up way.

And so, I'll be looking for grown-up cooking things to take her to this summer. Maybe even something at CIA. We'll see. In the meantime, we made one of Lucy's favorite foods, salmon. Or "pink fish" as she's been calling it since she was two. Since we are at the house in the country, we made it on the grill.




This meal couldn't have been more simple. Some fish grilled on cedar, a salad with spinach, tomatoes, avocado, a little salt and Asiago cheese, a lemon and olive oil dressing, and grilled vegetables with olive oil, salt, thyme and chives. And we all drank large glasses of sparkling water, just because we're fancy.


Simple. Simple. But the perfect anecdote to hurt feelings.

xo YM

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I used Wild Alaskan Sockeye Salmon for this dish. It's really all about having fresh, wild salmon because there isn't much adornment here. You really want to taste the fish. It should taste rich and wild. You can get the cedar plants at most big grocery stores, usually in the fish section. Soak the planks overnight or even an hour before you grill. They'll float in the water, so submerge them with a heavier object so they get good and soaked through. They get very burnt-looking when cooking. They'll be fine, and will not explode into flames, but if you are nervous about them catching fire you can keep a spray bottle of water next to the grill for possible dousing. A roughly one pound salmon fillet will serve 2 adults and a couple small kids.

Wild Alaskan Salmon Grilled on Cedar Planks

Ingredients

1 Pound or so, fresh, wild salmon (cut into portion-sized slices)
3/4 Teaspoon Kosher salt
2 Tablespoons Extra Virgin olive Oil
2 Tablespoons fresh thyme, finely chopped
2 Tablespoons chives, finely chopped
Juice from 2 lemons
2 grilling planks

Preparation

Get the grill nice and hot for about 10 minutes. While it's heating up, rinse your fish, pat it dry, cut into slices, and baste each piece with a little olive oil. Season with a little kosher salt. Cut a couple of lemon slices and reserve them for the top of the fish. Squeeze lemon juice right from the remaining lemon onto the fish. Sprinkle the herbs onto fish. Add a lemon slice to each one. Set them on a platter and bring them to the grill.

When the grill is hot, turn it down a bit to a medium-low heat. Put the planks right on the grill, without the fish. Let them get hot on one side, about a minute, flip them for another minute. You might have a little smoke, that is normal. Embrace it. Feel like a cave man. Put the salmon right on the hot planks, close your grill cover, and cook about 10 minutes. Don't overcook them.

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Let There Be Gardening

I take a break from this oppressive book proposal writing - damn you, sample chapters - to just say that things are starting to grow around here.

There is gardening, something new to the Foster family, but now that we also have this country life to add to our city life, we have large expanses of dirt and ground and gardens that will not flower and bring forth life, unless we give them some of our attention.

David and I were tilling (it's strange to even write that word in the same sentence as our names) the flower beds and I had this epiphany and looked up at him and said, "Gardening is hard work," as if I had said something completely new and original. He shook his head and went back to turning up the soil. I am, it seems, Captain Obvious.


Truth is, the whole family is enjoying this gardening thing. I didn't marry a handy man, but I'll be damned if David has turned into a hotter version of Bob Villas, with his swarthy tool belt and destroying things with chain saws. And me, well, I used to pity people who worked in the dirt, I lamented that they always had soil in their nail beds and bugs in their hair, now, I'm having lengthy Twitter conversations with Mrs. Wheelbarrow about the pros and cons of ornamental grasses and whether I should ask David to buy me a Weeping Higan Cherry Tree for Mother's Day...

What happened to jewelery? Who am I?



The kids love gardening, too. Especially Lucy. She has this long attention span and ability to focus on one thing for a long time and planting the seeds in neat rows was right up her alley. Also, gardening offers all the right elements - opportunity to get dirty, opportunity to play in dirt, opportunity to play in dirt and get dirty and add water. Drowning the plants in water with the big over-filled watering can is our favorite pastime.


We started small, with the idea of a container garden, growing the seedlings for flowers and vegetables in our green house first and then, later hoping to transplant them into containers. But now, the gardening bug has taken us over, our beans and peas are shooting out of their trays and we see urban farming as our path. Sigh.

Even David is plotting the outdoor garden space and saying things like, "Do you think it's possible we'll be able to grow all our own vegetables this summer?" and I hear myself say back, "Yeah, I think so, I think with the greenhouse, we can have an all year round garden, rotating in and out hot and cold weather vegetables..." and then I start talking about canning and how much tomato sauce I can put up for the winter. And then, I just have no idea who I am anymore, although she sounds a lot like Laura Ingalls Wilder's mother, and I sort of sit quietly and hope the strange voices stop talking to me.


But weirdly, I can't wait to get back to the country and check on my peas. I should've staked them last week and now, I'm worried about them, worried I might find them toppled over and failing. I am secretly considering pulling Lucy out of school so we can get back up there and check on them. Right now, I am holding back the desire to write a whole paragraph about my peas. This is truly pathetic.

xo YM

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Happy Easter.

Wishing you eggs and bunnies and family.


















xo YM

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Operation Christmas Cookie Hell

So, it occurs to me that we know only one neighbor near the country house and that it's about time we met the people around us. The country is a quiet, desolate, dangerous, wild animal-dwelling place. I need re-enforcements.

So, if I'm going to scream for almighty help when a crazed, rabid raccoon corners me in the garage and tries to eat my left ovary for a snack, I want people to come running. Best to get on the neighbors good side from the get-go. Lest someone need to stand over my withering, blood-spurting body and give me CPR as I utter my last, choked words through all the gurgling in my throat, "My husband made me...buy this...damned c-c-country house".

Thus, Operation Christmas Cookie. An effort to woo my new neighbors.

This strategic operation also doubles as a project with the kids. And what a project it is. Making Christmas cookies is an unendurable act of torture. The CIA should retire that tiresome water boarding they do and focus on making convicted terrorists make dough, let it set, roll it out, cut the cookie shapes, decorate with sprinkles, bake and then, make scratch frosting, after they've been forced to go to five supermarkets searching desperately for the ever-illusive mernegue powder, and then delicately drizzle said frosting on the cookies, so that the little trees look they have wafts of snow on their branches.

You want these guys to give up Bin Laden? Well, I have four words for you: HOMEMADE CHRISTMAS COOKIE HELL.


That said, the end product turned out pretty great. But still, not so great as to justify all that work. You bakers out there, I am in awe of you. Really.


And we made labels.


And bought pretty boxes.


And pasted the labels on.


See? This stuff is grueling. I have no idea how Martha Stewart does this.

I packed up the kids and the boxes into the red wagon and we went house to house offering strangers our cookies and begging them to call 911 if ever they hear screaming from inside our house.


This whole endeavor, this wrestling with dough and sprinkles, cost me, like 36 hours of my life. And I still have six mounds of dough in the fridge, ready to be fashioned into my next big idea - which sounded pretty good when I dreamed it up, but now seems like driving hot wooden spikes through my eyeballs and into my brain - which is, gifts of cold, hard dough in wax paper, tied up with ribbon like a tootsie roll, with packets of sprinkles and little Xmas cookie cutters.

I am a glutton for punishment.

xo YM

PS: If you get a chance, head over to visit the very talented Jennifer Perrillo and donate to her cookie campaign to end childhood hunger, "The 12 Days of Sharing Virtual Cookie Jar". Here's her post on what inspired her to get the cookie jar started and how you can participate. Although I haven't gotten a chance to meet her yet, Jennie's reputation is golden in these parts and if she's involved, it's a good cause. Also, there is still time to post your own cookie recipe and help get the word out.

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