Thursday, August 9, 2012

Salmon again

salmon.jpg
Eastside Road, August 9, 2012—
I REMEMBER LINDSEY'S FATHER saying that in his boyhood you could walk across the Green River, southeast of Seattle, on the backs of the salmon. The coal miners ate them so often they turned them down.

Once in The Netherlands, in Brielle, not far from Rotterdam, we ate at a restaurant called De Zalm — Dutch for "the salmon," because when the restaurant opened, Poseidon knows how long ago, salmon ran in the Old Maas, on whose banks the hotel-restaurant is situated. Well, you don't see salmon there any more, and my only recollection of our dinner — it was at least thirty years ago — is that it included an ear of corn on the cob: but, unfortunately, dent corn, not table corn.

Faithful Reader knows we have salmon at home almost weekly through the season. Dave the Fish Guy catches it off the Sonoma coast — well, maybe he ranges south to the Marin coast, or north to the Mendocino; I don't know. In any case the salmon is wild, and fresh, and firm, and delicious. It's too hot to light a fire outside; Lindsey broiled it in the oven. With it, broccoli, steamed with garlic and a little olive oil, and some cucumber salad in vinaigrette — odd, how nicely cucumbers and salmon go together.

(That reminds me of another dinner, also long ago, in Örebro, in Sweden, when we had gravlax, and cucumbers, and vodka — but that was another kind of salmon dinner altogether.)

These summer salmon dinners are among my favorites, and the lemon nails it down. I squeezed the other half into the vinaigrette for the green salad, and the tastes lingered into the melon we had for dessert.
Guadagni red, Preston of Dry Creek, 2011

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