Thursday, August 9, 2007

Family reunion dinner 1

My grandmother is getting on in years, so my dad's sisters have made it a point to come up and visit her each of the last few summers. This year, my brother, sister, and niece came out at the same time, so we were able to have a mini family reunion. Wild salmon is in season and really cheap, so I went a little overboard on the salmon purchase. We already had a big fillet of salmon and some lamb left over from the previous night, but when we went to the store and saw whole wild salmon for $6/lb, I had to get one. This fish weighs 6.5 lbs.
I stuffed the whole salmon with fennel, lemon, garlic, thyme, butter, salt and pepper. When you're cooking a whole fish this size on the grill, be sure to truss it so everything doesn't fall out. The strings will also make it easier to flip the fish. Also, make sure that you scale the fish before tying it up. I remembered this step after tying the fish, and it was significantly more difficult to work around the strings.

For the fillet of salmon, I decided to paint it with a honey mustard, citrus, and thyme glaze and cook it on a cedar plank. If you can incorporate a trip to the lumber yard and power tools into your food prep, that's probably a good thing.

Here are some pictures of the cooking and the finished products.


I also made a relish for the salmon that was made of roasted corn, avocado, tomatoes, red onions, garlic, cilantro, and lime. Basically, it was guacamole that hadn't been mashed up.
The menu was rounded grilled corn and Greek salad and roasted potatoes that my sister made. Midori was a big fan of the corn, which is unusually good this season.

1 comment:

Gustavo said...

Wow, what a beautiful salmon! I want to move to the west coast for this very reason alone.