Sexy Salmon

The price of Copper River salmon can take your breath away. Ranging from $15.99-to-unthinkable-per pound, the taste had better be good to justify the price.

It is.

I had never heard of Copper River salmon until a few years ago, when a co-worker who is a very good cook mentioned it. I’m a fan of salmon, so I was very interested.

The Copper River salmon season is very short (May and June), which likely accounts for its price tag. The poor, unsuspecting wild salmon are caught while swimming upstream in the Copper River in Alaska where they will breed. Wild salmon have more flavor than farm-raised, and these salmon are particularly delicious because they have to store a lot of fat to make the 300-mile trip upstream. Fat = Flavor.

But it doesn’t matter to my husband whether the salmon was farm-raised or caught wild. He doesn’t care how far they traveled to spawn. In fact, they could have tweeted their sexy fishy parts to lady salmon in Scotland, and it wouldn’t make my husband any more interested in eating salmon – expensive or otherwise.

Every once in a while, I will use the Omega-3-is-so-good-for-you argument, and he will allow me to serve salmon, but I don’t push the envelope. Instead, I simply order salmon at restaurants whenever possible. Sometimes I will go to Whole Foods and buy a hamburger patty for him and a salmon burger for me.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to see if he would be willing to eat Copper River salmon for dinner. I didn’t want to fork out that much money only to have him pick at his fish and yearn for a pork chop. I explained how delicious Copper River salmon is, and, of course, reminded him how good Omega 3 is for us. He acquiesced.

My original plan was to cook the salmon on the grill. I could taste the simple yumminess of grilled salmon with maybe just a couple of lemon slices on top and some capers. Then I suddenly got an idea.

“Eureka,” I said. I had just remembered a recipe I had discovered many years ago in a snooty cooking magazine called Saveur. (I only call it snooty because I don’t know what the word “saveur” means, being it’s French and all. The magazine was actually quite interesting and many of the recipes were delicious.)

The recipe involves bacon. If a salmon filet doesn’t excite my husband, at least the addition of bacon would make it that much more palatable.

Here’s what you do:

In a skillet, brown a few pieces of bacon. For my two filets, I browned (until crispy) four slices of bacon. Once the bacon is brown, remove it from the pan and drain it on some paper towels. Once it is cool, break it into pieces.

In the bacon grease that remains in your skillet, brown your filets on both sides. You want it fairly crispy, so cook it for maybe five minutes or so on each side. By the way, if the bacon you cooked didn’t render enough fat, add some olive oil (or even better, add some bacon grease that you have in a little jar in your refrigerator left over from previous breakfasts – oh, wait a minute; that’s me, not you). Once the salmon is caramelized, cover your skillet and cook on low temperature for about five minutes, until it is translucent.

Once the salmon is cooked through, set it aside. Pour some red wine vinegar (maybe a third of a cup or so) to the bacon grease in the skillet. This will splash, so stand back, and be prepared to clean your stove top later. Add a bit of sugar to the dressing that you have just prepared. Pour the hot dressing on top of a salad, top with the bacon, and serve along with the salmon. If you wish, a hard-boiled egg would be delicious on this wilted lettuce salad.

My husband ate the entire piece of fish and proclaimed it to be delicious. The moral of the story is when all else fails, add pork.