Friday, July 13, 2007

A Salmonless Existence

It's only in the last few years that I've started approaching the seafood side of the human's food chain. It started out, as I think I've mentioned previously, with a tentative nibble on insanely fresh and delicious battered flake at The Boatshed in Batemans Bay (NSW south-ish coast). It progressed over time, until I was ready to have my first go at barramundi with a few muscles at E'cco Bistro in Brisbane.

Then at Easter this year I tried my hand at cooking fresh, as opposed to frozen and crumbed, fish fillets with quite nice results.

But I hadn't yet tried my tastebuds at salmon.

So, in consultation with mellie we decided the best, easiest, least-scary way for me to ease this apparently delight of delights into my eating regime. And we decided that I should definitely start with cooked salmon in some quality sushi, and leave the raw stuff for another time. I'm sure there are plenty of places to get some quality sushi in Melbourne CBD, but I decided to stick with somewhere I knew.

I had a couple of choices for my experience and, in consultation with the lovely guy who served me, I decided to dip my toes in the water with a grilled salmon onigiri: cooked salmon flaked through rice, wrapped up in lovely crisp nori. I grabbed a teriyaki chicken handroll as well, just in case I needed something to flush the flavour away.

No need! Far nicer than tuna (in fact, it's an insult to salmon to compare the flavour to tuna, I think!). So nice, in fact, that I decided to go the whole way and grab me a roll with the raw stuff. So back I went, and grabbed for myself a salmon and avocado handroll.

Now, I'm not a fan of avocado. It's that whole mouth-feel thing. And I found that I really enjoyed the salmon... it was the avocado that was turning me off! So halfway through I started yanking the avocado out as much as I could. And I REALLY enjoyed it.

So there you go. I survived. And I enjoyed. Now to trip something a little more adventurous, to take a running leap into what salmon can offer me. And then... learn how to prepare it at home.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Congrats on busting your salmon cherry. I think we need to introduce you to a nice big hunk of pan-seared atlantic salmon. Hmm...I'll put the thinking cap on.