Fresh Fish

Coming to a location near me. A location I can walk to. Starting next month approximately 12 vendors will set up in an interior space right here in our back yard. We went to a market today, mainly hippie clothing, jewelry and other items. They also had prepared food and about eight farmers market stalls, one which had the most beautiful mushrooms I’ve ever seen since Mendocino – chanterelles. But by then I’d run out of cash. I bought yellow and red cherry tomatoes, some organic summer wheat berries to grow wheatgrass, 1# of frozen sea scallops that look gorgeous, and 1# of freshly flown-in Coho salmon, tail sections. I re-froze the scallops, cooked one salmon fillet and froze the other. I got a summer sun hat as there is no atmosphere here to keep the sun off one’s face, and Jim bought a leather one evocative of Indiana Jones.

For fresh fish here, you’ll probably get trout from the local rivers. Otherwise it’s flown in. But the Coho was gorgeous. I looked for pin bones and there were none, easily removed the skin with my fish filleting knife and cooked a marinade of 1/3 c soy sauce, 1 c water, several 1/4 inch coins of ginger, two large crushed garlic cloves, a pinch of freshly ground red pepper flakes and black pepper, and a few drops of roasted sesame oil. I used the microwave and cooked the sauce on high for about six minutes then let it cool. When Jim’s ribeye (he’s allergic to anything that swims) was ready on the grill outside, I put the salmon in the marinade and guessed cooking times but only used 50% power so it wouldn’t cook too quickly. I probably did it 6-7 minutes, flipping it carefully midway and ended up with the tail end a bit flaky and the rest just as I wanted it. I wish I had some lemon but wasn’t going to go back to the grocery store and I’ve two limes but they didn’t fit my personal flavor profile.

I served the ribeye and the salmon with an organic baked potato and 1/2 of the red and yellow cherry tomatoes, sauteed with a bit of extra virgin olive oil, salt, pepper and dried basil from Penzey’s.

Here’s a photo of a unique welded metal “see saw” at our first try at Park Silly Market:

We had lunch at our favorite burger joint then went to see Julie and Julia across the street. It was a good weekend but now Jim’s coming down with something. Not good news. Husbands are never good patients, especially when they brought back some bug from the office, you have it worse than him and he still moans and asks for a cup of tea. Not to mention he’s on contract so every hour he doesn’t work is an hour he doesn’t get paid.

Luckily we have plenty of fresh OJ, chinese herbs, tea and chicken broth. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow. Cheers, Dee