Thursday, February 5th - Rainy BBQ Salmon

I am seriously considering leaving out mid-week breakfasts in the blog. They're fairly repetitive. Though, I am a big cereal connoisseur and I like to make recommendations about them. I had Lactose free milk, which I really do prefer over soy milk when served cold, with Nature's Path Slim with a handful of Smart Bran. It was really good. Not sweet but not bland. It has pieces that look like: rice puffs, chex, all bran rods and flakes.

For Lunch, I took the left over curry portion. D made wraps. When he first started his new job last fall, he was eating out alot. I mean all of a sudden you're in the thick of Yaletown restaurants after being in exile in Burnaby. But it added up. So every once in a while, he'll remember that, particularly after booking a really expensive holiday and winning some bids on eBay. His wraps used some of our Superbowl leftovers.

Whole Wheat flat tortilla wraps:

In one:

1. Generous dollop of hummous

2. Marinated Italian Eggplant

3. Baby spinach

In the other:

1. Kalamata tapenade

2. Irish Organic cheddar

3. Baby Spinach

For Dinner, I bought some fresh wild Sockeye Salmon steaks from TNT. It's a chain of chinese supermarkets throughout Vancouver. There are some in Toronto as well, I think. http://www.tntsupermarket.com/ It's the best place in town for fresh seafood for prices. We took a cooking course once with the chef from the Gastown restaurant le Magasin who used to own a seafood restaurant on Robson. Funny, now he runs a charcuterie which is basically meat meat meat. Well, anyhoo, he says he buys all this seafood at TNT. It was he that told me that they'll chop up your dungeness for you for free if you buy te live stuff there. What a boon that discovery was. The salmon was on sale for $3.99 a pound.

I picked a medium to smallish looking steak and was poking my head around looking for another one of similar size. The fish monger was helping me but they were all really big. I pointed at one and she told me, in true sharp chinese marketer tones, "that's too big for you". She's selling me fish and she's trying to sell me less. I love it. Well, it was about 1.75 lbs or nearly 1kg. Still, I thought it was just reasonable.

I had a small girl fist sized sweet potato in my fridge from like a month ago. I had bought it as a snack and never ate it. Since it was still in the carrier bag, I sorta forgot it was there. I brought that to D's too. I had bought Asparagus last Saturday on Commercial at the market near Charles street. It's the best place for overall veg prices but if you watch as you walk down, some are better elsewhere. 2.99/lb and it was 4.99 everywhere else. We had 2 large Kale leaves left too.

It started to rain around 6pm and so when we got home, he was like, 'So we're broiling right?' But he was all big on BBQ yesterday so I had it stuck in my head so I insisted, and offered to hold the umbrella. His deck on the side with the BBQ isn't covered at all. He conceded.

I used my Jerk Rub that I bought at the One of a Kind craft fair last fall. It smelled the goods but it wasn't potent enough according to the directions which said you only needed to put it on right before cooking. It needs to sit longer. I augmented with my real Walker jerk spice too. It worked really well on the veg. So you take 1T of rub with 2T of oil. I used 1T olive oil and 1T canola. I washed and patted the salmon steakes. I poured about half a T on each side and rubbed it in. I sprinked some more Walkers on top and then washed a few sprigs of thyme and spread some across too. I used the 1 T or so of leftover rub and added some more oil and rubbed it all over the prepped asparagus and washed kale. I nuked the sweet potato for 3 minutes which was slightly too long for the size of it.

The steaks were over an inch thick so they took quite a while to cook through. Nearly 5-10 minutes a side. The kale cooked too quickly and charred a bit. It tasted super nutty and yummy and we couldn't place taste. I figured it out. It tasted a bit like roasted brussel sprouts. mmmmm.

Well, in the end, D and the fish monger were right. D only finished 2/3rds of this steak, which was bigger (easily 25% bigger but he didn't see it and AND he didn't seem to think that it was different from the pizza dough inequality accusation :0D). I finished 3/4 of mine. There was easily a whole 200-300 g left or a portion. He offered to make me a wrap for lunch but in the end we saved it for a pasta for another day.

I wouldn't recommend the Rub. If you do, I'd might leave it on longer. Or the other way, baste it whilst cooking. It was great on the veg.