Thursday, February 28, 2008

Dinner Tonight

You gotta love salmon, right? I was at one of my favorite places in town, a great grocery story that recently came to town called the Fresh Market. It's sort of in the Trader Joe's/Whole Foods Market camp of grocery stores. Bottom line it's a food lovers paradise. I walked in there this afternoon and unconsciously started humming, a surefire sign that I'm having a good old time.

I hadn't planned to buy dinner there, but then I saw some wild Alaskan salmon on sale that was calling out to be in my belly. I've made salmon with a lemon/thyme cream sauce a couple of times before and I think it's delicious, so I decided to buy some and try it again. Since they have Meyer lemons, I knew dinner would be even tastier than before. I also bought the shallots and fresh thyme the recipe calls for, and everything else I needed beyond that were things I had at home already: white wine, cream and butter.

I find as written the recipe is a bit too tart for my taste. It calls for a dry white wine and I think a sweeter wine, like a Riesling, would be much better. It also calls for a tablespoon of white wine vinegar--that's a lot of acidity, especially when it gets reduced down and concentrated. When you add the lemon juice it takes it even further into the acid range, which I feel is a mistake. I had to add a bit of sugar to tame down the acidity and balance out the flavors, along with a bit more cream to help mellow things down. (For next time, I need to remember that I should use some lemon zest instead of the white wine vinegar. That will bring lemon flavor without bringing an overwhelming tartness.)

This is all I can say: it was lick-the-plate-clean tasty. I do love to cook, and a good meal is hard to beat in my book. Life was very good tonight.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Sounds good. And who doesn't love Fresh Market?

When we moved to North Carolina we discovered this little green grocery and fell in love with it (not for all your shopping needs, of course).

Alas. Alack. Where we live now requires a 45 minute trek to get anywhere near one.

But glad to hear they're in your neck of the woods now.

Alison Hodgson said...

Dan, sounds delicious.

I need to cancel for tomorrow. We are headed to see Scott. I was going to cancel, but then, upon reflection, decided that foregoing an adjustment (something I really need) to make candies (something I clearly don't need) would not be a good idea.

Thank you for the kind offer, regardless.

Dan said...

Alison, no problem. It's probably for the best for me anyway. This week has been insanely hectic. It will be nice to have an afternoon free. I suspect I'll be taking a nap.