Food: Sockeye Salmon

It's a little strange since my parents own a restaurant, but I didn't really start learning how to cook until grad school.  This was partly due to living by myself without the safety net of a dining plan, but also due to the incredible fresh food available in California.  Now cooking is something that we enjoy a lot, although it is tougher to get good ingredients in Jersey.  I think that cooking reminds me a lot of chemistry, except that you have more freedom to deviate from literature procedures and even failed experiments are usually still edible.  There's something relaxing about preparing all of the ingredients and then combining everything into a final product.  We try to cook as much as we can since it's cheaper and usually better than most of the food around here, although it does get hard on the weekdays when we're tired after work.  However, we'll try to cook a nicer meal at least on the weekends when we have time to experiment with new recipes. 

While out shopping at Wegmans, we saw some wild Sockeye salmon.  We typically settle for the cheaper farm-raised salmon as it's cheaper (although apparently not as environmentally friendly as you would think according to this NPR interview), but we thought we'd try out the wild type.  We just did a simple pan fry with a little salt/pepper and lemon and served it with some roasted potatoes and asaparagus.  For an appetizer, we made white-wine steamed mussels and paired it with a Chimay.  The salmon was pretty good---the texture was more tender and flaky than farm-raised salmon and the flavor was stronger.  When we make farm-raised salmon, my wife usually makes a honey-miso sauce to go with it, but the Sockeye didn't need it as it was flavorful enough on its own.  Is it worth almost triple the price?  Maybe not all the time, but it's a nice splurge.

Beer and mussels

 Pan-fried sockeye salmon with roasted baby Dutch yellow potatoes, white wine steamed mussels, and broiled asparagus