FFwD: Salmon and Potatoes in a Jar, aka A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

When I read the recipe for Around My French Table's Salmon and Potatoes in a Jar (pg 182), I broke out into a cold sweat. You cure salmon in salt and sugar for 12-18 hours, rinse off the brine, then pack it into jars with layers of herbs, carrots, and onions and cover it all with oil. Potatoes go in a separate jar. Nothing about the book's photo, with its uncooked salmon and raw vegetables submerged in oil, made me want to eat it. I like sushi, but something about these big chunks of uncooked fish (is it still "raw" if it's cured? I don't know) skeeved me out. If someone served it to me, I would try it, but I really didn't feel like making it myself. However, I told myself that I was going to do it. I would fall backwards and hope that the recipe would catch me.

Then I went to the supermarket. The available salmon looked totally washed out, color-wise, and was cut into sad, thin fillets. Skin-on. I asked the fish guy if he could skin it. He said no. I brought the fish home and prepared to cure it. It smelled fishy.

I wanted to be a good sport. I wanted to suck it up and prepare the recipe as written, but there was no way I was eating this sorry fish without cooking it. I flipped the page and noticed a bonne idee in the sidebar for Roasted Cured Salmon. Perfect! I could still participate, without poisoning myself and my loved ones. I cured the salmon overnight. I don't know anything about curing, so I was not prepared to find the dish full of water the next day. It makes sense in retrospect, but a heads up would have been nice.

Be afraid.

Once you rinse the brine off the fish, Dorie just says to cook them for 5-7 minutes. No oil, no nothing. Just rinse off the brine, pat them dry, and put them in the oven. One of her ideas for serving is to top it with a pesto, so I made one while the fish cooked.

I opened the oven door, and the fish stink flashed me back to when I was a kid and my Mom would drive past the South Street Seaport on the FDR Drive to get to Sloan Kettering Hospital. Not good. Matt told me to stop being a baby and just try it. He popped a piece in his mouth...and gagged. I hate to admit how much I enjoyed watching him spin around, looking for help, before spitting it out into his hand. I asked him if it was as delicious as he thought it would be. His response: "That's PURE SALT!! Next time, just trust Dorie!" He said it would be better uncooked, because cooking it concentrated the salt. That's fine, but Dorie provided the roasting option. How was I supposed to know it would be wretched?

Be VERY afraid.

I DID taste it, just to say I had. It WAS pure salt, with a fishy, fishy side note. Disgusting. Absolutely, unequivocally disgusting. Thank God for the pesto. We boiled up some linguine, mixed in the pesto, and dinner was finally served.

Conclusion: Hated it. I'm so curious to see what the other French Fridays with Dorie participants thought of the jarred version. Maybe--maybe--if it gets a good response, I'll try it again. Maybe. Probably not, but maybe.