Firey Salmon...

Well, tonight’s dinner turned out to be a little more exciting than I thought it would be. While we have had several kitchen mishaps before including one that where I ended up with stitches and one where the inside of the microwave changed colors permanently and I have set the smoke alarm off on many occasions, however… tonight was our first kitchen fire.

So, we haven’t had fish in a while, so I decided to try an old CL recipe for Bourbon Glazed Salmon. For the salmon you make a marinade of brown sugar, crushed garlic, soy sauce, ginger, and bourbon. The recipe calls to have it marinate for 30 minutes, however, I think it would have been better to let it marinate longer. You then broil the fish for 11 minutes. This is exactly what I did, but I think I had the rack in the oven too close to the boiler because the marinade that had run off the fish caught fire in the last minutes of its cooking. I panicked and opened the oven door only to confirm that the orange I was seeing through the door was in fact flames. Still panicking I ran to get Russ who was outside to help put the fire out. He pulled the baking sheet out and blew out the fire that had by this point mostly put its self out. The fish turned out a little crusty on the top from the flambé, but was still very edible and good. Russ rates the salmon a 7 and I definitely think if I make it again and don’t flambé it that it will get an even higher rating!

My Mom gave us some fresh okra and black eye peas earlier this week that I wanted to have with the salmon tonight. The black eye peas I just cooked on the stove with water, onion, thyme, salt and pepper. The okra I decided to try something a little different and have Russ grill them. There is a restaurant that we like that does okra this way and it is really flavorful. I put them on wooden skewers with four to a skewer and sprinkled them with salt and pepper. Russ grilled them for a couple minutes on each side. Next time I think I’ll have him grill them a little longer as they were not as tender as they probably needed to be, but they were still really tasty and a fun new way to serve okra.

Needless to say cooking is certainly an adventure for Russ and me and tonight was no exception. Let’s just hope that the next time I flambé a dish it will be intentional…