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Eat the Web, August 8, 2015

peach-cucumber-salad

Summer perfection—peach and cucumber salad

Welcome back to Eat the Web, the intermittent collection of links that have caught my eye. I often post them piecemeal to twitter, but it’s nice to have them in one place. Here are some choice links from this summer:

My, how you’ve changed, watermelon [Vox]

Delicious grilled cheese sandwiches in SF at B. on the Go [SF Chronicle]

Spicy food might help you live longer [SciAm]

Quick ricotta gnocchi that look fabulous, and easy to make [Serious Eats]

Astoria’s “cathedral to smoked meats”—Muncan Food Corp—gets some love (good, traditional cured meats are here in abundance) [VV]

Easy summer ceviche [Latina]

Warming water in the Columbia river are causing sockeye salmon to die in large numbers [Digital Journal]

NYC Honey Week returns this September [NYC Honey Week]

One of NYC’s oldest German butchers, Schaller & Weber, opens a little sausage bar [DNAinfo]

This Peruvian gazpacho looks wonderful! The half avocado is particularly appealing. [Eating Free]

I recently came back from a lovely vacation in sunny San Diego. I ate a lot of tasty food, saw the sights, and spent time with family celebrating the wedding of my cousin. Here’s a shot from the beach out into the Pacific Ocean. It was perfect.

A photo posted by Meg Cotner (@megcotner) on

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Iliamna Salmon Share Has Arrived

Back in June I wrote that I had joined a wild-caught salmon CSA, run by the Iliamna Fish Company.  This weekend, I picked up my fish!

Pickup was at The Brooklyn Kitchen, right by the front door.  I hadn’t been to TBK since they’d moved to their new space on Frost Street, so I was also very curious to see the place.  Wow, it is awesome!  Lots of space, connection to The Meat Hook (a wonderful butcher that stocks local meat), and plenty of drool-worthy products.  I plan to buy my Harsch crock there this fall.

I must say, it smells amazing there.  They make a variety of sausages, and they smell delicious.

the package

The Iliamna representative – one of the family members – met me at the front of the store, keeping watch over a giant chest freezer.  It was probably 6 feet long, and full of vacuum packed, frozen fish.  My share was all wrapped up in two layers of butcher paper, and fit perfectly in my Hellgate CSA tote bag.  There was no risk of the fish defrosting, the way it was insulated.

Inside the package were 8 fillets.

frozen fish

I was able to fit them all in my freezer, thank goodness!  I was a little concerned that they’d be too big, but they fit just fine.

I put a couple of the fillets in the fridge to defrost, as friends were coming over to check out the salmon.  I thought that each fillet might feed three people – boy was I wrong.  One fillet fed 5 of us, with fish to spare!  So, I have a whole fillet ready to cook, which I’ll do tonight.  I plan to make salmon burgers with the cooked fish and freeze them for a later date.

This salmon is really gorgeous.

filet

I cooked it very simply – olive oil, fleur de sel, and lemon juice to season it.  Baked in parchment at 350 degrees.  Parchment is my favorite way to cook fish, apart from grilling.  It took about 20 minutes to cook the entire fillet, though I would be happy with cooking it for 15 minutes.

in parchment

The fish had amazing flavor – very clean and salmony.  I loved it, as did my guests.  I’m really happy I have this fish.  I look forward to eating it throughout the fall and winter, too!