It was a lovely summer evening and Kelly and I were picking up some groceries as she was planning a dinner of mussels - a recipe she was quite excited about before I rudely said “hey, can you not put that stuff on all of the mussels just in case it sucks.”
What I really meant, was that I was used to having mussels fresh in Newfoundland, just boiled in salt water, straight, no frills. Kel’s recipe involved some sort of cream sauce, and a bunch of stuff that I just didn’t imagine would go well with them, in my narrow mind. Anyway, after the quiet ride home and several more apologies, Kelly was about to start prepping the mussels and <gasp> the power went out. Now, because Kelly has refused to allow me to get a giant emergency natural gas powered generator installed for just such an occasion (or the apocalypse), and the fact that we didn’t have any ‘bbq safe’ pots, we could not have the mussels this evening. Alas.
Luckily, we’d also picked up a nice big salmon fillet at the fish counter, so I opted to grill that for dinner tonight (and hopefully make up for my rude comment earlier). I had purchased a cedar plank at the grocery store and even though it said I should soak it in water for 4 hours, I figured at least one or more would suffice for our situation.
Lighting the grill sans power proved to be a slight challenge as normally I use this awesome tool that is basically an industrial strength curling iron and hair dryer combo called a looftlighter. Recycling had just picked up the newspaper and cardboard a day earlier, so all I had was a small butane lighter and our Enbridge Natural Gas bill…how poetic. I used the envelope to light a fire and gingerly spent some time blowing on the coals until they caught fully. This worked out fine as it enabled my cedar plank to soak a bit longer.
Ok so now to the good stuff… I made a simple glaze to put on the salmon which was made up of the following:
2 tbsp of lemon juice
2 tbsp of maple syrup
1 tbsp of Dijon mustard
I put a little extra virgin olive oil on the fillet and sprinkled some sea salt and a wee bit of pepper. Now that my grill was heated up, I put the cedar plank down for a few minutes and then flipped it over and brushed a light coat of the glaze on the plank. Fillet then went down on the plank skin down and I coated the top with the glaze. I kept the grill at a mid-range heat to take it slow and allow the cedar scent to get into the fish. As well, when the time was right, I opened some wine and gave a glass to Kelly (re-read the opening paragraph to this post for the reason why).
When the fish looked about halfway done, I slapped some white asparagus down after lightly coating them with oil, sea salt and pepper, as well as some left over grilled veggies from a previous night’s pork tenderloin meal.
I then lit some candles as the sun was setting, put the iPod on in the rechargeable dock and served dinner up for my lovely wife outside on the deck. The evening (and my marriage) was saved! Dinner was great, the cedar smoking and maple/lemon/Dijon glaze worked great! The wine paired and flowed nicely and all was well in the world. We finished off with a special ice cream cookie sandwich treat and enjoyed the candles and wine!
I should and MUST mention that the next night, power restored, Kelly did indeed make her wondrously outstanding mussels that were gloriously flavorful! Seriously, it was really good. I loved them very much and the sauce worked great! I will never second guess her again, ever.
Happy Kelly
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