This week marks a couple of things, first off although I posted a picture of the meal on my personal Facebook page and I took a picture of the meal plated to use with this blog post I didn’t actually get to eat this food. So although I will tell you about the menu and some of the trials that I encountered this post is mainly going to be the story of why I didn’t get to eat it. I do want to be clear the menu was not at fault and when I can bring myself to buy the ingredients again I will give it another shot.
This is the first week we were going to be checking out a new chapter in the cookbook, Regional Meals, U.S.A. This chapter concentrates on menus featuring foods from different geographical areas of the US, starting with New England.
So the menu this week starred a salmon fillet and I had gotten a nice piece of salmon at my grocery store a while back. So I wasn’t too worried about it. I did almost delay this meal because of the dessert, fresh strawberries with ice cream but decided instead to just skip the dessert and have the rest of the meal. After all it is January and I’m in the Midwest. Fresh strawberries are not really a good option right now. Little did I know that the bigger problem laid elsewhere in the menu.
So the morning I was planning to have this I walked down to the grocery store and picked up my groceries. I got over to the fresh meat/seafood counter and was basically ignored for several minutes. Then finally someone decided to see what I wanted. I asked the nice man behind the counter for a small piece of salmon. He dug through to find me a small piece, weighed it and I was on my way. I grabbed the rest of what I needed and headed home.
When I got home I immediately put the salmon in the fridge and took care of the rest of my groceries.
At this point I realized the menu had called for new potatoes and I had forgotten to see if the store had tiny potatoes on hand. (they usually do) so I decided that I would just cut up a couple of the small potatoes in my pantry and use those. Not a problem really.
I spent some time making the dough for the rolls and getting some other projects done that I needed to do that day.
Since the menu called for me to poach the salmon and that is not really a method I enjoy I had already decided I was going to cut the piece of salmon I had bought into 3 serving size pieces and freeze 2 of them to use later. At this point the fish was extremely cold and other than being a bit slimy I didn’t notice too much off. I wrapped up the two extra portions and pulled the skin off the piece I was planning to use.
I had already started the poaching liquid and tasted it. It was perfect, just the right seasonings and I had let it simmer for a while to let the aromatics release their flavors into the broth. I carefully slipped the salmon fillet into the pan and put the lid on. At this point I had everything else ready to go.
The rolls were baked, the peas were cooked, as were the potatoes. I had the egg sauce ready and waiting. I had decided to skip the salad since I wasn’t super hungry.
Then the fish got warm and even with the lid on pan I knew something was off, way off. I carefully lifted the lid and was hit in the face with the stench of rotten meat. I mean this smelt like something had died in the pan. This was as bad as when you come upon an animal that has died several days ago. Or the time on the farm when a small animal crawled under the house and died in the middle of summer. It was horrid. And now my kitchen smelt like that also.
I quickly put the lid back on the pan and moved it off the heat. I pulled out the 2 pieces of salmon that I had wrapped up and sure enough when I smelt them closer I could definitely smell the rot it was faint because they were really cold but it was there.
At this point I was no longer hungry and I knew I was going to toss all the food I had made anyway. So I plated it and took a few pictures before tossing it all in the trash and exiting my kitchen leaving the vent over the stove running at full blast.
I did message the store about the issue and I will be taking my receipt back to see if I can get my money back on the foul fish.
It was hours before I felt up to even making a slice of toast to eat. My stomach was churning from the smell all night. Since it is so cold I had to wait until morning to take out the trash so I could still smell the stench in the morning when I got up.
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