I should have thought about how I would answer this week's On the Street question, "What's your signature dish?" before walking into the Junior League's second annual Iron Chef competition Wednesday night. It didn't take long before someone threw it back at me. And, I didn't have a clue what to say. After verbally fumbling around for a while I grasped at the first thing that came into my head -- Salmon.
Now that may or may not be true. But, it got me off the hook and I got a new recipe out of the deal. The woman who posed the question suggested the next time I grill salmon I should add orange juice, orange zest and rosemary. Sounds good to me!
Now I do have a freezer full of salmon, and not the farmed Atlantic mush. Nope. I have the real deal, wild Alaska salmon sent by my mother. But here comes the reason I may have lied to those women. I rarely cook it. For that I blame my husband. You know how people either love or hate seafood? He'd fall into the hate camp. Not only does he not like to eat it, he turns green at the smell. So, I only get salmon when I can cook it outdoors and the wind can carry the scent away.
The salmon is actually a good example of the dinnertime tango at our house. When I met my husband I hadn't eaten a bite of meat in five years. He, on the other hand, won't eat any vegetables except corn and lima beans (I know. Wierd. Right?) So, what happens when a meat and potatoes carnivore and a foodie vegetarian get married? The vegetarian starts eating free-range hormone free chicken and the two of them eat a whole lot of pasta. Throw a picky 4 year old into the mix and you can imagine how painful our meals can be.
You can also understand my excitement when I'm able to add a recipe to our repetoire. It doesn't happen often since the criteria is strict. No vegetable can be detectable and no red meat can be involved. Enter enchiladas. I use ground chicken. He gets corn and cheese in his. To mine I add black olives and black beans. We're both happy and he can inhale three or four in a sitting.
A few more sucess stories like that and maybe I can write a cookbook for vegetarian wives and their picky meat-eating husbands. We can't be the only dysfunctional family in the kitchen.