Saumon Gentil (was: SC - Re: SC- Turkish Food)

[Philip & Susan Troy]

"Laura C. Minnick" wrote:
> 
> Philip & Susan Troy wrote:
> 
> > 1. This is one of the more glaring culinary errors perpetrated by Hieatt
> > and Butler in an otherwise good edition (CoI). I believe this is pretty
> > straightforward, and that nobody ever intended the bones to be ground,
> > or any such nonsense. Fillet the fish, grind the _meat_, season it,
> > extrude it, poach, drain, plate, garnish, serve.

<snip>

> It occurs to me that they might have assumed that many folks might try
> this using canned salmon (---shudder---). After canning, the bones are
> really soft and could be ground, adding calcium to the mix. I don't like
> them, but my mom used to pick out the vertebrae and eat them. And to the
> fat, the canned stuff has bits of skin and fat that you have to pick
> out- they are slimy and beyons gross. I used to give them to our cat.
> 
> If you are using fresh salmon I think what you've said applies.

I agree that a quick read-through might give that impression, but
there's a big problem. You're relying on the uncooked fish proteins to
hold the dish together; lacking any other binder, Lutheran or otherwise,
if you drop mushed-up cooked fish into boiling water, you're going to
get more or less unpleasant results. It's the original recipe, that
Hieatt and Butler are commenting on, which instructs us to do away the
bones, and then grind hem in an mortar, or some such. The textual
problem is that you have to assume they're talking about salmon, since
it's in the title but IIRC doesn't mention it by name in the body of the
recipe, and _then_ it says to take out the bones, and cast in a mortar.
A modern grammarian would probably conclude that we have a run-on
sentence, one of which lacks a specified predicate or complement noun.
Medieval recipes often tend to be run-on sentences by modern standards.
Are we throwing the bones (the last noun mentioned) or the salmon (the
main subject of the recipe) into the mortar?  Hieatt and Butler seem to
be working on the assumption that you remove the bones and grind them,
and that's to some extent supportable, but I think it's far more likely
you take a salmon, remove the bones, and grind it. Similarly, if I have
a loin of veal and want to make meatballs, I take out the chine, rib,
and any pelvic bone structures before grinding the meat. Think about it.
Suppose your recipe said, "A Veal Dish: remove bones, grind, season with
X, roll into balls, cook, serve." Doesn't it make a fair amount of sense
to figure that it is the muscle tissue being ground, rather than the bones?

I hope it's clear to people that I'm using 'Lainie as a sounding-board,
and not foaming at the mouth and yelling at her... not that I haven't
done both of those things at various times in the past. ;  )     

Actually, I don't mind canned salmon -- it has its uses, but like most
other foods, it can't pretend to be what it is not, and the first thing
it is not is fresh salmon.  

Adamantius, whose home region has far fewer salmon than the Pacific
Northwest nowadays, but at least they're _real_ salmon ;  )
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com