This is In the Kitchen- Edition 6. I’m your host, Chef DPo. This week, I’m experimenting with a new format. It’s a wee bit longer than normal. It was also unintentional. But it includes lots of alliterations and rhyming so I’m cool with it.
After 3-5 different edition renditions scattered across several google docs, a multiverse emerged. So many possibilities to choose from. Will it be brining? Sausages? Rice? I almost let fate do its work by eating someone's boogers or chugging a liter of soda. But ultimately, I just went with the topic that captivated me most and ran with it. Sometimes it’s just that simple. Let’s dig in.
Sidebar - I spent too much time watching this chart showing every top google search of 2022. I was surprised that Everything Everywhere All at Once didn’t go viral domestically. IMO, that movie required some google search level closure. At least for me. Instead, Amber Heard made headlines shortly after the potential boom, and stayed on top for several days across most of America.
Sausage ➡️ Rice ➡️ Salmon ➡️ Edition 6
Last week, my sausage making equipment arrived. I was stoked to get my hands on some casings, but alas, my GI system had different plans for me. At the same time, I ventured into the world of rice. It felt good for my recovering belly and it’s also the topic for an event I’m planning with a friend next year.
Deep in my vortex of rice research last week, I learned that historically, California rice fields were burned between harvests. Mostly for pest and disease control. We later realized this was harmful to our air quality (duh) and banned this method through state legislation between 1999 and 2000 (Source). Now most farmers opt to flood their fields between harvests, creating an unintentionally nutrient-rich wetland-like ecosystem.
Simple enough… But here comes the crazy part.
Dance party commercial break
Aka me trying to keep the suspense.
Welcome back.
These magical rice fields feed 7 million geese and ducks during migration (source) and more recently, they’ve started growing salmon in them?! Yes, salmon is growing in California’s flooded rice fields.
As if that wasn’t crazy enough, it turns out that salmon in rice fields grow 2 to 5 times (big range, I know) faster than salmon that grow in the river alone. The rice water is filled with zooplankton and other nutrients that are basically natural steroids to the salmon. According to one farmer, “those zooplankton are the filet mignon of chinook salmon.” You should have seen his face. He was so proud. Yes, the link takes you to the exact moment he says it.
To be clear, we did hijack salmon’s natural wetland habitat to build these rice farms. But it’s really amazing to see the ingenuity and scalability of this approach. I’m looking forward to seeing how it expands through California in the coming years.
This is just one method to solving our massive fish population decline and naturally shrinking fish challenges. Another route is to skip the “fish” part entirely.
Enter plant-based and cell-cultured production of salmon. The plant-based version is commercially available. Check out Good Catch at your local Whole Foods if you’re curious to give it a go. We tried it and the results were… fine? It was flaky and textured, at least visually. But it was a tad too dense and flavorless for my liking. It’s just not fish. Under a mound of tartar sauce and delicious buns though, you could probably fake it.
On the more sciencey side of the solution, is cell-cultured salmon. It’s not available for sale in the US, but you can fly to Singapore to try it. It’s legal there, but TBH, I don’t know if they sell it. The folks over at Wildtype are working on this. The general concept is that they take cells from salmon and grow them in a scaffold that takes on the muscle, connective tissue and ultimately, the texture/color/shape of salmon. Magic! While they’re very stealth about the science, this is a moderately informative/ scare tacticty marketing YouTube vid about the process and broader landscape. To summarize, the 3 main challenges in the cell-cultured world are:
Regulatory - The FDA hasn’t figured out what category this form of “meat” fit into. Is this even meat? Would PETA be team Peeta? Where Peeta was cell-cultured meat instead of our beloved Hunger Games character. The jury is out on whether this will be FDA approved.
Cost- According to the video, it costs $40-45 to produce the amount of fish needed for a nigiri and when you account for inflation, that’s 300$ per nigiri to the end customer. jk. But it is expensive compared to $10.99/lb salmon.
Taste- I mean, this is pretty obvious. It just ain’t the real thing. Maybe one day we’ll say, “I can’t believe it’s not salmon!” For now, we’ll make do with janky AI interpretations of it.
So I guess nigiri isn’t the only intersection of rice and salmon? At this point, I’m shooketh by the intersectionality of it all and the continued power of venn diagrams. They still slap.
Meet Howie, the man who caught your dinner.
While it’s nuts, unhealthy and environmentally terrible that ⅔ (ish, depending on the report) of our fish is farm-raised, I’m hopeful about some of the more creative practices in the space too. Beyond the rice <> salmon commensalism-ish relationship, I was equally pumped to learn about community-based direct to consumer distribution routes.
In this model, you (as the consumer) can subscribe to a local store and get fish directly from the fisherman, bypassing the additional steps in traditional food distribution. Find a local store that does this using this map. I was surprised by how many companies follow this distribution model. It’s a totally different buying experience to subscribe to a fisherman’s haul rather than pick what’s first available on the counter. I’m definitely giving this a go.
Find my Fish, Launching 2024:
A less local version of this is the Alaskan Salmon Company. They mail you sushi-grade fish directly from Alaska.
If none of these options are interesting or available to you, you can always go the route of buying your fish at big chain stores. Try to go wild (hehe) and shop at clean, non-fish smelly places. Our king, Kenji, likes King (aka Coho) salmon. But you may have a different preference, all good. For folks who have no idea where to even start when it comes to the many varietals, I found this video informative.
The multiverse of cooking salmon
After all that, I can’t help but appreciate my future (likely Coho) salmon filet a little extra while in the kitchen. We gotta do the fish justice! There are many many many ways to cook salmon - from broiling to poaching to pan-frying. Back in Edition 3, we went over the Kenji pan frying science. Repasting here for our burnt-out readers:
If you’re more of a video-based learner and want dozens of ideas for cooking salmon + a master class from these amazing chefs, check out this amazing Jacque Pepin x Julia Child 20+ min collab:
Wait, there’s more! Breadcrumbs galore.
I’m running out of steam here, but curation is still my favorite part of these editions and this week is no exception.
If you’re looking for an <$25 stocking stuffer for a home cook, check out the thermopop thermometer. Thermometers just make our lives easier and prevent overcooking our salmon + everything else! I love mine (check it out on the bottom right of the salmon frying collage).
Young salmon are called fry. But they also go through 7 different life stages, each with different names. Did I just imagine a world where they served you a big mac with baby salmon on the side? Yes, I did.
Salmon can travel safely from freshwater to ocean water and back to freshwater because of their osmoregulation superpowers. This is objectively an incredible evolutionary trait. Thanks Haley.
Some male salmons develop a “kype”, aka a hook-like tip on their lower jaw as they approach spawning season. Spawning is not quite “mating” because they release their eggs and sperm into the water where they fertilize. But it’s effectively the same end goal. The evolutionary utility of kypes is still under review. Mouth swords? Flexing in front of other salmon?
What I’m Cooking
We hosted a lovely dinner with some friends this week, combining lots of Kenji goodness in a little kitchen. The original recipe for the glazed carrots is in The Food Lab, but this is similar-ish and sounds delicious. The pesto can found here.
This picture captures kairosclerosis (Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows)
kairosclerosis- n. the moment you realize that you're currently happy—consciously trying to savor the feeling—which prompts your intellect to identify it, pick it apart and put it in context, where it will slowly dissolve until it's little more than an aftertaste.
That’s it for Edition 6.
-Chef DPo
PS- I couldn’t find a way to gracefully weave in my question for you all, but I do have one… Moments of serendipitous discoveries needed to be bottled and/or scrapbooked for later consumption when we need a boost. Where do you log those precious “aha” moments? Plz don’t say academic journals.