Credit: John Kessler
Credit: John Kessler
Dear people who cook food at home and eat it in restaurants, I have three lovely things to tell you about.
Lovely Thing #1: The season for fresh wild salmon is upon us. Now is the time to banish all your ambivalence about the overfarmed, pink-dyed, food-pellet-fed, flabby textured and funky smelling industrial aquaculture product that often passes for salmon and revel in the luxurious pleasure of the real McCoy.
I picked some wild King salmon up at Whole Foods Market over the weekend, and then ran to the Dekalb Farmers Market for more when our dinner party grew. The fish from Whole Foods had a notably higher fat content and silkier texture.
If you buy salmon, remember to run your finger along the fillet to make the pin bones stand up and then tease them out with a pair of needle nose pliers.
I found a cedar plank that had been keeping company with our cutting boards for a couple of years and finally tried out the popular Northwest salmon-cooking method. Holy cow. It was so good I wanted to swim back upstream to my own spawning grounds. I slathered the top of the fillets with Dijon mustard and then sprinkled it with granulated maple sugar I bought once on an impulse, then cooked it over indirect heat on a hot grill. Score two for the random things I hoard in my kitchen cabinets. Get you some.
If you go to
on Buford Highway, make sure that in addition to the large, vinyl-bound menu you get a copy of the second menu of Vietnamese specialties.
There you will find com chay or "burned rice" offered with a variety of toppings. What comes to the table is a disc of crisp, char-dotted panfried rice festooned with seed-studded shrimp chips, cilantro sprigs and a stir-fried topping of your choice.
We got the phenomenal chopped clam topping, which was like the flavor-charged linguine sauce of my dreams. What's the minty, cuminy, cooling, almost mentholated back flavor? A Vietnamese herb called ngo om, which is finely chopped and mixed with the clams.
My kid and I ate this dish to the quick, just sitting at the table, picking at it, until there wasn't a speck left on the plate.
The rest of the meal (minus a too-gloopy eggplant dish) was quite good as well. I'm not sure Chateau de Saigon will keep me away from Nam Phuong just down the street, but clearly this menu bears exploration.
My favorite course at
, the Korean-Southern diner run by Cody Taylor and Jiyeon Lee, will always be dessert. The kitchen always serves three gourmet versions of bingsu, Korean shaved ice with toppings. Lately, there has been something called "Garden su" -- a wonderful assemblage of ice, sweet tomato compote, freeze-dried vegetables, corn ice cream, rice taffy, puffed rice and sugary jelly drops. It is sweet, vegetal, salty, crunchy, creamy and fantastic in every way.
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