Smoked Fish Salad

Just like a narcissistic hoarder mermaid, we're gonna betray
this little guy. Fortunately, he'll taste delicious.

Well, it's a new year out there. From what I've seen so far it's mostly like the old year, but you can never be too sure. I'm only like halfway through testing out laws of physics, so there could be some fun new surprises in 2018. But I digress. Like I said, it's a new year, so I figured that it's a good time to make some old-world food that somehow stood the test of time. Specifically, I'm making a smoked whitefish salad, which is an absurdly tasty thing to eat with bread, crackers, or vegetables, plus is full of protein so it'll help you survive the harsh winter you'd experience in a frozen wasteland like Siberia or Chicago. You can technically still buy this stuff nowadays in delis and whatnot, but it's usually full of sugar. Which normally I don't have a problem with, but we're talking fish and (apparently) that's where I draw the line.

Ingredients:

1 lb. Whole Smoked Fish (I bought smoked chubs, because that's the flavor I grew up with. You've got some leeway here, but stick in that general vicinity. Pretty much any fish you could reasonably expect to catch on a midwestern fishing trip.)
2 Ribs of Celery
3 TBSP Mayonnaise
2 TBSP Sour Cream
1.5 TBSP Fresh Dill
1 TBSP Prepared Horseradish (It's important to help your horseradish prepare for what's coming next)
1 tsp Worcestershire Sauce
Juice from 1/2 a Lemon
Salt 
Black Pepper
Chives

The first thing you're gonna need to do is remove the meat from your fish. Ideally you should have started this some time back in 2017, because it'll take a while. It's not that it's particularly hard to get at the meat. It's that there are, at a conservative estimate, 37,000 tiny little bones that are going to try and come along for the ride. There aren't any good ways to help with this, but there are a couple of methods to try and help minimize the horror. One option is to kind of flake the fish off of the bones with a couple of forks. Prayer and shouting angrily are other, equally effective methods. Long story short, even after you carefully remove the fish from the bones, you're probably going to want to go over them between one and seven times, just to double (septuple) check that you're completely bone free. The bad news is that if you were to look at a clock you'd note that this entire process has taken forever. The good news is that it's pretty much antarctica outside, so where else did you have to be exactly?

This fish smoked 3 packs a day for the sake of flavor.
Let's not let that sacrifice be in vain. 

Once your fish is boneless, lightly mash it into chunks with a fork or other implement of culinary destruction. Then choppity chop up your celery in to tiny bits and toss it in there along with your chopped dill, your mayo, sour cream, horseradish, worcestershire sauce, and lemon juice. Mix the whole thing into a homogenous fish glop, and salt and pepper it to taste. Cover it up and toss it in your fridge for at least a couple hours so that all of the flavors get to know each other. This is important. Flavors that don't know each other, who awkwardly stand at either end of the dance floor staring at the ground can ruin an otherwise awesome dish. When you're serving this (by which I mean eating it on the couch while watching Netflix), take it out of the fridge, top it off with some fresh chopped chives, and slather it up on anything you've got lying around. Crackers, cucumbers, the flesh of those too weak to make it through the winter. This will make anything taste smoky, and salty, and awesome. So enjoy the winter! There's only like 3 and a half months left.

Ginger Citrus Salmon

I like how they added insult to injury by posing the fish
as if they were swimming.

Lately, it's come to my attention that death is a looming specter from which escape is impossible. I say this because I seem to be aging at an alarming rate. It started off innocently enough. One day I was able to walk in to a bar and order a beer. Then, a couple years later, I was able to do the same thing even if they asked for ID. This seemed ok with me, and I didn't give it much thought. I was a fool. Because lately, this whole "aging" thing has started to affect me in uncomfortable ways. There are whiny kids everywhere with fidget spinners and bad music, and that's not even the worst of it. I've found that, on rare occasions, there are times when I don't actually crave delicious meat. Every so often I decide to eat something else entirely. This doesn't seem acceptable to me. And sure, some of you might be pointing out that I've often written recipes for things that don't contain meat. And that's true, though it's pretty rude of you to have pointed it out. But while I've certainly eaten other sorts of food before, in my heart I always knew that I was just doing it because I didn't have access to any salami at that specific moment in time. This is different. But, if I'm going to eat sad nonsense food like fish, it may as well be a delicious fish. Gandhi said that.

Ingredients:

4 Salmon Fillets

3 Green Onions

1 Grapefruit

1/2 a Lemon

2 TBSP Chopped Ginger

1 TBSP Honey

2 Large sized Human's pinches of Salt

The first thing you're gonna need to do is go to a fishmonger and get yourself some fish. Sure, you could get some sort of pre-packaged frozen salmon from a giant store that only sells 56 packs. But it won't taste as good. The reason for this is that all regulation fishmongers have a giant pile (or "heap," if you want to use the technical term) of fish lying on way too little ice to effectively keep it cool. This is important, because it allows you to taunt the fish as you're buying it, thus causing it to experience some delicious rage. In any case, go get some fish, then squeeze all of the juice out of your lemon and grapefruit and dump it, along with all the rest of your ingredients, into a ziploc bag. Let that whole mess marinate in your fridge for at least 1/2 an hour. All of the flavors are gonna get to know each other, regardless of whether they want to or not. Confined spaces will do that, as you know if you've ever been stuck on an elevator with somebody.

Recommended serving size: 1 school of fish 

Once your fish is desperate to free itself from the confines of your  bag-o-goodness, take it out and then immediately throw it on a baking sheet in a 350 degree oven. The key here is to move just slowly enough to give your salmon hope, and then immediately crush its dreams. Before making this recipe, chances are you weren't a sadist or a liar. That's some training you can't get in the public school system. Anyhow, leave your fish in the oven for about 15-20 minutes, then take it out and consume it. It'll taste awesome. Try not to think about the fact that you could have chosen to make a steak instead. The Irish had a deity back in the day who got turned into a salmon. That's something. So think of yourself as a devourer of gods, not an old man sadly eating fish and waiting to die. See you next week!

Salmon Patties

The best salmon has a mermaid on it. Remember that, as
you're lured to your watery demise.  

They say when life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade. Unless you're allergic to citrus, in which case when life gives you lemons you swell up and die. The point is, we all have to make do with some unfortunate circumstances. For some of us, that may be an embarrassing medical condition, or a weird laugh, or maybe having to stay at work until after midnight because other people screwed up, and the people who should be saddled with responsibility dumped it on you, even though they sure as crap aren't going to pay you any more for doing their stupid jobs for them. You know, hypothetically. The point is, when you get home from your day of being embarrassed, laughing weirdly, or being stuck doing somebody else's job for them, you want to just sit down and do nothing. But you're stir crazy because your brain is working out ways to untraceably burn down your stupid workplace. So you need something to occupy your time and mouth. Something easy, delicious, and made from ingredients that are close at hand. Bonus points if it's something you grew up eating, so it soothes your soul and keeps your dumb workplace unburnt for another day.

Ingreidients:

10 oz. Canned Salmon (You can totally get those cans of salmon with the skin and bone bits still in it so you need to do extra gross work. Or you can, you know....not.)
1/2 a Standard-issue Onion
1/3 Cup Seasoned Bread Crumbs
2 Eggs
1/2 tsp Dijon Mustard
1/4 tsp Black Pepper
1 average-sized human's pinch of Salt
Butter

The first thing you're gonna need to do is somehow will yourself off of your couch and into your kitchen. Allow 20-30 minutes for the standard hemming and hawing about whether you're actually hungry (even though you haven't eaten all day), and whether it's a better idea to just go to Dunkin' Donuts (it isn't). Once you're in the kitchen, drain your salmon and melodramatically throw it in a bowl, even though you're home alone and nobody can see you. Take a grade-3 mashing fork, and mash it into bits. Next, choppity chop your onion down to size, and then throw it in the bowl along with your bread crumbs, eggs, pepper, mustard, and salt. Stir that nonsense together until you've got a relatively homogenous salmon-goop, which makes you really start to question whether you were actually hungry after all. Take a pan and melt some butter in it over medium heat.

Sure, you could use some garlic mayo, or ketchup, or...a
fork. Or you could just gobble them down without
pausing to chew. You know, like a duck.

Now comes the fun part, and by "fun" I mean "gross." Dig your hands into your salmon goop, and form patties, roughly 2 inches in diameter. For those of you who didn't bring your protractors with you to the kitchen today, the patties should be about the same size as the palm of your hand. Take the goop discs you lovingly crafted, and throw them into the pan of hot butter. Cook them on each side for 2-4 minutes, until they're good and brown. Be careful when you're flipping them, otherwise you won't end up with salmon patties so much as you'll have salmon garbage. Once they're done, go collapse in a heap with your prize, and pray for a better tomorrow. Bonus points if you remembered to turn off the stove!

Tuna Salad

A picture of Solid White Albacore chilling with all his friends.
Not Pictured: Chunk Light alone listening to Justin Bieber.

Tuna Salad. It's one of those things we tend to associate either with greasy restaurants or bad catering. But it has its place on our collective plates and, if you make it well enough, in our stomachs. It also keeps well in the fridge, and is an awesome food to have while drunk. That might actually be because of its versatility. Whatever you have lying around, be it crackers, bread, or corrugated cardboard, haphazardly smear some kickass Tuna Salad on it, and it'll be one of the best 3 AM meals of your life.

Ingredients:

1 10 oz can Tuna Fish (spring for the solid white albacore. Sure, you can get "chunk light" tuna for less money, but sometimes it's nice to have your food taste like people food, and not cat food.)

1/3 cup Mayonnaise 

2 ribs of Celery

1/2 a Red Onion

1/2 a Lemon

1 TBSP fresh Parsley

1 tsp dried Dill

1/4 tsp Black Pepper

The first thing you need to do is open your can of tuna. Now, traditionally people would do this with a sharp rock or a knife, often resulting in hilarious injury. Nowadays, we do this with shoddy can openers made of cheap metal and even cheaper plastic, often resulting in hilarious injury (seriously, though...the can opener wasn't invented until almost 50 years after canning became a thing. If, like me, you've ever tried to open a can without a can opener, you're probably wondering how canning managed to stay a thing for those almost 50 years. Literally nobody knows). Once the can is open, press the lid down gently, and flip the can upside-down to drain out the concentrated fish juice. It's preferable to do this over a sink, or failing that, somebody you don't like. Then plop your Tuna into a bowl and crush it with a fork until it submits to your will, breaking up into small chunks. 

Once the Tuna is physically and emotionally crushed, take your Celery and Red Onion, and dice the crap out of them. You don't need to go crazy with it, but you don't want any large pieces. Add them in with your crushed Tuna bits. Then mince your parsley fine. How fine? Finer than you want to. Keep chopping until the bits of it are small enough that you can't even really tell what it is. Then add these in with your vegetables and Tuna. 

Homemade tuna bagels? Best mandatory 6AM

staff meeting EVER!

Next take your Mayo, Dill, and Black Peopper, add them to the party, and stir to combine. Squeeze in the lemon juice, being careful to avoid getting the seeds in your food. Then shamefacedly pick the seeds out of your food. Stir once more, and you're kind of done! What you have will taste pretty damn good. But, if you cover the bowl and stick it in the fridge for a couple hours, it'll taste even better. Regardless of whether you eat it immediately - sacrificing taste for instant gratification - or not, there's very little this stuff won't taste awesome with. Make a sandwich, out it on a crack, or just eat it plain. It's all good. I guess what I'm trying to say is...you're welcome.